All Along The Watchtower - Part 15A
Title: All Along The Watchtower
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
If I had to use any one word to describe this chapter, I couldn't, but I can do it in two. Baby steps. Both Derek and Meredith are taking them. A lot of little plot bunnies are advanced, some more subtle than others. If you've been craving some damned movement from this train, I think this chapter is your ticket to ride :) You may want to brush up on chapter 3, though, before hopping aboard, if it's been a while since you've read it.
This chapter has been a long time in the making. I would estimate I've spent at least 48 hours working on this chapter. Possibly more. If you're holding onto some feedback, please feel free to let it loose. Feedback is what makes sharing this story so fun, and I love to hear from my readers. Thank you to everybody who always takes the time to comment. Thank you to my beta readers. And thank you very much for your patience as I've worked on finishing this behemoth. In order to keep up with the word count requirements for NaNoWriMo, I need to get working on chapter 16 pretty quickly. My utmost hope is to return to a more regular posting schedule, now that I have TDC and one of my fic prompts out of the way.
I hope you enjoy this!
All Along The Watchtower - Part 15A
Derek sat on the leather loveseat in his old ten-by-ten office, staring at nothing. After he'd left his position as head of neurosurgery, the position had been filled by Dr. Weller. Dr. Weller already had an office at Seattle Grace the same shoebox size as Derek's former haunt. Neither office had windows. Neither had any particular locational advantage. There hadn't been much point in having Dr. Weller move his things. On top of that, the shooting had caused attrition, not growth. With no new doctors needing offices, Derek's old office had been left in skeletal limbo.
Meredith sat behind the dinged, scratched desk that had been his, watching him. His eye were open, but his eyelids drooped. Just a fraction. Enough to take away the normal wakefulness from what should have been a bright-eyed gaze.
His dull gaze faced where he'd hung his various diplomas, now a blank, white-washed wall. His old bookshelves lined the room behind the desk. Empty. A pale, dusty film had collected on the shelves. His desk, once stacked a foot high with ongoing casework and research, was nothing but an old oak husk with empty drawers. She stroked the smooth wood grain with her fingertips. Condensation formed on the wood in her wake and then slipped away in an instant.
The whisper of the air conditioner spread a hush into the room.
“Derek,” she prodded.
He blinked. He sighed, and he raised his hands to wipe his face, not in a graceful motion like it should have been. More lax. Like an ounce of care had been removed from the impulses sent by his brain to his muscles, leaving him looking like something... not. Not quite there. Not quite whole.
“I'm sorry,” he said, and he turned to her. “What?”
“I said, best vacation?”
She tried to ignore the fact that he'd lost track of the conversation right in the middle of it. They'd come to Seattle Grace two hours before, and they'd sat outside on the bench for a while. Just talking. People watching. Trying to get him used to things. They'd been doing it all week.
He'd been all right that morning. Not great. But all right. But then he'd excused himself to use the restroom. Ever since he'd returned, he'd been acting like he'd detached himself from reality. Weird. Spacey. Exhausted. Like he'd been when she'd brought him home from the hospital the first time.
Dissociation, Dr. Wyatt had said. When he's not paying attention to the world, he's not hurt or frightened. He's created a safety zone for himself.
A tremor of disquiet hovered underneath her skin. He was pushing himself. Pushing himself to be there when he wasn't okay with it yet. She tightened her grip against the arms of his beat up executive chair. Let him choose, she told herself, despite the whine in her head repeating to her that this was a mistake. Let him choose when he's done. He'll choose.
“Best vacation?” he parroted, as if the words he'd just heard weren't in English.
She spun the old executive chair half clockwise and then half counterclockwise. The chair squeaked. Tension drove her to move. She clutched the lip of the desk as she stood. Her fingers slipped over the empty surface, and a brief flash of what had been there months before illuminated in the back of her brain. She remembered a plastic poster stuck by double-sided mounting tape to the surface of the desk. The poster had delineated the different sections of the human brain and what purpose they each served. Frontal lobe for emotions, reasoning, movement, problem solving. Parietal lobe for the senses like touch and taste. Occipital lobe for vision and object recognition. Temporal lobe for memories. Which brought her gaze to him. Behind him, he'd hung dozens of posters, now, all gone. An illustration of a human spine. Nerve cluster maps. Framed copies of his headlining research articles, at least a dozen.
She left the desk behind her and sank onto the loveseat next to him. The cushions squeaked. Without comment, almost as if it were a reflex, he wrapped his arm over her shoulder. She sank against his body. The strong, soothing scent of his cologne caressed her.
He wore a sharp black suit and a black tie. She'd caught him that morning, standing lost and silent by the closet. His fingers had brushed the striped blue tie she'd always told him she liked, and he'd sighed. It doesn't feel appropriate for this, he'd said. And he'd passed it over. His tie rack had moaned as he'd spun it around, looking for an even more subdued alternative. She'd sat on the bed and watched, torn between apprehension and voyeurism as he'd primped and prepared. She loved the way he looked in a crisp, well-fitting suit.
“Yes, best vacation,” she said. “You're acting really spacey.”
He sighed. “Memories, I guess.”
She stroked the arm of his sport coat. “Good ones or bad ones?”
“When Richard showed me this office, I thought I might have made a mistake,” he said.
“Not what you were used to?”
A tired smile pulled at his lips. She followed his gaze as he looked at his former desk, the bookcase, three chairs, and the loveseat, all crammed into the room like interlocking puzzle pieces that wouldn't fit anymore with the slightest disruption to their alignment.
“I had a bathroom attached to my old office in Manhattan,” he said. “The bathroom had a closet. The closet was bigger than this.”
She tried to imagine the look on his face as Chief Webber had ushered him into this room. Derek's eyes would have widened, but he would have recovered with a panicky smile. The Chief wouldn't have noticed the panicky bit, just the smile. He would have blathered on about how Seattle Grace was the best of the best, and how Derek was a welcome addition to the team. Blah, blah. She could hear him in her head.
“Private practice is a bit more lucrative,” she said. “Life's a bit different down in the trenches.”
“More lucrative, yes,” he said. “But more empty. It only took me a few days to get over myself.”
I think I hate being Chief, he'd said.
She touched his thigh. His suit felt coarse to the touch. She'd gotten used to the soft, worn feel of beat up jeans. Pajama pants. Things he'd worn during his recovery. She kissed him.
“Hmm,” he said as he stared into the nothing where his coat rack had been. He used to hang his lab coat there with his stethoscope coiled in the pocket. “Egypt.”
“What?” she said.
“Now, who's spacing?” he said, a ghost of smirk on his face. “Best vacation. Egypt.”
She looked up at him. “You've been to Egypt?”
“A long time ago, yes,” he said. “Before I came to Seattle.”
“Did you go with Addison?”
“No, actually,” he said. “I went for a medical conference on neurosurgery and neuroscience in Cairo.”
“Derek, that's not a vacation. That's work. If you count work, I'm sure you've been everywhere.”
“I stayed an extra day. I saw the pyramids.”
She snorted. “A whole day, wow.”
“You're mocking me,” he said.
“I'm not mocking.”
“You are.” He kissed her, and she giggled. “The pyramids were sort of disappointing, by the way. They're not actually in the middle of the desert.”
“They're not?”
“No. And there's a Pizza Hut next to them. Or, there was. I don't know about now.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “I went. I saw. I even dared to sample the pizza. And you mock me.”
“It's just...” She stared at him, at his weathered laugh lines. She loved when his eyes lit up with extra wattage from his smile, and the skin around his eyes crinkled. She saw that look so rarely these days that it made her heart ache just to think about it. Today, he just seemed tired. A bit listless. He smiled, sometimes. But the expression never reached his eyes. “You seriously sampled the pizza?”
“Yes,” he said. “I was curious if it was as bad there as it is here.” His nose scrunched as though he'd scented something displeasing. “It is.”
“Did you get it without meat or cheese like usual?”
He shook his head. “See? You're mocking me.”
In her thirty-two years, she'd been to most of the states in the U.S. except Alaska, a few provinces in Canada, Mexico a few times, and a lot of Western Europe. “But...” She shifted, and he squeezed her shoulder as she resettled against him. “You've lived over four decades,” she said. “A one day vacation where you consumed faux-healthy pizza is the best one you've taken?”
He shrugged. “I'm a reformed workaholic, Meredith,” he said, and he gave her a lop-sided grin that made her heart twist. Almost. Almost perfect. Maybe he was snapping out of his funk. Maybe. “When would I have taken a vacation?”
“You didn't even take a nice honeymoon?”
He considered her for a moment. “Addison and I went to Niagara Falls for a long weekend because it was close, ate bad seafood, and spent most of it sick.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, what about when you were a kid?”
“My dad died,” he said, and the kindling twinkle in his eyes waned. She swallowed as alarm bells rang in her head. Stupid. Stupid topic, given the setting. They were trying to re-acclimate him. Stupid.
She clutched his knee and squeezed.
He stared at the far wall where his diplomas had hung, and she wondered if he even registered anymore what he looked at. He'd gone to Columbia University for both his bachelor's degree and his medical degree. That had been a surprise to her when she'd found out.
Then why do you wear Bowdoin shirts so often? she'd asked.
He'd shrugged. I went there my Freshman year. I transferred out after.
Why?
To be closer to home, he'd said. She'd never asked why he'd wanted that. Now, she knew his dad had died only a few years before, his mother had been alone, and Meredith wished she'd asked, then. Asked more. Known more.
“Before that?” she said, trying to steer him away from that black pit. “Nothing?
He said nothing. After a long, stretched moment, her nerves shivered back into existence. Fragile. The fragility of conversations with him made her dizzy. Topics that seemed safe on the surface swam like the shark from Jaws underneath, all chomping teeth and black, predatory eyes, ready and waiting to swallow him whole, or rip off a leg or something.
