All Along The Watchtower - Part 28.2A

[ariaadagio]

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.

I'm sorry it's been so long!  This semester has taken my free time and gleefully murdered it with a pointy shovel.

Suffice it to say, I am still here and still writing!  Thanks as always to my wonderful beta readers.  Please feedback; I can't tell you how much I appreciated the comments you all posted for 28.1.  They do a lot to keep me motivated, and they also help me figure out what I may need to fix (or do more of!).  I haven't responded to them individually yet, but rest assured, that is next on my list, and every single one brightened my day.  Thanks again, you all.  Seriously :)

28.2 is a bit more angsty than the last few chapters have been, but I promise I'll pay you back for enduring in 28.3, which is a chapter I fully expect to hear MD fan squees across the country for.  I don't have an estimate for when I will be able to post 28.3, but I promise it won't be 3 months like this gap was.  The semester is, thankfully, more than half over.


All Along The Watchtower - Part 28.2A

He found his mother in the kitchen, taking foil off the pies she'd been cooling in the fridge.  Her clipped, methodical movements made her look... upset.  The sniff he heard, as if she were staving off tears, solidified the suspicions that had burgeoned since he'd watched her dish up the green beans at dinner like she'd meant to stab them and kill them, not serve them.

His mother didn't ever cry in front of them.  She always hid like this, like she thought it would be a sin for her children to think she might be less than superhuman.  He didn't think she knew he heard her sniffling at night, sometimes, through the bedroom wall.  She struggled with the holiday season every year, and she'd been upset last night.  He knew that much, though he didn't think his sisters knew.

When he graduated in the spring, if he graduated after tanking so many grades, he and Addie had made the decision to find a place and move in together.  For a test run, Addie had said with a coy smile.  He thought he might marry her, soon, though he hadn't worked up the nerve yet to propose.

His heart squeezed with the thrill of that thought.  Getting married.  Starting his own family.  Having two beautiful children like his little niece, Abby, whom he adored.  On the other hand, leaving would mean his mother would be alone.  He would be the last to move out.

“Ma?” he said, his voice soft, concerned.  A cheerful cloud of voices, muffled by the kitchen door, bumped and collided in the air.  His sisters.  Addie.  Kathy's husband John, and Nancy's husband Rob.  Abby.  A modest gathering, but one he'd looked forward to all year.  “Do you need any help out here?”

His mother jerked at the sound of his voice.  “Sweetheart,” she said.  She looked up.  She seemed fine, based only on the superficial.  “No, I don't need help,” she said in an even tone.  “Why don't you go back out with your sisters?”

Derek's ears sharpened at the sound of Rachel's jovial laughter floating through the doorway, followed by Abby's excited shriek and a thump.  He folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the door fame.  “Abby's starting to wriggle a bit,” he said with an amused smile.  John had been trying less than successfully to keep the two-year-old girl occupied while all the adults talked.  “I think she wants pie.”

“Well, I'm working on it,” his mom said, and she turned back to the counter.  The foil crinkled.  She'd made two huge pumpkin pies that made the whole kitchen smell like nutmeg and cinnamon.  The crusts were a perfect, golden brown, with not one burned speck.

Without prodding, he pulled the whipped cream from the refrigerator and set it on the countertop beside her, along with the carton of homemade vanilla ice cream that Kathy had brought.  He touched his mother's shoulder and gave it a squeeze.  “Are you really okay, Ma?” he said.  “You seem...”  He swallowed.  “Not okay.”

She sighed, like she'd lost her patience.  “No, I'm not okay, Der.”

He blinked.  A lump thickened in his throat.  He didn't like talking about this, but if she needed an understanding ear, he would make himself suffer through it.  “Are you missing Dad?” he said, preparing for the knife stabs of remembering.

His mother sighed and gave him an exasperated this-is-exactly-what-I-mean look that told him nothing, because he truly had no idea what she meant.  She brushed her fingers through her graying hair, agitated.  Despite her displeasure with him, though, his bewildered look must have tugged at her heartstrings, because she pulled him into an embrace that made his muscles loosen and his mind drift.

“Of course I miss your father, sweetheart,” she said in a soft voice by his ear and pulled her fingers through his hair.  The lump in his throat became a softball when she said, “It's Thanksgiving.  I miss him very much.  I always will.”

