(no subject)
Title: 40 Years Of Snow
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Meredith, Cristina | implied Meredith/Derek, Cristina/Owen, Cristina/Burke
Word Count: 1,632
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #67 - Snow for fanfic100
Spoilers: Up to 5x01 - Dream A Little Dream Of Me
Summary: Based off the flashforward/dream we viewed. They've still got each other; maybe that's all that matters.
5.
“Am I really going to do this?”
There’s a slight narrowing of Cristina’s eyes, the beginnings of a groan coming from the back of her throat. “Oh, no. No. We are not having this conversation. Not after six months of picking out wedding invitations and cake tastings and dress fittings. No.”
Meredith just pulls the covers up higher in response, watching Cristina stuffing laundry in a drawer. “You make it sound worse than it is.”
“I did more for your wedding than I did for my own.” Cristina replies, which is true enough, considering Burke handled most of it - which might have something to do with why Cristina dreaded it just a little bit and why he left her at the altar.
It’s for those reasons that Meredith won’t fight her on this - no need to bring up old wounds. Instead she says, “I hope the snow clears up by tomorrow.”
“On the plus side, there are more patients if it doesn’t.” Somehow this isn’t exactly surprising coming from Cristina. She would say that. That would be her bright side.
“I don’t want more patients. I just want to get married and be...” she stops herself from saying ‘done with it’. It sounds like a jinx; it makes this sound like a chore. It shouldn’t be a chore. It should be the happiest day of her life (she keeps telling herself that but all she can feel is that knot in her stomach, that old reflex commanding her to run). “I just want to get married.”
“Yes, well,” Cristina sighs as she crawls into bed next to her, “that’s what you’re doing. You and Derek will go be happy and romantic and married, and the rest of us will do important things like save lives.”
“Cristina.” It’s all she needs to say really, that one exasperated word, for Cristina to discern her meaning.
“Right.” Another sigh, some shifting as she turns out the lone light, plunging them into darkness, lit only by the moon reflecting off the falling snowflakes outside the window, “I’m your person.”
---
10.
Cristina isn’t exactly talkative tonight, not that she’s ever been very chatty, but Meredith still finds herself concerned. She hasn’t found a good time, a good way, to ask what she’s fairly certain has to be bothering Cristina. At least it has to be bothering her somewhat. No one breaks up with someone, no matter how casual, and isn’t affected at all.
It’s why Meredith came home with her, back to the old apartment Cristina still hasn’t moved out of. Derek had given her that look, the look that said she spent more time with Cristina than him, and it had only made her more determined to walk out the door. He would just have to get over it.
Now the power keeps causing the lights to flicker, fighting the ice storm outside, and it makes her head hurt from straining her eyes to focus on the magazine that lies across her lap. This one’s backdated April of two years ago.
She shuts it the minute Cristina comes in, choosing instead to shift her eyes to her friend. Her mouth forms around various beginnings of sentences, before finally starting with, “Are you - “
“I’m over it.” Cristina cuts her off, sharply.
Not one to be deterred, Meredith still continues. “You don’t have to be you know. I mean I don’t understand why he showed up all of sudden if he was just going to leave - “
“No.” Again with the interrupting. “No, I dumped him. I told him to leave.”
“Oh.” Meredith thinks on this for a moment, highly confused. “Why?”
“Because relationships just complicate things.” It’s spoken exactly like someone who was broken up with at a wedding and never quite got over it. Cristina is pessimistic and overly practical, always has been, and it’s one of the many reasons why her and Owen Hunt (or Dr. McBadAss as she’d briefly entertained calling him), or her and anyone for that matter, never had a chance. “And I don’t need complications.”
And that, she thinks, is exactly why she spends more time with Cristina than she does with Derek. Because if it wasn’t for her then Cristina would be alone. Because Cristina is never going to be the relationship type and so she’s going to have to settle for being the friendship type. And that’s what Meredith’s there for.
She’s the only one Cristina trusts enough to let inside.
---
15.
“We could burn it.”