The air conditioning whirred. Quiet blanketed his office like the earth after fresh fallen snow. That's why she'd ushered him this way, though she hadn't told him outright that she thought it'd be easier for him away from the constant drone of the intercom. Away from the bustle and excitement of those arriving and leaving through the main entryway. Doctors, patients, other staff. People who'd recognized him often tried to chitchat, which hadn't helped, either. He'd gotten edgier as time had gone on. When he'd returned from the bathroom, he'd been spacey and weird, and she'd tried to get him away without making him feel self-conscious.
Have you been back to your old office? she'd said. I think it's still empty.
I don't know, he'd said.
Let's find out.
“Derek?” she prodded.
“Sandy Hook, I guess,” he said.
“Sandy what?”
“Hook,” he repeated. “It's a barrier spit in Jersey with some public beaches on it. We used to go there every summer for a long weekend. I take it you never went there?”
“Why would I have?”
He peered at her. “Boston is sort of close.”
“Why would I go to a sort of close beach when Boston has really close beaches?”
“True.”
“Plus, I lived with my mother, who didn't believe in vacations. Like Manhattan you.”
His gaze creased with displeasure. “That's just...”
“Sad and tragic, I know,” she said. “So, what made Sandy Hook a good vacation?”
“I don't know.” He shrugged. “My whole family would go.”
She pinched a line of fabric from his pant leg and ran her fingertips along the crease. The solid press of his quadriceps underneath her hand gave her reassurance. Her hand rasped against his leg, and she let her eyelids dip as she imagined. His mother had shown her a picture from her wallet when Derek had been sleeping in the hospital. Just one picture.
Derek had been small. Wiry. With a cherubic, smooth face and a big mess of untamed, almost-black hair. The picture had been taken before he'd broken his nose, and he'd been absent the ruggedness that his asymmetry had brought him. She imagined the littler, younger version of him crammed in the back seat of a car with his four pushy sisters amidst a chorus of are-we-there-yets and stop-touching-mes.
“Did your family have a hippie van?” she said.
“Uh, no,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason,” she said. “Did you play car games with your sisters?”
“Car games?”
“Punch buggies. Or the alphabet game. Or I spy?”
He looked at her with a small, tired smile that made her melt inside. He found her amusing, and he loved her, and when he looked at her, she rarely forgot it. That was another thing she had missed since the shooting. All his looks had become wounded and dark. He still loved her. Obviously. But the amusement had died. Even this barest hint of him bouncing back made her body lift.
“I don't remember,” he said.
“Well, what did you do at the beach?”
“I don't know,” he said. He shrugged. “Beach things. Played in the waves. Made sand castles. I remember...” His gaze spaced as his conscious thought fell away from the room. He made a soft noise in his throat. A hmm, sort of, but not a full-fledged vocalization. Something low and guttural and barely there, and it made her lower body tighten. The pink of his tongue appeared as he wet his lower lip. His mouth opened the smallest fraction. His pupils dilated a hair as he stared at the memory in his head.
“What?” she said.
“I remember standing in the water, up to my knees,” he said, his voice flat as he lived in the past. “I'd scrunch the sand between my toes, look out at all the open space over the water, listen to the surf, and--” He blinked and looked at her. She couldn't keep the grin from her face. “What?” he said.
“Maybe Seattle Derek isn't so different from Manhattan Derek, after all.”
“I guess I've always liked space.”
She stroked his arm. “And quiet.”
“Mmm. And quiet,” he agreed. He kissed her forehead. “It's funny.”
“What?”
“I haven't thought about that in years,” he said. “Sandy Hook has always been about my watering can.”
“Your watering can?”
He nodded. “When I was four, I got caught in an undertow as I was filling up my watering can,” he explained. He held out his palm and made a fist. “I remember, the can pulled on my hand, and I didn't want to let go. I fell into the current, but then I was in the air, and the can slipped away in the waves. My mom had picked me up, and I was so angry. That was my favorite watering can, and she just let it go.”
She kissed him. “Well, I'm glad she rescued the more important thing.”
He grunted, and his composure shattered. What had been peaceful became disquieted and dissonant. She tensed. “I apparently have a penchant for near death dating back to childhood,” he said.
“Derek...”
He shook his head. “It's okay.” He swallowed, and he blinked. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, and then he seemed all right again. “My dad bought me ice cream to make up for the can.”
She stared. “You? Ate ice cream? Voluntarily?”
“Hey,” he said, glowering. “I eat ice cream. I've eaten ice cream!”
“Once,” she countered.
She remembered the moment with clarity because she'd never seen him so indulgent. He'd taken her out for dinner the week after they'd first started talking about babies, and she'd said she'd think about having one. They hadn't dressed up, but he'd worn his nice red shirt. The one she'd met him in. He'd ordered a steak, which hadn't surprised her. What had surprised her was when he hadn't gotten a substitution for his mashed potatoes, and he hadn't skirted around them either. He'd cleaned his plate.
The restaurant glowed. A candle flickered in the middle of a glass bowl the size of a teacup on their table, giving the dessert plate, tablecloth, and him a warm, soft tone. Beyond their horizon, the room seemed to blur, and candles dotted the tables in the distance like fireflies. Derek pulled the fork to his mouth and slipped another bite - the last bite -- of hot brownie sundae between his lips while she watched.
Her eyebrows raised as his Adam's apple rolled. A wide smile curled his lips as he set his fork down. Only brown crumbs trapped in a thin sheen of melted vanilla ice cream and fudge remained. The fork tinkled as he set it down in the bowl. He relaxed against his chair, which moaned when he shifted his weight. What had been a complete sundae had disappeared, not just into her stomach, but into his. The few times they'd gone out in the past, they'd always ordered dessert, but he rarely had more than a bite or two, and her portion ranged anywhere from seven-eighths to the whole damned thing minus some crumbs. This was...
“Hungry?” she said.
He shrugged. “I'm in a good mood.”
“Not that I'm complaining,” she said, “But, why?”
He gave her a small, vague smile, and he didn't answer. He wiped his lips, and he set his napkin down in his lap. His gaze didn't leave her face.
“Seriously, why?” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
“And that's why you're eating ice cream and brownies?”
He shook his head, and he didn't stop smiling.
“What?” she said. Blush crept across her face.
“You know you're beautiful when you're perplexed?”
Her chest tightened when she recalled his appetite then, a few weeks before the shooting, and his appetite now, when she had to remind him just to eat at all. He still skipped meals. He said he didn't mean to, and she believed him. Whenever she prodded him, he ate without protest, but the simple act of replenishing himself no longer came to him as a natural activity. He was still a bit too thin, but she'd been watching his weight, and he'd been gaining, so she left him alone about it.
“Who do you think eats your strawberry ice cream, Meredith? Kitchen gnomes?”
Meredith frowned. “You mean that wasn't Lexie?” she said.
“I happen to like strawberry ice cream.”
“We've been married over a year,” she said. She grunted as she sat up to face him eye-to-eye. She would wrinkle her clothes, but she didn't care. She turned her hip into the back of the couch and brought her knee up on the seat. His hand shifted from her shoulder to her calf. He rubbed her idly through her black dress pants. The heel of her right shoe popped loose and fell to the floor with a clunk. “How did I not know you like strawberry ice cream?” she said.
He shrugged. “Have you ever asked?”
“Well, I...” She looked at her lap. “Well, no.”
His thumb brushed her chin, and he tipped her gaze to meet his. “I indulge once in a while, you know.”
She couldn't count the number of times she'd come home to her long-awaited pint of ice cream, only to find it nibbled on more than she could remember nibbling on it. Always an extra spoonful. One or two. Here or there. Not enough to annoy her or make her curious. She didn't put her name on the carton. She'd never told anybody to keep off. It wasn't like ice cream was a dwindling world resource or something. She'd just... assumed it had been her half-sister for some reason. Alex scarfed down all sorts of unhealthy food, but he was more of a fat and grease freak than a sweet tooth. And the idea of Derek being the culprit hadn't even occurred to her.
“Besides,” he continued, “I was four. I didn't know the evils of high blood glucose back then.”
“Still,” she said. “I don't know. I always pictured you as a tofu toddler.”
“Tofu toddler,” he said with a frown. “I'm not even a tofu adult.” His affronted expression made her grin despite her guilt for not knowing about the ice cream. “I choose to eat a high protein, nutritious breakfast every morning, and--”
“Whole grains instead of processed when there's an option.”
“Well, yes,” he said. “That's just common sense, isn't it?”
“Vegetables, all the time. Low-fat yogurt. No mayonnaise. No cheese or meat on your pizza.”
“What's wrong with that? It's a quick way to cut calories.”
“That's not pizza. And, what can I say?” She leaned into him and kissed him. She lingered at his lips. “You're sort of a dietary saint compared to me.”
“That's just sad,” he murmured against her. He nuzzled her ear, and he breathed in her space.
“What's sad?” she said.
“That my sainthood has somehow wedged me into the tofu category. Really, Meredith? Have you ever seen me eat soy?”
“It's called health nut stereotyping,” she said. “Get over it.”
“I will not,” he said. “I maintain my manly figure through blood, sweat, and tears. Not tofu.”
She laughed. Really laughed. The noise burbled out of her like a running brook, and she leaned against him. Her hair fell into her face, and the flowery scent of her hairspray overwhelmed his cologne in a dizzy dance of scent. He wrapped his arms around her, and he embraced her. He said nothing. As she flipped her hair away from her face, she saw him grinning at her, again not quite perfect, but she lost herself in that moment of levity.
This was her Derek. Almost. The Derek she'd missed for weeks. The one who teased her and smiled and seemed happy with his life. The one who made her laugh and feel safe, beautiful, and doubtless. He made rare appearances. Every once in a while. And when he did, her world seemed to align with everything. Dissonant chords became harmony. And the longing, lonely ache in her chest eased.
“What?” he said with a grin. “You don't think my figure is manly?” He patted his flat stomach for emphasis, and she laughed at him again. He murmured her name like a prayer and held her. His suit mashed with her blouse in a war of wool and silk.
She peered into the stark blue of his eyes. The twinkle and soul she hoped to find were there, but muted behind a telltale cloud, one she hadn't seen earlier when he'd been spacey and dour, and the contrast hadn't been so high. Her happiness crashed into the rocks, and she bit her lip as she stared at him.