He swallowed.  “But?”

“But Amy is waiting tables at the diner right now,” she said.

He bristled in her arms, and he pulled away.  Amy wasn't there because of her own stupid choices.  “So, what?  She made her bed.”

“So, you four are acting like it doesn't even matter,” Mom said.  “You wouldn't even know she's even missing from the way you all are talking.  It's like you don't even have another sister.”

“She should have thought of that before she started using,” he said, his tone tripping upward into self-righteous.

His mother stiffened.  “Derek, I don't want to hear it.”

“Do you have any idea what it's like to watch somebody you love die right in front of you because of her own fucking stupidity?” he snapped.

“I don't want to hear it!” she said again.  “And don't use that language in my house, young man.”

He glowered, unsure how this conversation had gone so quickly from melancholy to red hot anger, but too ruffled to analyze it.  “It's her choice not to be here.”

“She chooses not to be here because you all make her feel like dirt whenever she's in the room with you,” his mother said.  “That's not a real choice.”

“I'm not treating her like dirt.  I'm not treating her like anything.  I haven't even talked to her since her OD!” he insisted.  “I told her I was done, and I meant it.  I'm done, Ma.  I won't be party to her machinations to kill herself.”

“That's exactly my point, Derek,” his mother said.  She squeezed her fingers into tight, white-knuckled fists.  “It shouldn't be this way.  You shouldn't give up on your family, not when people are so easy to lose!”

Easy to lose.  He ground his molars together.  That was the crux of it.  Easy to lose.  He'd watched his dad die in front of him, and then he'd watched Amelia die as well, for no reason other than her own idiocy.  The latter seemed like a pointless, sadistic punch in the face after the former.  A pointless, sadistic punch that Amelia, his sister whom he loved, had perpetrated against him.

“Well, it is this way,” he said.

“Your father would be so disappointed in you,” she said.  “All of you!”  And the words hit him like a slap.  Her mouth clacked shut, and she blinked.  Her eyes went misty, like she regretted saying those things the moment the awful words had leaped off her lips.

“You can thank Amy for that.  Not us,” he said, his voice low and furious and wounded, and then he stalked out of the room.  His sisters, who'd heard the fight through the door, converged around him in support, but he shoved through them, and stomped out the front door.  He needed some fucking air.

He stood beside Meredith on the landing in front of the two-story house where he'd grown up, hands folded against his chest defensively.  He could remember standing there, panting and hot because he'd been so furious, so hurt, and so convinced he'd been right, and that his mother had been wrong.

Amy hadn't started coming to Thanksgiving again until after she'd gotten through medical school, nine years later.  Once she'd met Addison in more than just passing, they'd hit it off like sisters.  Addison, who didn't have any real context other than the vague details she'd been told.  Addison, who hadn't watched Amelia flat line right in front of her after years and years of trying to help and failing dismally.

Until Amelia had shown up in his hospital room after he'd been shot, he'd largely been aloof toward her whenever they happened to be in the same room.  Cordial when addressed, but not interested in getting emotionally involved anymore.  He hadn't gone to her college graduation, hadn't gone to her medical school graduation, both despite being invited.  Until she'd shown up at the hospital, the last time he'd seen her had been the Christmas before he'd fled to Seattle, and they'd barely spoken more than ten words.

“We really should ring the bell,” he mumbled, but his heart wasn't in it.

Meredith flinched beside him, as though his words had startled her from her own whirling cesspit of worries.  She shifted from her left foot to her right, and the floor boards of the old house creaked.  Her fists balled in her pockets.

“Well, ring it, then,” she said, her voice tight, almost shrill with nerves, which only made him feel more helpless, because he couldn't bring himself to raise his finger to the bell, and because she was upset, but he didn't think he could help her much.  Not when he felt this... dreading.

She was probably feeding off his worries like they were Wheaties, making her own nerves even worse.  These people were his family, and if he was a wreck about meeting them, of course she would be a wreck, simply by reading his fucked up signals.  He pulled his shaky arms around her, because he could do that, even if he was a worrying, hopeless, basket case.

