Far Far {a MerDer one shot}
Disclaimer: Considering this had to be written, I think it’s pretty clear I don’t own the show. Yael Naim owns the song used in the title. I’ve loved this song forever, and it seemed to fit this little story.
So, this is another fix-it one shot to add to the vault, based after 8.02, and includes spoilery stuff from the promos, too, in which Meredith and Derek have an actual conversation. Crazy thought, isn’t it? Anyway, enjoy!
…
Meredith stands at the foot of Zola’s crib. Two stuffed penguins and a monkey lay where she should have been, next to the stack of neatly folded blankets. It feels wrong to move them. Like if she does, it’s tempting fate, and that if she just keeps them where they are, where Zola put them two days ago, she’ll be back one day to play with them.
The past forty-eight hours have been spent in constant worry. When she’s at work, she’s trying to find a few spare minutes to talk to Derek who still wants nothing to do with her. And when she’s home, she’s crying.
If there’s one positive thing to come out of the mess that was currently her life, it’s Alex. At Meredith’s not-so-subtle insistence, he moved himself back into the house yesterday. When he found her sitting on the couch after work in tears, holding one of Zola’s onesies, he put his bags on the floor, dropped down next to her on the couch, and sat with her. When her tears had run out, he ordered them a pizza, and they ate in silence. It was friendship at its simplest, and she was grateful.
She smiles to herself, but when she sees Derek in the doorway, it dissolves into a frown. “What’s… why are you here?” she asks in surprise.
Derek leans against the door and sighs. “I left the number for the electrician in the nightstand. I need to call him in the morning.”
“So, you’re not here for sex?” Meredith clarifies. It’s a low blow, and she knows it, but she’s been sad for so many hours now that substituting that emotion with anger is actually refreshing.
“What? No.”
Meredith shrugs. “Well, judging by how you treat me at work, I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me here, either. And you already broke the Post-It, so what am I supposed to think?”
“When did I…?” he asks, before Meredith cuts him off.
“What does ‘no running’ mean to you? Because I’m pretty sure that couldn’t have been any clearer. And I get that you’re mad, and that you might never forgive me. But you not being here is punishing Zola, too, and she doesn’t deserve that,” Meredith says, all attempts at keeping calm out the window when she sees Zola’s face behind her eyelids. A sweet, happy, beautiful little girl that didn’t ask for any of this; a little girl they may never see again.
“Don’t bring her into this, Meredith. This has nothing to do with Zola,” Derek says, finally stepping all the way into the bedroom, not just wavering in the doorway like he wanted to turn around and walk in the opposite direction.
“It is about her! She’s our baby! She’s what matters right now, and she’s not here anymore!” Meredith yells. “You might not trust me, but you have to give me something here, Derek. We can’t keep doing this.”
Derek walks around to the other side of the bed, pulling open the drawer to his nightstand and stuffing the electrician’s business card into his pocket. “I have no reason to trust you! You jeopardized your career and mine, not to mention the integrity of the hospital. You lied to me, and Richard gave up his job to save your ass. And then, you took Zola, and wouldn’t pick up the damn phone.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s how I felt when Janet handed me a baby to take home, and you fell off the face of the freaking planet,” Meredith says. “Frustrating, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know she was here,” Derek says in defense.
“And if you would’ve picked up, you would’ve known,” Meredith replies.
He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I had no idea where you were! Janet was staring me down, and I’m pulling excuses out of thin air, wondering if I’d have to testify against you in a damn kidnapping case.”
“You wanna know why I took her, Derek? Because I was scared to death!” Meredith all but screams before her words become replaced with a tight feeling in her throat and a burning in her eyes.
She peers into Zola’s empty crib, then looks at him again. “We lost our first baby, and I had no control over it. My body decided that for me. And I stood there and felt the blood running down my legs, and the stabbing pain inside me, and there was nothing I could do. And you were in the OR next door with your chest cracked open while Cristina was saving your life. I had no control over that, either. And when we started trying to have a baby, my body made that decision for me again, and we couldn’t.”
“Meredith.”
“So, I know you’re pissed that I took her. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to let her disappear, too. I was in control this time. Or I thought I was until Janet took her away, and you walked right by me like I wasn’t even in the room. We lost two babies, and it’s my fault.” Hot tears slip from her eyes, and she turns around. Despite her best intentions to hold up the walls around her, they crumble, and she doesn’t have it in her to care anymore.