“What's wrong?” he said as his smile faded, and seriousness crept in.
She stroked his chest. His thick shirt hid the scar, but she could feel it through the fabric. The long, bumpy line down his sternum and the swollen knob just underneath his shirt collar where his tie formed a trapezoidal knot. He inhaled as she touched him.
“You didn't tell me you were hurting this morning,” she said. “Again?”
The last bit of his almost-perfect smile bled out of him. He swallowed, and he looked away. “Yeah.”
“I don't understand why Cristina would discontinue your Oxycontin when you're still aching so much. If you're in pain all the time, Oxy makes way more sense than Percocet.”
“I don't know,” he said.
“You should talk to her.”
“I'm fine with this,” he said.
“But it makes you tired and spacey--”
“I said I'm fine, Meredith.”
The abruptness of his tongue-lashing made her flinch. Her heart thudded. He took a slow breath, filled his lungs, and exhaled. “I'm sorry,” he said, his tone much more moderated. He swallowed, and he pinched the bridge over his nose. “That was...”
She took a deep breath to mirror his, and she blew it out. She closed her eyes. Nerves recovered from their ebb and flowed back into her. He was pushing himself too hard. That much was clear, or he wouldn't be on such a short fuse.
“What flavor?” she said, trying to steer the topic away from the conversational sharks.
He blinked. “What?”
“The ice cream,” she said. “What flavor did your dad buy you?”
“I...” he began. She watched as he struggled to put himself back in the mindset of their prior discussion. She stared at his hands. He'd withdrawn during his outburst, back into his own bubble. Now, he pushed his palms an inch toward her like he wanted to touch her, but he stopped. She grabbed his hands and pulled him to her. His skin had softened. Months of being Chief, and over eight weeks off from work had allowed his skin to heal from the constant soapy beatings of scrubbing into surgery. His fingers flexed in her grip. He stared at her, and his upset expression relaxed. Just a fraction.
“I'm sorry,” he said again, his words deep and sincere. He didn't break his stare. He looked more tired than he had been.
She squeezed his hands. “What flavor?” she said.
Silence stretched as he remembered. “It was from a DQ,” he said. He filled the verbal space with an empty sort of sound. Not a word. Not an um. Just a sound. Deep and soft. She watched his face as the memory unfurled in his brain, and a bewildered, small smile replaced what had been contrition. “I think it was strawberry.”
She grinned. She kissed him. “So, Derek Shepherd has a weakness for strawberry ice cream.” She dropped her voice low. “That's my favorite flavor, too, you know.”
He nodded. “I do know.”
“Must be kismet or whatever.”
“I wouldn't say ice cream is a weakness, exactly,” he said. “And my favorite is coffee-flavored, not strawberry. But it's more a distinct fondness held at bay by my awesome willpower.”
“So, a weakness.”
He snorted. “I don't have those,” he said. But his hesitant expression belied his haughty tone. Still, he was trying despite his outburst instead of sulking, and that meant a lot to her. In the past months, he'd become the king of sulking.
“Right,” she said. “Coffee-flavored? Seriously?”
He shrugged. “I like coffee. I like ice cream. It's both.”
“The same could be said for strawberries, you know.”
“Coffee-flavored is still better,” he said.
“Strawberry.”
He leaned forward, his gaze challenging and sparkling. “Coffee.”
“Definitely strawberry,” she said.
“Definitely,” he said. Their noses bumped. “Coffee.” She reached up and stroked the loose hair out of his face. His eyelids dipped, and he sighed.
“Did your dad have some ice cream, too?” she said. “The ice cream weakness could be genetic. Like kryptonite.”
That question brought him up short. “I don't...” He blinked, and the space between them widened. He sighed, though this time he sounded disturbed and not relaxed. “I don't remember. I don't remember much about him anymore. He died a long time ago.”
“What do you remember, then?” she said. “Did he look like you?”
“I see him in the mirror everyday,” he said, and he seemed a bit forlorn. “He was taller.” A small laugh twisted in his throat. “Or maybe I just remember him taller.”
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised in an expression doubt. Do you really care about this? said his gaze, as though he didn't believe she would maintain interest in him or his past for such a long conversation. Her heart squeezed. She nodded to urge him on. She wanted to hear. She did.
“He smelled like... some kind of wood,” he continued, “Or... sawdust, maybe? Cedar.” He touched his face as he stared into space. His fingertips followed the line of his cheekbone. “I think he had a wider face. He never broke his nose, either. Or, if he did, it healed straight.”
She tried to imagine from Derek's description the man who had shaped Derek's young life. A less rugged Derek with a rounder face. The man must have been kind, she decided. Soft spoken, but confident. Derek had a soothing way about him that made it difficult to be upset when he was trying to calm her down. She imagined that quality in a dad, in his dad, and fantasies erupted in her brain left and right. She watched the elder Shepherd soothe away stubbed toes and hurt feelings and broken Barbies for the entire Shepherd family. And then she pictured Derek with their theoretical baby doing the same thing in the not-so-distant, theoretical future. She splayed a palm against her lower body and sighed as a familiar ache ran her through.
She wished it would happen, now. They still didn't have sex every day like they'd used to. But every other day to every three days at the widest gap. Whenever he was up for it, both literally and figuratively.
“Do you have a picture?” she said. “I'd like to see one.”
He shrugged. “Somewhere in a box, maybe. I didn't bring much with me when I moved.”
Another sad look.
“I'm sorry I dredged this up,” she said as his expression knocked sense back into her. What had she been thinking? She'd been trying to avoid the sharks, and then she'd pretty much fed him to one with a bucket of chum and a blood-sickle.
“No, it's okay,” he said. “He was my dad.” As though that were explanation enough. As though family could never be taboo no matter how much it hurt to discuss. He stroked her cheek, and then he glanced at his watch. “But we do have to get moving, soon.”
She sighed. As time had whittled away the moments, she'd really been hoping he'd given up on the idea of going to the memorial. He'd done poorly enough on the bench outside the hospital that she'd been forced to usher him away. He'd relaxed in his office, but at the same time gotten more tense. She stared at his face. Tired. He looked tired. And rubbed raw despite his small hints of returning levity and balance. And now she'd made him sad.
She stood as he stood, and she stumbled into the shoe that had fallen from her foot as she'd sat down. The small pump pinched her toes. She rubbed his back and watched his sleek lines as he took a deep, calming breath and blinked like he was dizzy. If he'd taken Percocet, that would make sense. She waited for a long moment, but he didn't move. The cushion pressed into the backs of his knees. He didn't speak.
She hated to keep prodding him. Hated to keep pushing. Nagging made her feel like the designated driver for an alcoholic who refused to admit he was drunk and couldn't get behind the wheel.
“Derek,” she said. She took a deep, preparatory breath to bolster herself. “Are you really okay?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, actually.”
“Not panicky?” she prodded.
“Maybe, I just needed to get it all out of my system that first time,” he said.
“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. She smoothed her pants with a brush of her palms. Her blouse had gotten so wrinkled it looked like she'd slept in it. One reason to hate silk. But it was too late to care or fix it. He moved, but she stopped him before he reached the door, and she gripped his arms. “Derek, I mean it,” she said. “Are you really sure about this?”
“I'm sure,” he said, but he didn't sound sure. Not one bit. Her fingers tightened against his arms as she remembered how the whispers had started when he'd had his panic attack.
Meredith had been in the pit when she'd noticed an intern staring at her with a piteous look. And then another intern and another. A custodian. A fellow resident. What? she'd snapped, but no one had explained. No had one told her that Derek probably needed help. They'd just stared and whispered like gossiping leeches. What's the little wife have to run and fix, now?
Dr. Bailey had found Meredith and told her what had happened. Meredith remembered the burn in her lungs as she'd sprinted to Dr. Weller's office, a burble of uncontrolled presentiment coiling in her gut. She'd worried about how upset he would be that he'd fallen apart in front of so many people. At the same time, she'd been frantic. And frustrated. What the hell had he been doing on the catwalk in the first place? The plan, which she'd reviewed with him more than once, had been for him to go home with Mark after his appointment. Immediately. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not visit the freaking catwalk where he'd been shot! When she'd found him tired and beaten and barely aware even after she'd spent five minutes shaking him awake, though, that had somehow been worse than seeing him hysterical like she'd expected.
Dissociation is a mental defense mechanism, Dr. Wyatt had said. A sort of... self-hypnosis. It allows us to separate ourselves from reality. It helps us avoid processing negative emotions before we're ready.
She didn't want him to go through that again. She didn't want him to have to dissociate to make it through a minute or five or ten. Not ever. But he was a stubborn ass. He would force his body into a breakdown even though it was telling him, no, do not continue. She stared at him, meeting his gaze in the eye. She knew this would set him off. But she had to say something, if only to rip his keys away.
“I don't think this is a good idea,” she said.
A long pause followed. He stared at her, and he twitched like she'd slapped him across the face. She couldn't think of a single time she'd told him something so negative since he'd been shot. She'd been all about the you-can-do-it, maudlin crap, and the positive, fluffy it'll-get-betters. She still believed it would get better. But the longer he languished, the more she doubted that it would happen soon or even in the near-ish future. Not if things continued like they'd been going.
“How else do you expect me to become a human being again?” he said. “You said I had to keep going, and that I shouldn't stop.”
Guilty nausea churned in her stomach. “I did say that,” she conceded. “I think I was wrong.”
The last ounce of confidence in his gaze cracked. “You don't think I can do this.”
“No, Derek. I don't think you can,” she said. “You're pushing yourself too hard. Last week, you came here, and you had a twenty-five minute panic attack on the catwalk.”
“And we've been coming back all week,” he said, his voice even. “I haven't had another one.”
“To sit on benches and talk about our future first couple-y vacation!” she said. “Not to go to a memorial.”
