Comes And Goes (In Waves)

[drownondryland]

It's not that things are looking up exactly. It's that they just aren't looking so persistently down, which, for Meredith, is very nearly the same thing.

Or maybe they are looking up, maybe she's just being cautious. After all, every time she's thought things were working out before, she's found a way to crash and burn and she can't this time. Not

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[lexiepedia]

"Hmm?" Lexie asks, instinctive, pausing at the question on her way past before she even stops to realize its source. That only takes her a moment, though - a glance underneath the table as she scans the floor for the missing pen - and then she's nodding, though the thing in question has yet to catch her eye. "Yeah, I'm sure it's right here somewhere," she says, ducking to a crouch, which seems to do the trick. She grabs the pen, then grins at Meredith, already straightening again. "Got it."

[drownondryland]

"Lexie, thanks," Meredith says, backing out the other way to stand up again. She sighs, hands coming to rest on the table. While Lexie may have been right that the drinking is a problem for Sean, she was wrong about the extent. He's cut back considerably and he's doing just fine as far as she's concerned, but at least he's listened to her, and Meredith's kept Lexie's prompting to herself. With how he reacted when she brought it up, though things have settled, she doesn't want him to resent his future sister-in-law for it. "It got away from me again."

[lexiepedia]

"Don't worry about it," Lexie says, setting the pen down on the tabletop near Meredith. Though it's been ages, now, since that debacle with Rapture and since she told Meredith what she'd meant to for a while, it's still something of a relief to have the mood seem so much lighter, everything settled in to something closer to normalcy. Smiling, she tips her chin in the direction of the papers on the table, not yet taking a seat. "What are you working on?"

[drownondryland]

"Oh, this," Meredith says, shaking her head. She waves a hand at it all and shrugs. "Course syllabi for First Aid and Anatomy." She's been teaching the same class for a while now, but she's never fully satisfied with what she's up to, refining it year by year and pondering whether or not she ought to start offering something a little more advanced for those who've survived the earlier courses. Whether or not she's a good enough teacher is the real question. "The school term's coming up on us fast."

[lexiepedia]

"Right, yeah, it is, isn't it?" Lexie asks, the question coming out a little absent, though her interest isn't. It's just not something she's thought much about, despite having taken a couple of classes last semester; she probably will again, just for something to do, but the time for signing up hasn't even come yet, so it hasn't really even crossed her mind before now. "So you're making changes from last term?"

[drownondryland]

"Here and there," Meredith says lightly. "Every class helps me figure out where to streamline and expand. And I always need to copy out the new syllabus for the students, although I'm mostly saving that until I have students." There's never any telling if it'll be one person or five, and how much, if any, experience they'll already have. She'd rather wait than waste time making too many.

[lexiepedia]

"Makes sense," Lexie says, nodding. Aside from the brief stint as a resident that preceded her arrival here, teaching isn't really anything she has much experience with at all, but it seems logical enough to her, and when Meredith is the one who's been teaching the class for a good long while now, she would probably know best. "You looking forward to it? The start of the semester."

[drownondryland]

"It's... something," Meredith says, nodding. "It helps fill the time, and sometimes the students are bright." Sometimes she doesn't know why they signed up, but she's at least learned enough tact not to say so. The thought of how soon it'll be here again, though, just means she needs to get on finding that dress faster or her classes are going to be fewer this year.

[lexiepedia]

Lexie nearly laughs at the use of 'sometimes,' biting her lip to hold the sound back instead. It isn't actually funny - God, she can' t imagine having to teach students who aren't bright - and she doesn't need to have that pointed out to her, as she suspects it would be. The phrasing, though, she can't help finding humorous. "Filling time is always good," she says warmly. "And hopefully they'll be bright this semester."

[drownondryland]

"I can only hope," laughs Meredith. "They're good people, they're trying." Some are just better at it than others and that's always going to be the case in a field like this one - in any field, really. Some just show an aptitude for the work. Those are the best ones, the ones she really enjoys teaching. "And you know how this place is - full of surprises."

[lexiepedia]

"Yeah, that's one way of putting it," Lexie says dryly, one corner of her mouth curling up in a smile that's almost teasing. The island does always seem to come up with something, weird as it is to think of it that way; while she's found things to be dull more often than not, her life isn't a reflection on this place as a whole, and she'd bet that it still has a whole bunch of tricks up its metaphorical sleeve that it hasn't yet employed. "At least you know they have to be interested if they're bothering to take it, too. That's got to help."

[drownondryland]

Meredith nods. "Learning for the sake of learning," she says. "It's... admirable. I doubt regular classes are so invested. A subject's always less interesting when you're required to take it." She always hated that in school, the many required courses and the work she never wanted to do. But then, of course, she hated a lot about school as a teenager.

[lexiepedia]

"I know, right?" Lexie says, like she has a lot of experience with that herself. On the whole, she enjoyed nearly all of school, though there were naturally some subjects she preferred to others; she has experience enough seeing other people's reactions to it, though, that she won't argue that logic. "Are you going to take anything? Or just stick to teaching?"

[drownondryland]

"I think it's better for everyone's sanity if I just teach," Meredith says, huffing out a laugh. "I was never the best student." She's smart, but she's not good at school, exactly. She can do well, but that doesn't mean she enjoys it. She's not that desperate for activities. "What are you taking?"

[lexiepedia]

"I haven't really decided yet," Lexie says, shrugging. She might as well take something different, something new, something to pass the time; it's just a matter of figuring out what those may be, and fitting them around her clinic schedule. "I'll have to look at what they have, see what looks interesting. Maybe take something really weird just for the hell of it."

[drownondryland]

"Yeah, why not?" Meredith asks. "You have the time, you might as well." Lexie, of course, was better at school than her. That's easy to know. She's just that kind of girl, earnest and book-smart and with that ridiculous photographic memory. At least it would help occupy her, too, give her something new to focus on.