Derek opens his mouth, then closes it, at a loss for things to say. He sits down on the bed and stares at the pile of laundry scattered on the blanket. From onesies to dresses, all in different colors and patterns, tiny and freshly washed. He picks up Zola’s purple footie pajamas covered in speckled cows and yellow moons, and holds them tightly in his hands. He wipes away the tears in his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
“It’s not your fault,” he says.
“The miscarriage? Well, whose fault is it, then? I’m the one with the hostile, baby-hating uterus; not you. So our infertility? Medically, it is my fault. And as far as Zola goes, I know you blame me. I panicked, I lied to Janet, and now, Zola is with some other family. She’s probably scared and upset and confused, and I can’t do anything about that, either,” Meredith says. She lets out a long, haggard breath and closes her eyes. “I blame me for that, so you can, too. I don’t care. And if you wanna leave, go. Zola’s not here, so there’s nothing tying you down.”
The way she says it, cold and detached, feels like a punch in the gut, and he physically coils at her tone. “Just because I’m angry doesn’t mean I’m leaving you,” Derek says, glancing up at the Post-It, framed above their bed. It stares back, and he can’t shake the feeling that the small, blue square is judging him.
“Well, what does it mean? Because this,” she says, gesturing back and forth at the space between them. “This isn’t working for me. When I asked you at work earlier, you didn’t answer, so I’ll ask again. You’re either here, or you’re not. And if we want to get Zola back, you can’t be a part-time husband, Derek. If we want her back, we have to work things out. So, are you ever going to forgive me, or are you going to hold this grudge until the day you die, and we’re both still childless and fighting over a clinical trial? Which is it?”
Derek doesn’t say anything at first. He just sits there with the footie pajamas in his lap. When he finally speaks, she can barely hear him. “I need her back.”
“So do I.”
He sighs. “I don’t want to hold a grudge.”
She leans against Zola’s crib and crosses her arms over her chest. “Cristina had an abortion. Owen wanted a baby, but he still showed up, and held her hand, anyway. He was upset, but he’s her husband, so he stuck by her. Cristina had an abortion, Derek,” Meredith stressed. “If Owen can find a way to forgive her for that, then I think you need to find a way to forgive me, too. Even if you can’t do it right now.”
Derek nods solemnly, slowly. He knows she’s right, and he doesn’t try to say otherwise. “I know.”
Meredith sits on the other side of the bed and folds a pair of Zola’s socks. Derek takes her silence as an opportunity to speak again, so he does.
“You really think I blame you for the miscarriage? And us not being able to have a baby?” he asks.
The way he says it stings her as much as it stings him to have to ask, and she shrugs. “I don’t know. You called me a bad mom. Sometimes I think maybe that’s part of why you said it. Like you resent me, and you just don’t want to admit it.”
“I don’t. Meredith, I don’t. And I don’t think you’re a bad mom. I’m sorry for saying that. I meant every word of what I told Janet about you,” Derek says, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “And Zola isn’t here because of both of us. Not just you. We both made mistakes.”
“And she’s the one that suffers for it.” Her voice breaks, and she drops her face into her hand. Derek isn’t sure if he’s earned the right to touch her, so as much as it pains him, he doesn’t. “I found her teething ring in the fridge last night. And I forgot to tell Janet that Zola was teething when she took her, so now, she’s probably in pain because her gums hurt, and she doesn’t have her teething ring with her. And what if the people she’s with now don’t have one, and they don’t give her any acetaminophen?”
“Mer,” Derek tries to interrupt.
“I was having a freaking panic attack at midnight, and Janet didn’t answer the phone when I called. When I finally went back upstairs to try to get a few hours of sleep, I couldn’t, because you weren’t there on the other side the bed. You weren’t here to tell me she was okay.” She pulls a tissue from the box next to the pack of baby wipes on her nightstand, and blots her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Derek frowns. “You should’ve…”
“What? Called? Yeah, because I’m sure you would’ve answered,” Meredith snaps at him. Again, the meanness pours out of her mouth before she can stop it, but being mad at him is easier than being mad at the unconcerned cruelty of the damn universe that gets a kick out of taking babies away from her.
Her frankness delivers another punch at him, and he drops his head. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re supposed to love me, even when you hate me, remember?” Meredith says. “Or is that over because of what I did?”
Her third punch, this one more hurtful than the last. “I do love you.”