“Meredith--”
“No,” she said. “You're tired. You've been sad. You've been snarly, and all I did was ask about your pain medication.” He swallowed, and he looked away as she spoke. “You're going to walk into the auditorium, and, assuming you make it past the jam-packed mass of hundreds, you're going to have to listen to stories about everybody who died. Did you even look at the program they sent with the invitation? There's bagpipers. With real bagpipes. Nothing says grief like bagpipes.”
He stared at the floor, silent. His breaths fell into the space between them fast and clipped. She closed her eyes and waited for the eruption. For the yelling match. For the hissing and spitting. She hated his temper, but she wouldn't back down. He swallowed, and the wet sound of it made her eyes burn. When he looked up, he stared at her, his expression like slate. Nothing there.
“I have to do this,” he said with a low voice.
“Why do you have to do this?” she said. “Give me a reason I can get behind.”
“Because I have to.”
“But, why?” she said. “Why do you want to put yourself through this when you know you're barely treading water?”
He blinked. The cataclysmic volcano she'd expected never erupted. His eyes filled with a thick sheen of water. He blinked again, and he sniffed. His lower lip quivered, and he looked away. “Because they died, and I...” His voice cracked and fell silent.
She stared at him, disbelief and heartache carving out her insides. He hadn't said a word. Not in weeks. Not since the day he'd seen Chief Webber carrying around a bunch of death certificates. Had he really been bottling this up the whole time? A lump formed like a tumor in her throat, and she swallowed. He wasn't crying. She wouldn't cry either. She could give him that much. For the longest march of moments, though, she had no idea what to say.
“They're not dead because of you,” was the best she could come up with.
“They're all dead because of me,” he said. “Gary Clark was looking for me.”
“And Lexie, and Chief Webber,” she said. She touched his face. No stubble rubbed against her palm. He'd shaved for this. He'd shaved, he'd coiffed his unruly hair, and he'd put on his best suit and a depressing black tie. All to torture himself by attending. “It's not your fault, Derek. None of this is. Have you been punishing yourself this whole time?”
He didn't speak. A deep, grieving noise caught in his throat. He stared at the empty bookcase behind the desk where he'd kept all his medical journals and his old textbooks. His breaths shuddered in his chest. He took a deep, long breath and another and another. He blinked again. His eyes didn't spill over. He wiped his face with his hands. He swallowed. He rocked on the balls of his feet.
He didn't cry, but his carefully measured control made him look like an overly twisted paperclip about to snap with the next forced move. His body, from the tripwire tenseness of his muscles, to the crushed expression on his face telegraphed his thoughts for him no matter his Herculean efforts not to fall apart.
“It's my fault,” he said.
She embraced him. He still didn't speak as she rubbed his back. “You've got to let this go, Derek. We talked about this. You're breathing, and you're not to blame for those who aren't. You're not. Gary Clark is to blame. He shot the gun. Not you.”
“I still need to go to this, Meredith. I'm fine.”
“Don't lie to me,” she said. “You haven't been fine in eight weeks.”
“I'm not fine,” he said. “I meant I can do this. I need to do this. I need to.” He pushed toward the door, and she tightened her grip. His arm stretched. He stopped.
“We've been making progress this week,” she said. “You're going to see Paul Wandell's wife make a tearful speech, and it'll undo everything. You're going to lose it, and if you keep letting yourself lose it, that'll just make it harder to find yourself again.”
He bristled. “Just like stopping makes it harder to go again?”
“Stop throwing that back at me,” she said. “I made a mistake, and I'm sorry.” She pressed against him, and even though they were fighting, he held her. He was bristled and prickly, but he didn't let go. She sniffed as her stinging eyes overflowed, and she couldn't stop them anymore.
“I don't have anything left to lose,” he said.
She scrunched her fingers underneath his sport coat. Sleek, firm muscle slipped under her fingertips through his shirt. He rocked with the pressure she applied. “You keep saying that, but it's not true,” she said.
“Of myself, it is.”
“I'm here, Derek.”
“I know that,” he said. “I just meant...” He swallowed, and she watched him as he begged his brain for an explanation that would make sense to her. She wanted to hear it. Desperately. She hadn't understood the last time he'd said it either. Or the time before that. Instead, he fell into his old pattern. His expression collapsed. “Please,” he said, and the word slayed her just as he knew it would.
She hated him for that.
“This is your choice,” she said. “I'm not your keeper. You have choices, Derek, and you need to make them.”
“You didn't have a problem making me go to my appointment last week.”
“You never said no,” she said. “You just gave me flimsy excuses.”
His gaze darkened. “You pushed me, Meredith. And now you're pulling.”
“I'm not an expert at this,” she said. “Dr. Wyatt said--”
“I don't want to talk about Dr. Wyatt,” he snapped.
Silence crashed into the room like a wave, and she pulled away from him. His lower lip quivered. He launched from the door and paced like some sort of agitated cat, except his office was the size of a shoebox, and he didn't have more than a few feet to maneuver. The cramped space only seemed to incense him more. But he hadn't run away. Hadn't run out the door. He'd been between her and freedom. If he'd really wanted to, he could have bolted. Why had he stayed to carve a trough into his threadbare carpet?
“I'm sorry that I pushed too hard,” she said, forcing her voice into an even tone, despite the burbling, burning urge to yell and scream at him in frustration. “But I'm not sorry for pushing, Derek. You've been a different person.”
“I know,” he said.
“I'm trying to get to know you again. I am. But--”
“I know. I just...” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “I need to go to this thing. I need to, Mere. Please, just... I need...”
“I said it's your choice!” she said.
“I know, but I want you to...” He struggled for a word and ended up blowing out a breath in a huff. He gave up, and he looked away.
And then the reason for his lingering clicked. The world made sense to her. He wanted her to be okay with it, and he'd stayed instead of going off to the memorial half-cocked and crazy with the desire to prove himself. Which was both reassuring and daunting all at once. Reassuring that her opinion mattered to him. Daunting that her opinion mattered that much to him.
Her lip quivered, and she sniffled. Her mascara would run. She couldn't bring herself to care. She wiped her eyes. She went back to the couch and collapsed. She glanced at the clock on the wall. They still had time.
“Tell me about your nightmares,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I think if you're not ready to tell me about that, just me and nobody else, after everything we've been through, then you're not ready to do this memorial thing, and nothing you say will change my mind.”
His lip twitched. “Bossy,” he said.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Stubborn.”
He collapsed onto the seat beside her and folded over his knees. He sat on her left. They'd flipped sides from before. He swallowed. “Would you just do this with me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
He stared. “But you said--”
“That you're a stupid, stupid idiot? Yes,” she said. “But I'll go with you. I love you even when I hate you, remember? Isn't that a given by now?”
He remained silent for a long time. When he looked at her, a tired smile caressed his face and made him seem less distraught. “You've changed, too,” he said.
“I know. For the better?”
“I think so.” He sighed. “I'm a lot worse.”
She touched his back and stroked him along his spine. “It'll get better,” she said.
“You really still believe that?”
“I do,” she said. “I've just developed slightly more realistic expectations about how soon.”
“I wish I could believe,” he said. The deluge he'd been holding back collected and spilled over his dark eyelashes. “It hurts to breathe.”
“Physically?” she said.
“No,” he said. “I just...” He shook his head. “I hate this. It's been two months, and I feel the same.”
“How do you feel?”
He swallowed and stared at his knees. He pushed the knuckles of his index fingers into the fleshy area below his eyes. He wicked the tears away, only to have them replaced. “I'm tired, Mere,” he said, his voice soft. “I can't ever sleep.”
“Please, tell me, Derek. One nightmare. It might feel good to get it out.”
He wiped his face. At first she thought he wouldn't give in, but then he spoke. “There are two,” he said, his voice muffled as he pressed his face into his splayed fingers.
“Two nightmares?”
“Yes. Over and over. Just two. Whenever I close my eyes. I have one and then the other.”
She kissed him. “Tell me.”
The couch moaned as he shifted. He turned into her with a sick look on his face. “The first one is just an echo, I guess.”
“Of when you were shot?”
He blinked, and he flinched like he'd been shot in that moment instead of weeks ago. “Yes. I'm...”
“It's okay.”
A noise quivered in his throat, and he stared at her, but the blankness she found in his eyes told her he didn't see her. His breaths quickened, and his eyes turned glassy and bright with terror. “I don't want to die,” he said as though he thought he were. Dying. His twisted, helpless tone ran her through with a sword of disquiet.
She remembered finding him on the white floor in a lake of red blood, staring at nothing. She remembered his clammy, shivery skin. The way he'd panted, suffocating before her eyes. She remembered hitting him. Over, and over. She remembered his scream as they'd tried to pick him up off the floor. She'd never heard him scream like that. Unadulterated agony.
Derek, in the time she'd known him, had proven to be a stoic individual in the face of pain. When he was upset, he got quiet, and the most she'd ever seen from him was a sniffle and wet eyes that he kept in check with an iron fist. Hearing him cry out as though she'd been branding him with a smoking iron had broken her last resolve into shattered pieces. Cristina had barely snapped her out of hysterics. And since then, since he'd recovered physically, Meredith had seen him break into tears so often he could fill a freaking lake.
She swallowed, and she forced her breaths to remain even. She hated hearing this. She hated hearing him speak like this. Hated seeing him prostrate himself like a victim for his ghosts when he was supposed to be the confident, snarky, arrogant man she'd fallen in love with. In a brief moment of fear, a tiny voice asked, “What have you gotten yourself into, asking him to talk about this?”
She wanted to run. For an instant that was so overwhelming, she flinched. And that made her feel like crap because she knew he'd seen it, too. Felt it. The flinch.
Are you familiar with a condition known as compassion fatigue? Dr. Wyatt had asked.
“I'm sorry,” he said, but Meredith grabbed his arm before he could pull away.
“No,” she said, her voice firm. “Keep going.” Both of them needed to hear it. She made a show of staying put. This wasn't compassion fatigue. This was cowardice. She refused to break in front of him, now. Not after she'd finally forced the clog out of his verbal drain.
“He shot me.”
“I know.” He stopped, and she said, “Keep going,” again.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Pairing: Mer/Der
Rating: M
Summary: S6 continuation. Immediately post Sanctuary / Death and All His Friends.
