(Untitled)

[single_digit]

It'd been a few days since the island kinda sorta got back to its usual self, but some people were still wandering around like they were a little lost and Eddie couldn't blame them. It was just weird, waking up at home for a couple of days - home just the way he remembered it - and then coming back to the island again like it never happened. Maybe

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[drownondryland]

So Meredith's not the most social of people. Presumably, it'd be a lot simpler, then, for her to wait until everyone's done and cleared out, given how busy the meals can get in this place. The thing is, though, not only would she then have to exude some small measure of effort to manage her food, like heating it up or something, but the kitchen's never really cleared out. It gets less crowded. It almost never gets outright empty. And patience has never been her strong point anyway.

That doesn't mean she's about to mingle, not willingly, but there's only so much available space in the place. Sitting by herself isn't something bound to last long here. And maybe company wouldn't be too bad a thing now anyway.

[whats_insideyou]

Sarah wasn't a social person, either. She kept to herself, speaking only to the few people who seemed to have insinuated themselves within her life, whether she'd asked them to or not. And Meredith was not a friend. She remembered her, vaguely, from the long nights she spent in the clinic, bruised and battered and half dead.

Still, on her way to grab some food, Matthieu dozing in one arm, she murmured, "Hello, Dr. Grey," and spared the woman a ghost of a smile.

[drownondryland]

Looking up, resting against an elbow, Meredith smiles. Whatever's been wrong with her lately, that much is still genuine. "Sarah, hello," she says. "How are you two?"

There are too few serious patients to forget any of them, and she's always been good at that part. The sleeping child looks so peaceful, it's hard to believe the memory of the state his mother had been in less than a year ago.

[whats_insideyou]

"I am fine, I suppose. He is growing like a weed." Even a mother like Sarah couldn't help talking a bit about the wonder in watching her child grow.

Sometimes, she was certain that her son was strong, healthy, just to spite the world and the way he'd been brought into it. A tiny little fuck you to that woman and the things she'd done.

[drownondryland]

"I hear that's what they do," Meredith says, laughing quick and soft. "But a healthy weed, by the look of him."

So she's a sucker for a child. She can't help doting on babies, glad though she is not to have one of her own. It makes perfect sense to her -- there's something alluring about the durability of such fragile, tiny beings, how fresh everyone is at the start. Nothing, she's sure, could stay so clean and whole in her care long.

[whats_insideyou]

"He is. I do not understand how, but he is," she admitted, her lips twisting into a restrained smile. Sarah had not smiled fully, teeth flashing and all, in a very long time.

It was difficult, fixing her plate with a squirming eleven-month-old in her arms, so finally she said, "Would you hold him? Only for a moment. At this rate we will never eat."

[drownondryland]

"Oh, of course." Standing up, Meredith walks closer, holding out her arms, feeling a little sorry she hadn't thought to offer. It can't be easy, negotiating a child and food at the same time. For that matter, she can't imagine being a single mother in this place after all Sarah's endured. She has to admire her tenacity. "I'd be glad to."

[whats_insideyou]

Matthieu let the other woman take him without complaint, silently looking up at her with wide, curious eyes. Sometimes, there was something about him that even Sarah found a little eerie. She had no way of knowing if he'd always been that way, but she can't imagine that he came away from the night of his birth completely unchanged.

"This would all be so much easier if I had an extra pair of hands."