“Well, then what the hell are we doing?” Meredith asks. “Because you being angry is hurting Zola more than it’s hurting me. If we don’t fix this, do you really think Social Services is going to come anywhere near us? We need to stop. We need to get past it if we ever want to see her again. And we both need her, so we have to, Derek.”
“I know.” The thought sobers him, and he squelches his pride for the sake of his daughter. He has to. He pulls a set of condensed notes and blueprints from his back pocket and unfolds the papers, spreading them out over the bed. “So, uh, Owen and I finished the kitchen counter. We used the stones like you wanted. It looks good. I want you to come see it.”
It’s his small token of peace and moving forward, and Meredith accepts it. “Yeah?”
“It’s your house, too.”
Meredith picks up Zola’s green leggings off the bed and folds them on her knee. Now it’s her turn. “So, you said the electrician is coming tomorrow?”
“Yeah. He’s gonna start routing some wires, mostly in the kitchen and playroom for now,” Derek tells her, finally folding the cow pajamas on his lap, then placing them on the small stack on top of her other pajamas.
“Okay, good.” She pushes the still unfolded pile of laundry so it’s between them, and Derek takes the invitation.
He stops in the middle of folding a bath towel with a duck hood, and looks at her. “Zola has a teething ring.”
“What?”
“Karev told me about the teething ring today at work. He told me you were worried about Zola all day, so I called Janet. She told me Zola is fine, that she has a teething ring, and the bottle of acetaminophen was in the diaper bag. She’s not in pain. She’s okay, Mer,” Derek says softly.
Another round of tears sting her eyes, and it’s the first time in the last forty-eight hours that her heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to break and stop beating. Meredith exhales, then offers him a small smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he nods.
Meredith picks up a yellow onesie and folds it. She clears her throat, and sniffles. “So, I know we don’t have walls yet, but I was thinking purple for her room,” she says, reaching for a small tee shirt with a monkey on it.
“I think she’d like that,” Derek agrees, taking a pen from his nightstand and scribbling something down about getting paint swatches.
Meredith holds the tee shirt up to her nose and breathes it in. Zola’s little baby smell still lingers in the fabric, and smiles to herself. Even if she wasn’t here right now, she was still theirs. And when she came back, they’d be ready. They’d come too far to accept anything less.
How can you stay outside?
there's a beautiful mess inside
how can you stay outside?
there's a beautiful mess inside
oh oh oh oh
So, this is another fix-it one shot to add to the vault, based after 8.02, and includes spoilery stuff from the promos, too, in which Meredith and Derek have an actual conversation. Crazy thought, isn’t it? Anyway, enjoy!
…
Meredith stands at the foot of Zola’s crib. Two stuffed penguins and a monkey lay where she should have been, next to the stack of neatly folded blankets. It feels wrong to move them. Like if she does, it’s tempting fate, and that if she just keeps them where they are, where Zola put them two days ago, she’ll be back one day to play with them.
The past forty-eight hours have been spent in constant worry. When she’s at work, she’s trying to find a few spare minutes to talk to Derek who still wants nothing to do with her. And when she’s home, she’s crying.
If there’s one positive thing to come out of the mess that was currently her life, it’s Alex. At Meredith’s not-so-subtle insistence, he moved himself back into the house yesterday. When he found her sitting on the couch after work in tears, holding one of Zola’s onesies, he put his bags on the floor, dropped down next to her on the couch, and sat with her. When her tears had run out, he ordered them a pizza, and they ate in silence. It was friendship at its simplest, and she was grateful.
She smiles to herself, but when she sees Derek in the doorway, it dissolves into a frown. “What’s… why are you here?” she asks in surprise.
Derek leans against the door and sighs. “I left the number for the electrician in the nightstand. I need to call him in the morning.”
“So, you’re not here for sex?” Meredith clarifies. It’s a low blow, and she knows it, but she’s been sad for so many hours now that substituting that emotion with anger is actually refreshing.
“What? No.”
Meredith shrugs. “Well, judging by how you treat me at work, I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me here, either. And you already broke the Post-It, so what am I supposed to think?”
“When did I…?” he asks, before Meredith cuts him off.
“What does ‘no running’ mean to you? Because I’m pretty sure that couldn’t have been any clearer. And I get that you’re mad, and that you might never forgive me. But you not being here is punishing Zola, too, and she doesn’t deserve that,” Meredith says, all attempts at keeping calm out the window when she sees Zola’s face behind her eyelids. A sweet, happy, beautiful little girl that didn’t ask for any of this; a little girl they may never see again.