If I had to use any one word to describe this chapter, I couldn't, but I can do it in two. Baby steps. Both Derek and Meredith are taking them. A lot of little plot bunnies are advanced, some more subtle than others. If you've been craving some damned movement from this train, I think this chapter is your ticket to ride :) You may want to brush up on chapter 3, though, before hopping aboard, if it's been a while since you've read it.
This chapter has been a long time in the making. I would estimate I've spent at least 48 hours working on this chapter. Possibly more. If you're holding onto some feedback, please feel free to let it loose. Feedback is what makes sharing this story so fun, and I love to hear from my readers. Thank you to everybody who always takes the time to comment. Thank you to my beta readers. And thank you very much for your patience as I've worked on finishing this behemoth. In order to keep up with the word count requirements for NaNoWriMo, I need to get working on chapter 16 pretty quickly. My utmost hope is to return to a more regular posting schedule, now that I have TDC and one of my fic prompts out of the way.
I hope you enjoy this!
All Along The Watchtower - Part 15A
Derek sat on the leather loveseat in his old ten-by-ten office, staring at nothing. After he'd left his position as head of neurosurgery, the position had been filled by Dr. Weller. Dr. Weller already had an office at Seattle Grace the same shoebox size as Derek's former haunt. Neither office had windows. Neither had any particular locational advantage. There hadn't been much point in having Dr. Weller move his things. On top of that, the shooting had caused attrition, not growth. With no new doctors needing offices, Derek's old office had been left in skeletal limbo.
Meredith sat behind the dinged, scratched desk that had been his, watching him. His eye were open, but his eyelids drooped. Just a fraction. Enough to take away the normal wakefulness from what should have been a bright-eyed gaze.
His dull gaze faced where he'd hung his various diplomas, now a blank, white-washed wall. His old bookshelves lined the room behind the desk. Empty. A pale, dusty film had collected on the shelves. His desk, once stacked a foot high with ongoing casework and research, was nothing but an old oak husk with empty drawers. She stroked the smooth wood grain with her fingertips. Condensation formed on the wood in her wake and then slipped away in an instant.
The whisper of the air conditioner spread a hush into the room.
“Derek,” she prodded.
He blinked. He sighed, and he raised his hands to wipe his face, not in a graceful motion like it should have been. More lax. Like an ounce of care had been removed from the impulses sent by his brain to his muscles, leaving him looking like something... not. Not quite there. Not quite whole.
“I'm sorry,” he said, and he turned to her. “What?”
“I said, best vacation?”
She tried to ignore the fact that he'd lost track of the conversation right in the middle of it. They'd come to Seattle Grace two hours before, and they'd sat outside on the bench for a while. Just talking. People watching. Trying to get him used to things. They'd been doing it all week.
He'd been all right that morning. Not great. But all right. But then he'd excused himself to use the restroom. Ever since he'd returned, he'd been acting like he'd detached himself from reality. Weird. Spacey. Exhausted. Like he'd been when she'd brought him home from the hospital the first time.
Dissociation, Dr. Wyatt had said. When he's not paying attention to the world, he's not hurt or frightened. He's created a safety zone for himself.
A tremor of disquiet hovered underneath her skin. He was pushing himself. Pushing himself to be there when he wasn't okay with it yet. She tightened her grip against the arms of his beat up executive chair. Let him choose, she told herself, despite the whine in her head repeating to her that this was a mistake. Let him choose when he's done. He'll choose.
“Best vacation?” he parroted, as if the words he'd just heard weren't in English.
She spun the old executive chair half clockwise and then half counterclockwise. The chair squeaked. Tension drove her to move. She clutched the lip of the desk as she stood. Her fingers slipped over the empty surface, and a brief flash of what had been there months before illuminated in the back of her brain. She remembered a plastic poster stuck by double-sided mounting tape to the surface of the desk. The poster had delineated the different sections of the human brain and what purpose they each served. Frontal lobe for emotions, reasoning, movement, problem solving. Parietal lobe for the senses like touch and taste. Occipital lobe for vision and object recognition. Temporal lobe for memories. Which brought her gaze to him. Behind him, he'd hung dozens of posters, now, all gone. An illustration of a human spine. Nerve cluster maps. Framed copies of his headlining research articles, at least a dozen.
She left the desk behind her and sank onto the loveseat next to him. The cushions squeaked. Without comment, almost as if it were a reflex, he wrapped his arm over her shoulder. She sank against his body. The strong, soothing scent of his cologne caressed her.
He wore a sharp black suit and a black tie. She'd caught him that morning, standing lost and silent by the closet. His fingers had brushed the striped blue tie she'd always told him she liked, and he'd sighed. It doesn't feel appropriate for this, he'd said. And he'd passed it over. His tie rack had moaned as he'd spun it around, looking for an even more subdued alternative. She'd sat on the bed and watched, torn between apprehension and voyeurism as he'd primped and prepared. She loved the way he looked in a crisp, well-fitting suit.
“Yes, best vacation,” she said. “You're acting really spacey.”
He sighed. “Memories, I guess.”
She stroked the arm of his sport coat. “Good ones or bad ones?”
“When Richard showed me this office, I thought I might have made a mistake,” he said.
“Not what you were used to?”
A tired smile pulled at his lips. She followed his gaze as he looked at his former desk, the bookcase, three chairs, and the loveseat, all crammed into the room like interlocking puzzle pieces that wouldn't fit anymore with the slightest disruption to their alignment.
“I had a bathroom attached to my old office in Manhattan,” he said. “The bathroom had a closet. The closet was bigger than this.”
She tried to imagine the look on his face as Chief Webber had ushered him into this room. Derek's eyes would have widened, but he would have recovered with a panicky smile. The Chief wouldn't have noticed the panicky bit, just the smile. He would have blathered on about how Seattle Grace was the best of the best, and how Derek was a welcome addition to the team. Blah, blah. She could hear him in her head.
“Private practice is a bit more lucrative,” she said. “Life's a bit different down in the trenches.”
“More lucrative, yes,” he said. “But more empty. It only took me a few days to get over myself.”
I think I hate being Chief, he'd said.
She touched his thigh. His suit felt coarse to the touch. She'd gotten used to the soft, worn feel of beat up jeans. Pajama pants. Things he'd worn during his recovery. She kissed him.
“Hmm,” he said as he stared into the nothing where his coat rack had been. He used to hang his lab coat there with his stethoscope coiled in the pocket. “Egypt.”
“What?” she said.
“Now, who's spacing?” he said, a ghost of smirk on his face. “Best vacation. Egypt.”
She looked up at him. “You've been to Egypt?”
“A long time ago, yes,” he said. “Before I came to Seattle.”
“Did you go with Addison?”
“No, actually,” he said. “I went for a medical conference on neurosurgery and neuroscience in Cairo.”
“Derek, that's not a vacation. That's work. If you count work, I'm sure you've been everywhere.”
“I stayed an extra day. I saw the pyramids.”
She snorted. “A whole day, wow.”
“You're mocking me,” he said.
“I'm not mocking.”
“You are.” He kissed her, and she giggled. “The pyramids were sort of disappointing, by the way. They're not actually in the middle of the desert.”
“They're not?”
“No. And there's a Pizza Hut next to them. Or, there was. I don't know about now.”
“Seriously?”
He nodded. “I went. I saw. I even dared to sample the pizza. And you mock me.”
“It's just...” She stared at him, at his weathered laugh lines. She loved when his eyes lit up with extra wattage from his smile, and the skin around his eyes crinkled. She saw that look so rarely these days that it made her heart ache just to think about it. Today, he just seemed tired. A bit listless. He smiled, sometimes. But the expression never reached his eyes. “You seriously sampled the pizza?”
“Yes,” he said. “I was curious if it was as bad there as it is here.” His nose scrunched as though he'd scented something displeasing. “It is.”
“Did you get it without meat or cheese like usual?”
He shook his head. “See? You're mocking me.”
In her thirty-two years, she'd been to most of the states in the U.S. except Alaska, a few provinces in Canada, Mexico a few times, and a lot of Western Europe. “But...” She shifted, and he squeezed her shoulder as she resettled against him. “You've lived over four decades,” she said. “A one day vacation where you consumed faux-healthy pizza is the best one you've taken?”
He shrugged. “I'm a reformed workaholic, Meredith,” he said, and he gave her a lop-sided grin that made her heart twist. Almost. Almost perfect. Maybe he was snapping out of his funk. Maybe. “When would I have taken a vacation?”
“You didn't even take a nice honeymoon?”
He considered her for a moment. “Addison and I went to Niagara Falls for a long weekend because it was close, ate bad seafood, and spent most of it sick.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, what about when you were a kid?”
“My dad died,” he said, and the kindling twinkle in his eyes waned. She swallowed as alarm bells rang in her head. Stupid. Stupid topic, given the setting. They were trying to re-acclimate him. Stupid.
She clutched his knee and squeezed.
He stared at the far wall where his diplomas had hung, and she wondered if he even registered anymore what he looked at. He'd gone to Columbia University for both his bachelor's degree and his medical degree. That had been a surprise to her when she'd found out.
Then why do you wear Bowdoin shirts so often? she'd asked.
He'd shrugged. I went there my Freshman year. I transferred out after.
Why?
To be closer to home, he'd said. She'd never asked why he'd wanted that. Now, she knew his dad had died only a few years before, his mother had been alone, and Meredith wished she'd asked, then. Asked more. Known more.
“Before that?” she said, trying to steer him away from that black pit. “Nothing?
He said nothing. After a long, stretched moment, her nerves shivered back into existence. Fragile. The fragility of conversations with him made her dizzy. Topics that seemed safe on the surface swam like the shark from Jaws underneath, all chomping teeth and black, predatory eyes, ready and waiting to swallow him whole, or rip off a leg or something.