“Worthless,” Mr. Clark said, which made Derek cringe.  He tried to push the awful word out of his mind.  If Meredith was in a similar situation with her own family, he'd be sympathetic, not condemning.  But that cold, hating voice was so hard to ignore when he felt like this.

“You're not ringing it,” Meredith said.

He glanced at her.  “No, at this moment, I'm hugging you.”

“Why?” she said.  Like he needed a reason or something.

“Because you're hunkering in your coat like a turtle,” he said.

“And you're shaky and barely speaking!” she countered.

“Well, maybe I need it, too,” he said quietly.

“Oh,” she said.  She closed her mouth and looked up at him.  She snaked her arms around his waist.  He sighed as she pressed her cheek against his chest.  “Are you okay?”

“No,” he said.

He wanted Percocet.  Wanted it so badly he was aching for it, and all his joints hurt.  Percocet took all the noisy jumble in his head and made it mostly quiet, and it was hard not to want that false calm when he was this unsettled, when he was hearing Mr. Clark again, when he was dealing with so many things, new and old, all at once.

He'd slept until 1:00 PM, beyond worn out from the long plane trip, and still on Pacific Time, and he didn't feel quite right anymore.  He couldn't seem to recuperate from the deficit he'd accrued.  He probably still would have been sleeping if Meredith hadn't gently woken him to ask if he wanted her to warn his family they would be late.  Six hours on a noisy plane was a lot for him.  Dealing with a ton of people who didn't know how to deal with him was a lot for him.  Dealing with a ton of people who didn't know how to deal with him, after six hours on a noisy plane?

“Insurmountable,” said Mr. Clark, and Derek gritted his teeth.

His mother and Amelia, he wasn't worried about, because they both already knew everything, and they were okay.  Mark, he wasn't worried about, of course.  It was them.  Rachel and Steve and Kathy and John.  All of the kids.  Nancy and Rob, too, but at least they weren't there today, which took some of the heart-crushing stress away.  They were in Houston with Rob's family.

“Are you okay?” he said to Meredith.

She pressed her ear against his heart and listened.  “Not really.”

They sighed in unison.

Empty, parked cars lined the street bumper to bumper behind them.  His mother's house was a narrow, but deep, two-story house with pristine white siding, crammed like sandwich filling between the bread of the two houses next to it on either side.  Helen and Jean lived in the house on the left.  He didn't know the new neighbors on the right, who'd moved in after he'd left Manhattan.  The house had a small yard in front the size of shoebox, where he could remember playing catch with his father, tussling with Mark, playing cops and robbers with water pistols, juggling apples he'd stolen from the kitchen, stalking through the rain to get to his motorcycle on the night he'd crashed, any number of things.  There was no driveway, which was why he'd canceled their rental car reservation before they'd left Seattle, and they'd taken a taxi instead.

The air around them was bitterly cold, and the grass in the yard had turned the color of straw for the coming winter.  None of the trees had any leaves, and the whole neighborhood had turned gray and cold and barren.  That was something he'd grown to adore about Seattle.  The fact that, with all the evergreens and the wetness, the world stayed green and lush year-round.

“How not okay are you?” Meredith said as they stood shivering, not entirely from chill, in each other's arms.

“Seven,” he said.  “You?”

“Eight,” she said.  And then she shook her head.  Her fingers scrunched the lapel of his coat between them, and he felt his collar pulling on his neck a little.  “No, nine.”

“Nine?” he said.

“What if they don't like me?” she said.  “What if I'm a horrible aunt?”

He frowned.  “Meredith, they've met you already, and they liked you fine.  Even Nancy came around.”

“But not the kids, or the husbands, or the lions and tigers and bears!” she said.  “Plus, you were nearly dead at the time, and we weren't married in their eyes, yet.  Nobody would hate on their nearly dead brother's not-permanent girlfriend.”

He blinked.  “Lions, tigers, and bears?”

“Or similarly chomp-y mammals,” she said.

“You're really comparing my family to vicious carnivores?”

She gave him a look that said, Well, aren't you?  He couldn't exactly refute her.