Meredith sighs, far too shakily when she only means to sound annoyed. The shirt in her hand is cold, unworn for far too long, and still smells like Derek. Her fingers smooth over the collar, trying to decide between laying it down back on the chair where she’d found it or balling it up and tossing it into a corner where she couldn’t see it any longer. She decides for a mix of both, calmly folding it and setting it on the chair, before placing the throw over it, blocking it from sight. “That’s what angry girlfriends do. Not angry wives.”
“Former.” Cristina corrects, something a person with more tact would’ve avoided saying. That doesn’t even seem to register for Cristina. “And people do it all the time on television. Isn’t it supposed to make you feel better?”
“We aren’t characters on television.” She answers, ignoring the actual question. “And I don’t need to feel better. I feel fine. It’s done, it’s over. We’re divorced. It’s better that way, really.”
“Okay.” They’re both silent for a moment, listening to each other breathe, trying to figure out what to do or say next. Or Meredith was. Then, “I sold my apartment.”
“What? Why?”
Cristina shrugs, like now she might be a little worried that this was the wrong time to tell her that. “I thought I’d move in.”
It’s funny because Meredith had almost been looking forward to the idea of an empty house, a place all to herself, for the first time in over a decade, and yet she drops that thought completely, with nothing more than an, “okay.”
---
20.
She guesses she should’ve seen this coming. Well, she did, see it coming, it’s normal, it’s life, it’s just -
Her father - Thatcher - has been dead and gone for years. Too much alcohol will do that to you, she thinks, remembering that night as the last night she drank herself into oblivion. There’s still a half-full bottle of tequila in the cabinet but she hasn’t touched it in two years.
But this isn’t about him. He hadn’t been a parental anything since she was five.
They bury Richard on a cold morning in October. He hadn’t been chief in years and yet everywhere she looked she saw familiar faces, mostly from the hospital.
Meredith doesn’t cry but her hands shake a little (she remembers a handful of ashes, down the drain of the hospital sink in OR 2; the sink’s still there and she’s never looked at it the same), right up until Cristina does the most un-Cristina like thing ever and takes both Meredith’s hands in hers and just holds on.
---
25.
“I hate children.”
At the moment, and this is just temporary, Meredith nods. Perhaps, she thinks solemnly, this is why neither of them ever had children. Even so, generally she liked other people’s children.
Not today.
“He’s five years old and he’s already mastered the art of sarcasm. He’s not even supposed to have mastered speech yet.” Cristina gives an annoyed groan in agreement. “Then again he takes after his father who takes after his father.” It’s a family tree she’d hate to see continue. (She’s aware these thoughts make her a bad person; she doesn’t much care)
“Who let evil spawn breed anyways?” Cristina asks, crossing her arms.
Meredith wonders when they became crotchety old women who sat around and complained about everyone.
---
30.
“What are we supposed to do exactly?”
“I don’t...” she stares at the alarm clock, blaring at 4:30 am. They don’t have to be up but they forgot to turn it off. Or maybe they just neglected to turn it off. “I don’t know.”
“Well what do normal people do?” Is Cristina’s next question, like somehow Meredith will have all the answers. She actually looks a little unnerved. Neither one of them makes a move to silence the alarm.
“I don’t know.” Meredith bites her lip. “We should know. We had lives before that hospital, right? We had to.”
“Maybe you did.” Cristina mutters, which isn’t all that surprising. Cristina probably spent most of her free time studying and doing medical-related training. She was about the job, always had been, still was unfortunately.
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
“Retirement sucks.”
“Oh yeah.”
---
35.
Even all the way over here it makes the newspapers. Esteemed surgeon Preston Burke dies. Meredith goes to great pains to hide the newspaper and is perfectly successful until about one in the afternoon when Izzie calls to ask Cristina if she’s okay.
“I thought I was helping,” is all Meredith can offer. And she was. She was protecting her. All these years later. But Cristina has never needed protection.
Cristina tears the page out of the paper, and crumbles it into a little ball that finds its way into the trashcan seconds later.
They never talk about it. They never talk about how they’re starting to loose friends, enemies, and old loves alike.
---
40.
They still think in terms of surgery.
Hell Cristina won’t cut that chicken without gloves, holds the knife like a scalpel. They talk in medical terms. It’s hard to let go.