The air conditioning whirred. Quiet blanketed his office like the earth after fresh fallen snow. That's why she'd ushered him this way, though she hadn't told him outright that she thought it'd be easier for him away from the constant drone of the intercom. Away from the bustle and excitement of those arriving and leaving through the main entryway. Doctors, patients, other staff. People who'd recognized him often tried to chitchat, which hadn't helped, either. He'd gotten edgier as time had gone on. When he'd returned from the bathroom, he'd been spacey and weird, and she'd tried to get him away without making him feel self-conscious.
Have you been back to your old office? she'd said. I think it's still empty.
I don't know, he'd said.
Let's find out.
“Derek?” she prodded.
“Sandy Hook, I guess,” he said.
“Sandy what?”
“Hook,” he repeated. “It's a barrier spit in Jersey with some public beaches on it. We used to go there every summer for a long weekend. I take it you never went there?”
“Why would I have?”
He peered at her. “Boston is sort of close.”
“Why would I go to a sort of close beach when Boston has really close beaches?”
“True.”
“Plus, I lived with my mother, who didn't believe in vacations. Like Manhattan you.”
His gaze creased with displeasure. “That's just...”
“Sad and tragic, I know,” she said. “So, what made Sandy Hook a good vacation?”
“I don't know.” He shrugged. “My whole family would go.”
She pinched a line of fabric from his pant leg and ran her fingertips along the crease. The solid press of his quadriceps underneath her hand gave her reassurance. Her hand rasped against his leg, and she let her eyelids dip as she imagined. His mother had shown her a picture from her wallet when Derek had been sleeping in the hospital. Just one picture.
Derek had been small. Wiry. With a cherubic, smooth face and a big mess of untamed, almost-black hair. The picture had been taken before he'd broken his nose, and he'd been absent the ruggedness that his asymmetry had brought him. She imagined the littler, younger version of him crammed in the back seat of a car with his four pushy sisters amidst a chorus of are-we-there-yets and stop-touching-mes.
“Did your family have a hippie van?” she said.
“Uh, no,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason,” she said. “Did you play car games with your sisters?”
“Car games?”
“Punch buggies. Or the alphabet game. Or I spy?”
He looked at her with a small, tired smile that made her melt inside. He found her amusing, and he loved her, and when he looked at her, she rarely forgot it. That was another thing she had missed since the shooting. All his looks had become wounded and dark. He still loved her. Obviously. But the amusement had died. Even this barest hint of him bouncing back made her body lift.
“I don't remember,” he said.
“Well, what did you do at the beach?”
“I don't know,” he said. He shrugged. “Beach things. Played in the waves. Made sand castles. I remember...” His gaze spaced as his conscious thought fell away from the room. He made a soft noise in his throat. A hmm, sort of, but not a full-fledged vocalization. Something low and guttural and barely there, and it made her lower body tighten. The pink of his tongue appeared as he wet his lower lip. His mouth opened the smallest fraction. His pupils dilated a hair as he stared at the memory in his head.
“What?” she said.
“I remember standing in the water, up to my knees,” he said, his voice flat as he lived in the past. “I'd scrunch the sand between my toes, look out at all the open space over the water, listen to the surf, and--” He blinked and looked at her. She couldn't keep the grin from her face. “What?” he said.
“Maybe Seattle Derek isn't so different from Manhattan Derek, after all.”
“I guess I've always liked space.”
She stroked his arm. “And quiet.”
“Mmm. And quiet,” he agreed. He kissed her forehead. “It's funny.”
“What?”
“I haven't thought about that in years,” he said. “Sandy Hook has always been about my watering can.”
“Your watering can?”
He nodded. “When I was four, I got caught in an undertow as I was filling up my watering can,” he explained. He held out his palm and made a fist. “I remember, the can pulled on my hand, and I didn't want to let go. I fell into the current, but then I was in the air, and the can slipped away in the waves. My mom had picked me up, and I was so angry. That was my favorite watering can, and she just let it go.”
She kissed him. “Well, I'm glad she rescued the more important thing.”
He grunted, and his composure shattered. What had been peaceful became disquieted and dissonant. She tensed. “I apparently have a penchant for near death dating back to childhood,” he said.
“Derek...”
He shook his head. “It's okay.” He swallowed, and he blinked. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, and then he seemed all right again. “My dad bought me ice cream to make up for the can.”
She stared. “You? Ate ice cream? Voluntarily?”
“Hey,” he said, glowering. “I eat ice cream. I've eaten ice cream!”
“Once,” she countered.
She remembered the moment with clarity because she'd never seen him so indulgent. He'd taken her out for dinner the week after they'd first started talking about babies, and she'd said she'd think about having one. They hadn't dressed up, but he'd worn his nice red shirt. The one she'd met him in. He'd ordered a steak, which hadn't surprised her. What had surprised her was when he hadn't gotten a substitution for his mashed potatoes, and he hadn't skirted around them either. He'd cleaned his plate.
The restaurant glowed. A candle flickered in the middle of a glass bowl the size of a teacup on their table, giving the dessert plate, tablecloth, and him a warm, soft tone. Beyond their horizon, the room seemed to blur, and candles dotted the tables in the distance like fireflies. Derek pulled the fork to his mouth and slipped another bite - the last bite -- of hot brownie sundae between his lips while she watched.
Her eyebrows raised as his Adam's apple rolled. A wide smile curled his lips as he set his fork down. Only brown crumbs trapped in a thin sheen of melted vanilla ice cream and fudge remained. The fork tinkled as he set it down in the bowl. He relaxed against his chair, which moaned when he shifted his weight. What had been a complete sundae had disappeared, not just into her stomach, but into his. The few times they'd gone out in the past, they'd always ordered dessert, but he rarely had more than a bite or two, and her portion ranged anywhere from seven-eighths to the whole damned thing minus some crumbs. This was...
“Hungry?” she said.
He shrugged. “I'm in a good mood.”
“Not that I'm complaining,” she said, “But, why?”
He gave her a small, vague smile, and he didn't answer. He wiped his lips, and he set his napkin down in his lap. His gaze didn't leave her face.
“Seriously, why?” she said.
“I love you,” he said.
“And that's why you're eating ice cream and brownies?”
He shook his head, and he didn't stop smiling.
“What?” she said. Blush crept across her face.
“You know you're beautiful when you're perplexed?”
Her chest tightened when she recalled his appetite then, a few weeks before the shooting, and his appetite now, when she had to remind him just to eat at all. He still skipped meals. He said he didn't mean to, and she believed him. Whenever she prodded him, he ate without protest, but the simple act of replenishing himself no longer came to him as a natural activity. He was still a bit too thin, but she'd been watching his weight, and he'd been gaining, so she left him alone about it.
“Who do you think eats your strawberry ice cream, Meredith? Kitchen gnomes?”
Meredith frowned. “You mean that wasn't Lexie?” she said.
“I happen to like strawberry ice cream.”
“We've been married over a year,” she said. She grunted as she sat up to face him eye-to-eye. She would wrinkle her clothes, but she didn't care. She turned her hip into the back of the couch and brought her knee up on the seat. His hand shifted from her shoulder to her calf. He rubbed her idly through her black dress pants. The heel of her right shoe popped loose and fell to the floor with a clunk. “How did I not know you like strawberry ice cream?” she said.
He shrugged. “Have you ever asked?”
“Well, I...” She looked at her lap. “Well, no.”
His thumb brushed her chin, and he tipped her gaze to meet his. “I indulge once in a while, you know.”
She couldn't count the number of times she'd come home to her long-awaited pint of ice cream, only to find it nibbled on more than she could remember nibbling on it. Always an extra spoonful. One or two. Here or there. Not enough to annoy her or make her curious. She didn't put her name on the carton. She'd never told anybody to keep off. It wasn't like ice cream was a dwindling world resource or something. She'd just... assumed it had been her half-sister for some reason. Alex scarfed down all sorts of unhealthy food, but he was more of a fat and grease freak than a sweet tooth. And the idea of Derek being the culprit hadn't even occurred to her.
“Besides,” he continued, “I was four. I didn't know the evils of high blood glucose back then.”
“Still,” she said. “I don't know. I always pictured you as a tofu toddler.”
“Tofu toddler,” he said with a frown. “I'm not even a tofu adult.” His affronted expression made her grin despite her guilt for not knowing about the ice cream. “I choose to eat a high protein, nutritious breakfast every morning, and--”
“Whole grains instead of processed when there's an option.”
“Well, yes,” he said. “That's just common sense, isn't it?”
“Vegetables, all the time. Low-fat yogurt. No mayonnaise. No cheese or meat on your pizza.”
“What's wrong with that? It's a quick way to cut calories.”
“That's not pizza. And, what can I say?” She leaned into him and kissed him. She lingered at his lips. “You're sort of a dietary saint compared to me.”
“That's just sad,” he murmured against her. He nuzzled her ear, and he breathed in her space.
“What's sad?” she said.
“That my sainthood has somehow wedged me into the tofu category. Really, Meredith? Have you ever seen me eat soy?”
“It's called health nut stereotyping,” she said. “Get over it.”
“I will not,” he said. “I maintain my manly figure through blood, sweat, and tears. Not tofu.”
She laughed. Really laughed. The noise burbled out of her like a running brook, and she leaned against him. Her hair fell into her face, and the flowery scent of her hairspray overwhelmed his cologne in a dizzy dance of scent. He wrapped his arms around her, and he embraced her. He said nothing. As she flipped her hair away from her face, she saw him grinning at her, again not quite perfect, but she lost herself in that moment of levity.
This was her Derek. Almost. The Derek she'd missed for weeks. The one who teased her and smiled and seemed happy with his life. The one who made her laugh and feel safe, beautiful, and doubtless. He made rare appearances. Every once in a while. And when he did, her world seemed to align with everything. Dissonant chords became harmony. And the longing, lonely ache in her chest eased.
“What?” he said with a grin. “You don't think my figure is manly?” He patted his flat stomach for emphasis, and she laughed at him again. He murmured her name like a prayer and held her. His suit mashed with her blouse in a war of wool and silk.
She peered into the stark blue of his eyes. The twinkle and soul she hoped to find were there, but muted behind a telltale cloud, one she hadn't seen earlier when he'd been spacey and dour, and the contrast hadn't been so high. Her happiness crashed into the rocks, and she bit her lip as she stared at him.