His heart filled up as he looked at her.  She was beautiful.  She wore a maternity version of the white toggle coat she loved.  She'd discovered last week that her old one wouldn't button over her stomach anymore.  She'd dragged him along on an emergency coat-shopping trip, and he'd obliged, giving her his opinion of more than twenty coats.  He'd said, “You're beautiful; it's perfect,” for twenty-four out of twenty-five, which she'd gotten a little irritated with, but he'd been honest, at least.  She could wear a potato sack and make it work, in his opinion.  She'd ended up buying the one where his broken record “beautiful” had changed to “enchanting”.  She'd wrapped the red scarf his mother had knitted for her when he'd been in the hospital around her neck.  Blush from the cold had brightened her face, and she looked alive.  Alive and glowing.

She was scared witless.  A nine out of ten.  But she was there.  She was in his arms in a maternity coat.  She wasn't going anywhere.  And he loved her for that.

Now, there's you, and you're so strong, and I'm proud of you every day, he'd said once when he'd been feeling lost, and she'd pushed him through the day with her own tenacious strength of will.  He'd meant every word he'd said about her, then.

“Thank you,” he said.  “For doing this for me.  I mean it.  I know it's hard for you.  And you won't be a horrible aunt.”  He kissed her.  The hotel had smelled a bit like peppermint that morning, and her hair had carried the scent along with it.  He breathed her in and sighed.  “I think you'll be amazing.”

She relaxed in his arms.  “Have you made any decisions about... what to tell them?”

His grip tightened, and he took comfort in her warmth.

He just didn't know.  He was leaning toward not saying anything about the drugs.  The PTSD, which they knew about already but hadn't yet experienced firsthand, was daunting enough by itself.  He missed his family, but he didn't have a clue how to be mentally ill around them, and he sure as hell didn't know how to be an addict around them.  Except he was both.  He was both to gigantic proportions, right now, even with all the improvement.

“I don't know,” he said with a half-hearted shrug.  His stomach twisted.  “My sisters already think I'm crazy.  I just--”

“They don't think you're crazy,” she replied.  “They just don't understand what we've been going through.”

“What if I have a panic attack?” he said.  “What if I jump six miles because--”

She shrugged.  “Then you have a panic attack, or you jump six miles, and--”

“It's embarrassing,” he countered.

“I know, but if they think less of you for that, they're not worth it, Derek,” she insisted.  “They're not.”

“They're my family.”

“That doesn't give them a blank check to be mean, judge-y freaks,” she said.

He sighed, deflating.  “That doesn't mean they aren't, sometimes.”

She looked at him with sympathy.  “I know.”

“They practically disowned Amelia.”  He clenched his fists.  “I disowned her.”

“I know,” she said.  “It's hard for everybody involved when stuff like this happens.  But you have a new perspective, now.  Maybe, they do, too.”

He swallowed, and he looked away.  He was making himself sick.  He knew he needed to stop.  Knowing and doing were two different things, though.  All the worrisome stuff stuck and churning inside his head wouldn't cease its endless swirl.

She bumped his hip with hers.  “Hey.”

“What?” he said weakly.

“Whatever you decide, I'll back you up a thousand percent.  Okay?” she said.  “And you don't, Derek.  You don't owe them anything.”

A car drove down the street behind him, something that hadn't bothered him in weeks, except today, the noise of the exhaust made his heart squeeze and his breaths tighten, and it was all he could do not to jump out of his skin.  He made an awful, soft, terrified noise that made him sound like some sort of animal.  His mouth went dry, and his body shook despite his attempts to control himself.

Meredith gave him a wide bubble of space.

He thought wildly about pickles as he counted for his inhalations and exhalations.  Pickles and his pregnant wife.  She was pregnant, and she'd want extra crunchy pickles to eat with her strawberry ice cream.  He thought about the grocery store aisle.  She liked Ben & Jerry's.  He'd get her something special.  Strawberry Cheesecake instead of just strawberry.  She loved that flavor.  He couldn't fathom how it could taste good with pickles, but he would buy it.  Whatever she wanted.

He saw the fog on the glass display case.  Felt the cool burst of air as he pulled open the freezer.  By the time he'd put the ice cream in his grocery basket, he felt better, and by the time he found the aisle with the pickles, he felt wrung out, but not panicky.

He moved back into her orbit, pressed his nose against her hair and breathed.  She rubbed his back.

“I can't,” he said softly.  “I can't think about telling them right now.  This feeling is just going to get worse the longer we wait here.”