They’re just trying desperately not to think about what’s going to happen when they have to let go of each other.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Meredith, Cristina | implied Meredith/Derek, Cristina/Owen, Cristina/Burke
Word Count: 1,632
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: #67 - Snow for fanfic100
Spoilers: Up to 5x01 - Dream A Little Dream Of Me
Summary: Based off the flashforward/dream we viewed. They've still got each other; maybe that's all that matters.
5.
“Am I really going to do this?”
There’s a slight narrowing of Cristina’s eyes, the beginnings of a groan coming from the back of her throat. “Oh, no. No. We are not having this conversation. Not after six months of picking out wedding invitations and cake tastings and dress fittings. No.”
Meredith just pulls the covers up higher in response, watching Cristina stuffing laundry in a drawer. “You make it sound worse than it is.”
“I did more for your wedding than I did for my own.” Cristina replies, which is true enough, considering Burke handled most of it - which might have something to do with why Cristina dreaded it just a little bit and why he left her at the altar.
It’s for those reasons that Meredith won’t fight her on this - no need to bring up old wounds. Instead she says, “I hope the snow clears up by tomorrow.”
“On the plus side, there are more patients if it doesn’t.” Somehow this isn’t exactly surprising coming from Cristina. She would say that. That would be her bright side.
“I don’t want more patients. I just want to get married and be...” she stops herself from saying ‘done with it’. It sounds like a jinx; it makes this sound like a chore. It shouldn’t be a chore. It should be the happiest day of her life (she keeps telling herself that but all she can feel is that knot in her stomach, that old reflex commanding her to run). “I just want to get married.”
“Yes, well,” Cristina sighs as she crawls into bed next to her, “that’s what you’re doing. You and Derek will go be happy and romantic and married, and the rest of us will do important things like save lives.”
“Cristina.” It’s all she needs to say really, that one exasperated word, for Cristina to discern her meaning.
“Right.” Another sigh, some shifting as she turns out the lone light, plunging them into darkness, lit only by the moon reflecting off the falling snowflakes outside the window, “I’m your person.”
---
10.
Cristina isn’t exactly talkative tonight, not that she’s ever been very chatty, but Meredith still finds herself concerned. She hasn’t found a good time, a good way, to ask what she’s fairly certain has to be bothering Cristina. At least it has to be bothering her somewhat. No one breaks up with someone, no matter how casual, and isn’t affected at all.
It’s why Meredith came home with her, back to the old apartment Cristina still hasn’t moved out of. Derek had given her that look, the look that said she spent more time with Cristina than him, and it had only made her more determined to walk out the door. He would just have to get over it.
Now the power keeps causing the lights to flicker, fighting the ice storm outside, and it makes her head hurt from straining her eyes to focus on the magazine that lies across her lap. This one’s backdated April of two years ago.
She shuts it the minute Cristina comes in, choosing instead to shift her eyes to her friend. Her mouth forms around various beginnings of sentences, before finally starting with, “Are you - “
“I’m over it.” Cristina cuts her off, sharply.
Not one to be deterred, Meredith still continues. “You don’t have to be you know. I mean I don’t understand why he showed up all of sudden if he was just going to leave - “
“No.” Again with the interrupting. “No, I dumped him. I told him to leave.”
“Oh.” Meredith thinks on this for a moment, highly confused. “Why?”
“Because relationships just complicate things.” It’s spoken exactly like someone who was broken up with at a wedding and never quite got over it. Cristina is pessimistic and overly practical, always has been, and it’s one of the many reasons why her and Owen Hunt (or Dr. McBadAss as she’d briefly entertained calling him), or her and anyone for that matter, never had a chance. “And I don’t need complications.”
And that, she thinks, is exactly why she spends more time with Cristina than she does with Derek. Because if it wasn’t for her then Cristina would be alone. Because Cristina is never going to be the relationship type and so she’s going to have to settle for being the friendship type. And that’s what Meredith’s there for.
She’s the only one Cristina trusts enough to let inside.
---
15.
“We could burn it.”