“What's wrong?” he said as his smile faded, and seriousness crept in.
She stroked his chest. His thick shirt hid the scar, but she could feel it through the fabric. The long, bumpy line down his sternum and the swollen knob just underneath his shirt collar where his tie formed a trapezoidal knot. He inhaled as she touched him.
“You didn't tell me you were hurting this morning,” she said. “Again?”
The last bit of his almost-perfect smile bled out of him. He swallowed, and he looked away. “Yeah.”
“I don't understand why Cristina would discontinue your Oxycontin when you're still aching so much. If you're in pain all the time, Oxy makes way more sense than Percocet.”
“I don't know,” he said.
“You should talk to her.”
“I'm fine with this,” he said.
“But it makes you tired and spacey--”
“I said I'm fine, Meredith.”
The abruptness of his tongue-lashing made her flinch. Her heart thudded. He took a slow breath, filled his lungs, and exhaled. “I'm sorry,” he said, his tone much more moderated. He swallowed, and he pinched the bridge over his nose. “That was...”
She took a deep breath to mirror his, and she blew it out. She closed her eyes. Nerves recovered from their ebb and flowed back into her. He was pushing himself too hard. That much was clear, or he wouldn't be on such a short fuse.
“What flavor?” she said, trying to steer the topic away from the conversational sharks.
He blinked. “What?”
“The ice cream,” she said. “What flavor did your dad buy you?”
“I...” he began. She watched as he struggled to put himself back in the mindset of their prior discussion. She stared at his hands. He'd withdrawn during his outburst, back into his own bubble. Now, he pushed his palms an inch toward her like he wanted to touch her, but he stopped. She grabbed his hands and pulled him to her. His skin had softened. Months of being Chief, and over eight weeks off from work had allowed his skin to heal from the constant soapy beatings of scrubbing into surgery. His fingers flexed in her grip. He stared at her, and his upset expression relaxed. Just a fraction.
“I'm sorry,” he said again, his words deep and sincere. He didn't break his stare. He looked more tired than he had been.
She squeezed his hands. “What flavor?” she said.
Silence stretched as he remembered. “It was from a DQ,” he said. He filled the verbal space with an empty sort of sound. Not a word. Not an um. Just a sound. Deep and soft. She watched his face as the memory unfurled in his brain, and a bewildered, small smile replaced what had been contrition. “I think it was strawberry.”
She grinned. She kissed him. “So, Derek Shepherd has a weakness for strawberry ice cream.” She dropped her voice low. “That's my favorite flavor, too, you know.”
He nodded. “I do know.”
“Must be kismet or whatever.”
“I wouldn't say ice cream is a weakness, exactly,” he said. “And my favorite is coffee-flavored, not strawberry. But it's more a distinct fondness held at bay by my awesome willpower.”
“So, a weakness.”
He snorted. “I don't have those,” he said. But his hesitant expression belied his haughty tone. Still, he was trying despite his outburst instead of sulking, and that meant a lot to her. In the past months, he'd become the king of sulking.
“Right,” she said. “Coffee-flavored? Seriously?”
He shrugged. “I like coffee. I like ice cream. It's both.”
“The same could be said for strawberries, you know.”
“Coffee-flavored is still better,” he said.
“Strawberry.”
He leaned forward, his gaze challenging and sparkling. “Coffee.”
“Definitely strawberry,” she said.
“Definitely,” he said. Their noses bumped. “Coffee.” She reached up and stroked the loose hair out of his face. His eyelids dipped, and he sighed.
“Did your dad have some ice cream, too?” she said. “The ice cream weakness could be genetic. Like kryptonite.”
That question brought him up short. “I don't...” He blinked, and the space between them widened. He sighed, though this time he sounded disturbed and not relaxed. “I don't remember. I don't remember much about him anymore. He died a long time ago.”
“What do you remember, then?” she said. “Did he look like you?”
“I see him in the mirror everyday,” he said, and he seemed a bit forlorn. “He was taller.” A small laugh twisted in his throat. “Or maybe I just remember him taller.”
He looked at her, his eyebrows raised in an expression doubt. Do you really care about this? said his gaze, as though he didn't believe she would maintain interest in him or his past for such a long conversation. Her heart squeezed. She nodded to urge him on. She wanted to hear. She did.
“He smelled like... some kind of wood,” he continued, “Or... sawdust, maybe? Cedar.” He touched his face as he stared into space. His fingertips followed the line of his cheekbone. “I think he had a wider face. He never broke his nose, either. Or, if he did, it healed straight.”
She tried to imagine from Derek's description the man who had shaped Derek's young life. A less rugged Derek with a rounder face. The man must have been kind, she decided. Soft spoken, but confident. Derek had a soothing way about him that made it difficult to be upset when he was trying to calm her down. She imagined that quality in a dad, in his dad, and fantasies erupted in her brain left and right. She watched the elder Shepherd soothe away stubbed toes and hurt feelings and broken Barbies for the entire Shepherd family. And then she pictured Derek with their theoretical baby doing the same thing in the not-so-distant, theoretical future. She splayed a palm against her lower body and sighed as a familiar ache ran her through.
She wished it would happen, now. They still didn't have sex every day like they'd used to. But every other day to every three days at the widest gap. Whenever he was up for it, both literally and figuratively.
“Do you have a picture?” she said. “I'd like to see one.”
He shrugged. “Somewhere in a box, maybe. I didn't bring much with me when I moved.”
Another sad look.
“I'm sorry I dredged this up,” she said as his expression knocked sense back into her. What had she been thinking? She'd been trying to avoid the sharks, and then she'd pretty much fed him to one with a bucket of chum and a blood-sickle.
“No, it's okay,” he said. “He was my dad.” As though that were explanation enough. As though family could never be taboo no matter how much it hurt to discuss. He stroked her cheek, and then he glanced at his watch. “But we do have to get moving, soon.”
She sighed. As time had whittled away the moments, she'd really been hoping he'd given up on the idea of going to the memorial. He'd done poorly enough on the bench outside the hospital that she'd been forced to usher him away. He'd relaxed in his office, but at the same time gotten more tense. She stared at his face. Tired. He looked tired. And rubbed raw despite his small hints of returning levity and balance. And now she'd made him sad.
She stood as he stood, and she stumbled into the shoe that had fallen from her foot as she'd sat down. The small pump pinched her toes. She rubbed his back and watched his sleek lines as he took a deep, calming breath and blinked like he was dizzy. If he'd taken Percocet, that would make sense. She waited for a long moment, but he didn't move. The cushion pressed into the backs of his knees. He didn't speak.
She hated to keep prodding him. Hated to keep pushing. Nagging made her feel like the designated driver for an alcoholic who refused to admit he was drunk and couldn't get behind the wheel.
“Derek,” she said. She took a deep, preparatory breath to bolster herself. “Are you really okay?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, actually.”
“Not panicky?” she prodded.
“Maybe, I just needed to get it all out of my system that first time,” he said.
“Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. She smoothed her pants with a brush of her palms. Her blouse had gotten so wrinkled it looked like she'd slept in it. One reason to hate silk. But it was too late to care or fix it. He moved, but she stopped him before he reached the door, and she gripped his arms. “Derek, I mean it,” she said. “Are you really sure about this?”
“I'm sure,” he said, but he didn't sound sure. Not one bit. Her fingers tightened against his arms as she remembered how the whispers had started when he'd had his panic attack.
Meredith had been in the pit when she'd noticed an intern staring at her with a piteous look. And then another intern and another. A custodian. A fellow resident. What? she'd snapped, but no one had explained. No had one told her that Derek probably needed help. They'd just stared and whispered like gossiping leeches. What's the little wife have to run and fix, now?
Dr. Bailey had found Meredith and told her what had happened. Meredith remembered the burn in her lungs as she'd sprinted to Dr. Weller's office, a burble of uncontrolled presentiment coiling in her gut. She'd worried about how upset he would be that he'd fallen apart in front of so many people. At the same time, she'd been frantic. And frustrated. What the hell had he been doing on the catwalk in the first place? The plan, which she'd reviewed with him more than once, had been for him to go home with Mark after his appointment. Immediately. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Do not visit the freaking catwalk where he'd been shot! When she'd found him tired and beaten and barely aware even after she'd spent five minutes shaking him awake, though, that had somehow been worse than seeing him hysterical like she'd expected.
Dissociation is a mental defense mechanism, Dr. Wyatt had said. A sort of... self-hypnosis. It allows us to separate ourselves from reality. It helps us avoid processing negative emotions before we're ready.
She didn't want him to go through that again. She didn't want him to have to dissociate to make it through a minute or five or ten. Not ever. But he was a stubborn ass. He would force his body into a breakdown even though it was telling him, no, do not continue. She stared at him, meeting his gaze in the eye. She knew this would set him off. But she had to say something, if only to rip his keys away.
“I don't think this is a good idea,” she said.
A long pause followed. He stared at her, and he twitched like she'd slapped him across the face. She couldn't think of a single time she'd told him something so negative since he'd been shot. She'd been all about the you-can-do-it, maudlin crap, and the positive, fluffy it'll-get-betters. She still believed it would get better. But the longer he languished, the more she doubted that it would happen soon or even in the near-ish future. Not if things continued like they'd been going.
“How else do you expect me to become a human being again?” he said. “You said I had to keep going, and that I shouldn't stop.”
Guilty nausea churned in her stomach. “I did say that,” she conceded. “I think I was wrong.”
The last ounce of confidence in his gaze cracked. “You don't think I can do this.”
“No, Derek. I don't think you can,” she said. “You're pushing yourself too hard. Last week, you came here, and you had a twenty-five minute panic attack on the catwalk.”
“And we've been coming back all week,” he said, his voice even. “I haven't had another one.”
“To sit on benches and talk about our future first couple-y vacation!” she said. “Not to go to a memorial.”