“Don’t bring her into this, Meredith. This has nothing to do with Zola,” Derek says, finally stepping all the way into the bedroom, not just wavering in the doorway like he wanted to turn around and walk in the opposite direction.
“It is about her! She’s our baby! She’s what matters right now, and she’s not here anymore!” Meredith yells. “You might not trust me, but you have to give me something here, Derek. We can’t keep doing this.”
Derek walks around to the other side of the bed, pulling open the drawer to his nightstand and stuffing the electrician’s business card into his pocket. “I have no reason to trust you! You jeopardized your career and mine, not to mention the integrity of the hospital. You lied to me, and Richard gave up his job to save your ass. And then, you took Zola, and wouldn’t pick up the damn phone.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s how I felt when Janet handed me a baby to take home, and you fell off the face of the freaking planet,” Meredith says. “Frustrating, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t know she was here,” Derek says in defense.
“And if you would’ve picked up, you would’ve known,” Meredith replies.
He runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “I had no idea where you were! Janet was staring me down, and I’m pulling excuses out of thin air, wondering if I’d have to testify against you in a damn kidnapping case.”
“You wanna know why I took her, Derek? Because I was scared to death!” Meredith all but screams before her words become replaced with a tight feeling in her throat and a burning in her eyes.
She peers into Zola’s empty crib, then looks at him again. “We lost our first baby, and I had no control over it. My body decided that for me. And I stood there and felt the blood running down my legs, and the stabbing pain inside me, and there was nothing I could do. And you were in the OR next door with your chest cracked open while Cristina was saving your life. I had no control over that, either. And when we started trying to have a baby, my body made that decision for me again, and we couldn’t.”
“Meredith.”
“So, I know you’re pissed that I took her. But there wasn’t a chance in hell that I was going to let her disappear, too. I was in control this time. Or I thought I was until Janet took her away, and you walked right by me like I wasn’t even in the room. We lost two babies, and it’s my fault.” Hot tears slip from her eyes, and she turns around. Despite her best intentions to hold up the walls around her, they crumble, and she doesn’t have it in her to care anymore.
Derek opens his mouth, then closes it, at a loss for things to say. He sits down on the bed and stares at the pile of laundry scattered on the blanket. From onesies to dresses, all in different colors and patterns, tiny and freshly washed. He picks up Zola’s purple footie pajamas covered in speckled cows and yellow moons, and holds them tightly in his hands. He wipes away the tears in his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
“It’s not your fault,” he says.
“The miscarriage? Well, whose fault is it, then? I’m the one with the hostile, baby-hating uterus; not you. So our infertility? Medically, it is my fault. And as far as Zola goes, I know you blame me. I panicked, I lied to Janet, and now, Zola is with some other family. She’s probably scared and upset and confused, and I can’t do anything about that, either,” Meredith says. She lets out a long, haggard breath and closes her eyes. “I blame me for that, so you can, too. I don’t care. And if you wanna leave, go. Zola’s not here, so there’s nothing tying you down.”
The way she says it, cold and detached, feels like a punch in the gut, and he physically coils at her tone. “Just because I’m angry doesn’t mean I’m leaving you,” Derek says, glancing up at the Post-It, framed above their bed. It stares back, and he can’t shake the feeling that the small, blue square is judging him.
“Well, what does it mean? Because this,” she says, gesturing back and forth at the space between them. “This isn’t working for me. When I asked you at work earlier, you didn’t answer, so I’ll ask again. You’re either here, or you’re not. And if we want to get Zola back, you can’t be a part-time husband, Derek. If we want her back, we have to work things out. So, are you ever going to forgive me, or are you going to hold this grudge until the day you die, and we’re both still childless and fighting over a clinical trial? Which is it?”
Derek doesn’t say anything at first. He just sits there with the footie pajamas in his lap. When he finally speaks, she can barely hear him. “I need her back.”
“So do I.”
He sighs. “I don’t want to hold a grudge.”
She leans against Zola’s crib and crosses her arms over her chest. “Cristina had an abortion. Owen wanted a baby, but he still showed up, and held her hand, anyway. He was upset, but he’s her husband, so he stuck by her. Cristina had an abortion, Derek,” Meredith stressed. “If Owen can find a way to forgive her for that, then I think you need to find a way to forgive me, too. Even if you can’t do it right now.”
Derek nods solemnly, slowly. He knows she’s right, and he doesn’t try to say otherwise. “I know.”