Meredith sighs, far too shakily when she only means to sound annoyed. The shirt in her hand is cold, unworn for far too long, and still smells like Derek. Her fingers smooth over the collar, trying to decide between laying it down back on the chair where she’d found it or balling it up and tossing it into a corner where she couldn’t see it any longer. She decides for a mix of both, calmly folding it and setting it on the chair, before placing the throw over it, blocking it from sight. “That’s what angry girlfriends do. Not angry wives.”
“Former.” Cristina corrects, something a person with more tact would’ve avoided saying. That doesn’t even seem to register for Cristina. “And people do it all the time on television. Isn’t it supposed to make you feel better?”
“We aren’t characters on television.” She answers, ignoring the actual question. “And I don’t need to feel better. I feel fine. It’s done, it’s over. We’re divorced. It’s better that way, really.”
“Okay.” They’re both silent for a moment, listening to each other breathe, trying to figure out what to do or say next. Or Meredith was. Then, “I sold my apartment.”
“What? Why?”
Cristina shrugs, like now she might be a little worried that this was the wrong time to tell her that. “I thought I’d move in.”
It’s funny because Meredith had almost been looking forward to the idea of an empty house, a place all to herself, for the first time in over a decade, and yet she drops that thought completely, with nothing more than an, “okay.”
---
20.
She guesses she should’ve seen this coming. Well, she did, see it coming, it’s normal, it’s life, it’s just -
Her father - Thatcher - has been dead and gone for years. Too much alcohol will do that to you, she thinks, remembering that night as the last night she drank herself into oblivion. There’s still a half-full bottle of tequila in the cabinet but she hasn’t touched it in two years.
But this isn’t about him. He hadn’t been a parental anything since she was five.
They bury Richard on a cold morning in October. He hadn’t been chief in years and yet everywhere she looked she saw familiar faces, mostly from the hospital.
Meredith doesn’t cry but her hands shake a little (she remembers a handful of ashes, down the drain of the hospital sink in OR 2; the sink’s still there and she’s never looked at it the same), right up until Cristina does the most un-Cristina like thing ever and takes both Meredith’s hands in hers and just holds on.
---
25.
“I hate children.”
At the moment, and this is just temporary, Meredith nods. Perhaps, she thinks solemnly, this is why neither of them ever had children. Even so, generally she liked other people’s children.
Not today.
“He’s five years old and he’s already mastered the art of sarcasm. He’s not even supposed to have mastered speech yet.” Cristina gives an annoyed groan in agreement. “Then again he takes after his father who takes after his father.” It’s a family tree she’d hate to see continue. (She’s aware these thoughts make her a bad person; she doesn’t much care)
“Who let evil spawn breed anyways?” Cristina asks, crossing her arms.
Meredith wonders when they became crotchety old women who sat around and complained about everyone.
---
30.
“What are we supposed to do exactly?”
“I don’t...” she stares at the alarm clock, blaring at 4:30 am. They don’t have to be up but they forgot to turn it off. Or maybe they just neglected to turn it off. “I don’t know.”
“Well what do normal people do?” Is Cristina’s next question, like somehow Meredith will have all the answers. She actually looks a little unnerved. Neither one of them makes a move to silence the alarm.
“I don’t know.” Meredith bites her lip. “We should know. We had lives before that hospital, right? We had to.”
“Maybe you did.” Cristina mutters, which isn’t all that surprising. Cristina probably spent most of her free time studying and doing medical-related training. She was about the job, always had been, still was unfortunately.
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
“Retirement sucks.”
“Oh yeah.”
---
35.
Even all the way over here it makes the newspapers. Esteemed surgeon Preston Burke dies. Meredith goes to great pains to hide the newspaper and is perfectly successful until about one in the afternoon when Izzie calls to ask Cristina if she’s okay.
“I thought I was helping,” is all Meredith can offer. And she was. She was protecting her. All these years later. But Cristina has never needed protection.
Cristina tears the page out of the paper, and crumbles it into a little ball that finds its way into the trashcan seconds later.
They never talk about it. They never talk about how they’re starting to loose friends, enemies, and old loves alike.
---
40.
They still think in terms of surgery.
Hell Cristina won’t cut that chicken without gloves, holds the knife like a scalpel. They talk in medical terms. It’s hard to let go.
They’re just trying desperately not to think about what’s going to happen when they have to let go of each other.