“Meredith--”
“No,” she said. “You're tired. You've been sad. You've been snarly, and all I did was ask about your pain medication.” He swallowed, and he looked away as she spoke. “You're going to walk into the auditorium, and, assuming you make it past the jam-packed mass of hundreds, you're going to have to listen to stories about everybody who died. Did you even look at the program they sent with the invitation? There's bagpipers. With real bagpipes. Nothing says grief like bagpipes.”
He stared at the floor, silent. His breaths fell into the space between them fast and clipped. She closed her eyes and waited for the eruption. For the yelling match. For the hissing and spitting. She hated his temper, but she wouldn't back down. He swallowed, and the wet sound of it made her eyes burn. When he looked up, he stared at her, his expression like slate. Nothing there.
“I have to do this,” he said with a low voice.
“Why do you have to do this?” she said. “Give me a reason I can get behind.”
“Because I have to.”
“But, why?” she said. “Why do you want to put yourself through this when you know you're barely treading water?”
He blinked. The cataclysmic volcano she'd expected never erupted. His eyes filled with a thick sheen of water. He blinked again, and he sniffed. His lower lip quivered, and he looked away. “Because they died, and I...” His voice cracked and fell silent.
She stared at him, disbelief and heartache carving out her insides. He hadn't said a word. Not in weeks. Not since the day he'd seen Chief Webber carrying around a bunch of death certificates. Had he really been bottling this up the whole time? A lump formed like a tumor in her throat, and she swallowed. He wasn't crying. She wouldn't cry either. She could give him that much. For the longest march of moments, though, she had no idea what to say.
“They're not dead because of you,” was the best she could come up with.
“They're all dead because of me,” he said. “Gary Clark was looking for me.”
“And Lexie, and Chief Webber,” she said. She touched his face. No stubble rubbed against her palm. He'd shaved for this. He'd shaved, he'd coiffed his unruly hair, and he'd put on his best suit and a depressing black tie. All to torture himself by attending. “It's not your fault, Derek. None of this is. Have you been punishing yourself this whole time?”
He didn't speak. A deep, grieving noise caught in his throat. He stared at the empty bookcase behind the desk where he'd kept all his medical journals and his old textbooks. His breaths shuddered in his chest. He took a deep, long breath and another and another. He blinked again. His eyes didn't spill over. He wiped his face with his hands. He swallowed. He rocked on the balls of his feet.
He didn't cry, but his carefully measured control made him look like an overly twisted paperclip about to snap with the next forced move. His body, from the tripwire tenseness of his muscles, to the crushed expression on his face telegraphed his thoughts for him no matter his Herculean efforts not to fall apart.
“It's my fault,” he said.
She embraced him. He still didn't speak as she rubbed his back. “You've got to let this go, Derek. We talked about this. You're breathing, and you're not to blame for those who aren't. You're not. Gary Clark is to blame. He shot the gun. Not you.”
“I still need to go to this, Meredith. I'm fine.”
“Don't lie to me,” she said. “You haven't been fine in eight weeks.”
“I'm not fine,” he said. “I meant I can do this. I need to do this. I need to.” He pushed toward the door, and she tightened her grip. His arm stretched. He stopped.
“We've been making progress this week,” she said. “You're going to see Paul Wandell's wife make a tearful speech, and it'll undo everything. You're going to lose it, and if you keep letting yourself lose it, that'll just make it harder to find yourself again.”
He bristled. “Just like stopping makes it harder to go again?”
“Stop throwing that back at me,” she said. “I made a mistake, and I'm sorry.” She pressed against him, and even though they were fighting, he held her. He was bristled and prickly, but he didn't let go. She sniffed as her stinging eyes overflowed, and she couldn't stop them anymore.
“I don't have anything left to lose,” he said.
She scrunched her fingers underneath his sport coat. Sleek, firm muscle slipped under her fingertips through his shirt. He rocked with the pressure she applied. “You keep saying that, but it's not true,” she said.
“Of myself, it is.”
“I'm here, Derek.”
“I know that,” he said. “I just meant...” He swallowed, and she watched him as he begged his brain for an explanation that would make sense to her. She wanted to hear it. Desperately. She hadn't understood the last time he'd said it either. Or the time before that. Instead, he fell into his old pattern. His expression collapsed. “Please,” he said, and the word slayed her just as he knew it would.
She hated him for that.
“This is your choice,” she said. “I'm not your keeper. You have choices, Derek, and you need to make them.”
“You didn't have a problem making me go to my appointment last week.”
“You never said no,” she said. “You just gave me flimsy excuses.”
His gaze darkened. “You pushed me, Meredith. And now you're pulling.”
“I'm not an expert at this,” she said. “Dr. Wyatt said--”
“I don't want to talk about Dr. Wyatt,” he snapped.
Silence crashed into the room like a wave, and she pulled away from him. His lower lip quivered. He launched from the door and paced like some sort of agitated cat, except his office was the size of a shoebox, and he didn't have more than a few feet to maneuver. The cramped space only seemed to incense him more. But he hadn't run away. Hadn't run out the door. He'd been between her and freedom. If he'd really wanted to, he could have bolted. Why had he stayed to carve a trough into his threadbare carpet?
“I'm sorry that I pushed too hard,” she said, forcing her voice into an even tone, despite the burbling, burning urge to yell and scream at him in frustration. “But I'm not sorry for pushing, Derek. You've been a different person.”
“I know,” he said.
“I'm trying to get to know you again. I am. But--”
“I know. I just...” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “I need to go to this thing. I need to, Mere. Please, just... I need...”
“I said it's your choice!” she said.
“I know, but I want you to...” He struggled for a word and ended up blowing out a breath in a huff. He gave up, and he looked away.
And then the reason for his lingering clicked. The world made sense to her. He wanted her to be okay with it, and he'd stayed instead of going off to the memorial half-cocked and crazy with the desire to prove himself. Which was both reassuring and daunting all at once. Reassuring that her opinion mattered to him. Daunting that her opinion mattered that much to him.
Her lip quivered, and she sniffled. Her mascara would run. She couldn't bring herself to care. She wiped her eyes. She went back to the couch and collapsed. She glanced at the clock on the wall. They still had time.
“Tell me about your nightmares,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because I think if you're not ready to tell me about that, just me and nobody else, after everything we've been through, then you're not ready to do this memorial thing, and nothing you say will change my mind.”
His lip twitched. “Bossy,” he said.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Stubborn.”
He collapsed onto the seat beside her and folded over his knees. He sat on her left. They'd flipped sides from before. He swallowed. “Would you just do this with me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
He stared. “But you said--”
“That you're a stupid, stupid idiot? Yes,” she said. “But I'll go with you. I love you even when I hate you, remember? Isn't that a given by now?”
He remained silent for a long time. When he looked at her, a tired smile caressed his face and made him seem less distraught. “You've changed, too,” he said.
“I know. For the better?”
“I think so.” He sighed. “I'm a lot worse.”
She touched his back and stroked him along his spine. “It'll get better,” she said.
“You really still believe that?”
“I do,” she said. “I've just developed slightly more realistic expectations about how soon.”
“I wish I could believe,” he said. The deluge he'd been holding back collected and spilled over his dark eyelashes. “It hurts to breathe.”
“Physically?” she said.
“No,” he said. “I just...” He shook his head. “I hate this. It's been two months, and I feel the same.”
“How do you feel?”
He swallowed and stared at his knees. He pushed the knuckles of his index fingers into the fleshy area below his eyes. He wicked the tears away, only to have them replaced. “I'm tired, Mere,” he said, his voice soft. “I can't ever sleep.”
“Please, tell me, Derek. One nightmare. It might feel good to get it out.”
He wiped his face. At first she thought he wouldn't give in, but then he spoke. “There are two,” he said, his voice muffled as he pressed his face into his splayed fingers.
“Two nightmares?”
“Yes. Over and over. Just two. Whenever I close my eyes. I have one and then the other.”
She kissed him. “Tell me.”
The couch moaned as he shifted. He turned into her with a sick look on his face. “The first one is just an echo, I guess.”
“Of when you were shot?”
He blinked, and he flinched like he'd been shot in that moment instead of weeks ago. “Yes. I'm...”
“It's okay.”
A noise quivered in his throat, and he stared at her, but the blankness she found in his eyes told her he didn't see her. His breaths quickened, and his eyes turned glassy and bright with terror. “I don't want to die,” he said as though he thought he were. Dying. His twisted, helpless tone ran her through with a sword of disquiet.
She remembered finding him on the white floor in a lake of red blood, staring at nothing. She remembered his clammy, shivery skin. The way he'd panted, suffocating before her eyes. She remembered hitting him. Over, and over. She remembered his scream as they'd tried to pick him up off the floor. She'd never heard him scream like that. Unadulterated agony.
Derek, in the time she'd known him, had proven to be a stoic individual in the face of pain. When he was upset, he got quiet, and the most she'd ever seen from him was a sniffle and wet eyes that he kept in check with an iron fist. Hearing him cry out as though she'd been branding him with a smoking iron had broken her last resolve into shattered pieces. Cristina had barely snapped her out of hysterics. And since then, since he'd recovered physically, Meredith had seen him break into tears so often he could fill a freaking lake.
She swallowed, and she forced her breaths to remain even. She hated hearing this. She hated hearing him speak like this. Hated seeing him prostrate himself like a victim for his ghosts when he was supposed to be the confident, snarky, arrogant man she'd fallen in love with. In a brief moment of fear, a tiny voice asked, “What have you gotten yourself into, asking him to talk about this?”
She wanted to run. For an instant that was so overwhelming, she flinched. And that made her feel like crap because she knew he'd seen it, too. Felt it. The flinch.
Are you familiar with a condition known as compassion fatigue? Dr. Wyatt had asked.
“I'm sorry,” he said, but Meredith grabbed his arm before he could pull away.
“No,” she said, her voice firm. “Keep going.” Both of them needed to hear it. She made a show of staying put. This wasn't compassion fatigue. This was cowardice. She refused to break in front of him, now. Not after she'd finally forced the clog out of his verbal drain.
“He shot me.”
“I know.” He stopped, and she said, “Keep going,” again.