Meredith sits on the other side of the bed and folds a pair of Zola’s socks. Derek takes her silence as an opportunity to speak again, so he does.
“You really think I blame you for the miscarriage? And us not being able to have a baby?” he asks.
The way he says it stings her as much as it stings him to have to ask, and she shrugs. “I don’t know. You called me a bad mom. Sometimes I think maybe that’s part of why you said it. Like you resent me, and you just don’t want to admit it.”
“I don’t. Meredith, I don’t. And I don’t think you’re a bad mom. I’m sorry for saying that. I meant every word of what I told Janet about you,” Derek says, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “And Zola isn’t here because of both of us. Not just you. We both made mistakes.”
“And she’s the one that suffers for it.” Her voice breaks, and she drops her face into her hand. Derek isn’t sure if he’s earned the right to touch her, so as much as it pains him, he doesn’t. “I found her teething ring in the fridge last night. And I forgot to tell Janet that Zola was teething when she took her, so now, she’s probably in pain because her gums hurt, and she doesn’t have her teething ring with her. And what if the people she’s with now don’t have one, and they don’t give her any acetaminophen?”
“Mer,” Derek tries to interrupt.
“I was having a freaking panic attack at midnight, and Janet didn’t answer the phone when I called. When I finally went back upstairs to try to get a few hours of sleep, I couldn’t, because you weren’t there on the other side the bed. You weren’t here to tell me she was okay.” She pulls a tissue from the box next to the pack of baby wipes on her nightstand, and blots her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Derek frowns. “You should’ve…”
“What? Called? Yeah, because I’m sure you would’ve answered,” Meredith snaps at him. Again, the meanness pours out of her mouth before she can stop it, but being mad at him is easier than being mad at the unconcerned cruelty of the damn universe that gets a kick out of taking babies away from her.
Her frankness delivers another punch at him, and he drops his head. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re supposed to love me, even when you hate me, remember?” Meredith says. “Or is that over because of what I did?”
Her third punch, this one more hurtful than the last. “I do love you.”
“Well, then what the hell are we doing?” Meredith asks. “Because you being angry is hurting Zola more than it’s hurting me. If we don’t fix this, do you really think Social Services is going to come anywhere near us? We need to stop. We need to get past it if we ever want to see her again. And we both need her, so we have to, Derek.”
“I know.” The thought sobers him, and he squelches his pride for the sake of his daughter. He has to. He pulls a set of condensed notes and blueprints from his back pocket and unfolds the papers, spreading them out over the bed. “So, uh, Owen and I finished the kitchen counter. We used the stones like you wanted. It looks good. I want you to come see it.”
It’s his small token of peace and moving forward, and Meredith accepts it. “Yeah?”
“It’s your house, too.”
Meredith picks up Zola’s green leggings off the bed and folds them on her knee. Now it’s her turn. “So, you said the electrician is coming tomorrow?”
“Yeah. He’s gonna start routing some wires, mostly in the kitchen and playroom for now,” Derek tells her, finally folding the cow pajamas on his lap, then placing them on the small stack on top of her other pajamas.
“Okay, good.” She pushes the still unfolded pile of laundry so it’s between them, and Derek takes the invitation.
He stops in the middle of folding a bath towel with a duck hood, and looks at her. “Zola has a teething ring.”
“What?”
“Karev told me about the teething ring today at work. He told me you were worried about Zola all day, so I called Janet. She told me Zola is fine, that she has a teething ring, and the bottle of acetaminophen was in the diaper bag. She’s not in pain. She’s okay, Mer,” Derek says softly.
Another round of tears sting her eyes, and it’s the first time in the last forty-eight hours that her heart doesn’t feel like it’s going to break and stop beating. Meredith exhales, then offers him a small smile. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he nods.
Meredith picks up a yellow onesie and folds it. She clears her throat, and sniffles. “So, I know we don’t have walls yet, but I was thinking purple for her room,” she says, reaching for a small tee shirt with a monkey on it.
“I think she’d like that,” Derek agrees, taking a pen from his nightstand and scribbling something down about getting paint swatches.
Meredith holds the tee shirt up to her nose and breathes it in. Zola’s little baby smell still lingers in the fabric, and smiles to herself. Even if she wasn’t here right now, she was still theirs. And when she came back, they’d be ready. They’d come too far to accept anything less.
How can you stay outside?
there's a beautiful mess inside
how can you stay outside?
there's a beautiful mess inside
oh oh oh oh