“For both of us,” she said.

He would try to be pleased with the mere fact that he'd made it here, no matter what happened today with his family.  He would try to be pleased that he'd had a rockstar day yesterday, pleased that, seven weeks after having a crippling panic attack in an airport, he'd flown six hours across the country and conquered not one but two airports.  He would try to keep the sunglasses off his face.

He pulled away from her embrace and rubbed his tired eyes.  “Yeah.  Let's just ring the bell.”

“I'll do it,” she said.  She looked at him, eyebrows raised.  “On three?”

He nodded shakily.  “Sure.”

He swallowed, staring at the bell.  The black paint on the molding around the door was chipping.  The last time he'd seen it, there hadn't been a single crack, and now it was chipping and would need a new coat soon.  It'd been that long since he'd been home.  The mathematics of each year passing hadn't sunk in, really, until he saw the paint chipping.  When he'd left, his newest nephew, Cody, had been a year old, and now he would be big enough to have a primer-level conversation.

Things would be so different, now.

“You're not counting,” Meredith said.

He looked at her.  “I thought you would count, since you're pushing it.”

“I can't multitask when I'm this nervous,” she snapped.

He swallowed.  “Ditto.”

She sighed.  “I need a replacement thought.”

“You can borrow mine.”

She looked at him.  “What are you thinking?”

He grinned weakly.  She knew about the pickle thought, already.  He used that one a lot.  “It comes faster when I push it?” he joked, trying to put her at ease.

She elbowed him, rolling her eyes.  “Oh, shut up,” she said, and he had the presence of mind to laugh.  Just a little.

Silence stretched as they both stared at the bell.

“I freaking knew we should have brought a pie,” Meredith said.

“Why?”

“So we could eat it while we're waiting for courage.”

And that was when the door swung inward.  He leaped back without sense or reason.  Meredith, who'd been holding the lapel of his coat, let go, but not before the line of fabric cut him in the neck and he made a choking noise.  His shoulder hit the thick post at the top of the stairs that supported the awning.  Pain flared and went silent.

He caught up with the world to find his heart slamming in his chest and the words gone from his throat.  His sister Kathy stood on the threshold wearing jeans and a festive red sweater that brought out her cream-colored skin.  Her curly, shoulder-length hair framed her face with silver and black, and her eyes were a shock of surprised azure.

She blinked.  Her lips parted.  “Are you okay?” she said, her tone bewildered.  “What on earth are you guys doing out here on the stoop?”

“Um,” Meredith said, flicking a concerned glance at Derek, “debating the merits of pie?”

Fuck, Derek thought as he tried to collect himself.  Fuck, fuck, fuck.  He'd already done something Not Normal.  He hadn't even made it inside the house.  He glanced at the ground.  A foot.  Though it had felt like a mile, he'd only jumped a foot.  Maybe, it was okay.

“H...”  He lost the word he wanted, and he swallowed.  He didn't like calming himself down under pressure.  He'd gotten so used to Mark and Meredith and, lately, everybody at the hospital being patient with him.  Rachel's familiar face appeared behind Kathy's shoulder, making his audience bigger, and his distress worse.  “Hi.  K...”  He couldn't get his tongue to work, and they were both staring at him.  Pickles, he thought.  Pickles, pickles, pickles.  “Kathy.”  He took a deep, cleansing breath, and shook the last of his jumbled, surprised neurons back into their proper places.  He even managed a smile.  “Rachel.  Hi.”

“Hi!” said Rachel with a bright smile in return, though it didn't quite reach her eyes, which was... troublesome.

Kathy, however, grinned at him like nothing had happened.  The skin around her eyes crinkled, and her body language seemed welcoming and happy and all sorts of positive things that told him to relax a bit, which he tried and failed.

“Come in, come in,” Kathy said, beckoning them with her hands.  “It's freezing outside!”

His oldest sister backed away from the threshold, pushing Rachel backward with her.  Rachel made an indignant noise.  Meredith looked at him, her gaze a wild twist of Meredith-patented crap-it's-a-family-what-do-I-do panic.

A protective wave rippled through him.  He wrapped his arm over her shoulder, gave her a shaky squeeze, took a breath, took the lead, and stepped into the lion's den in front of her.  Probably not the best plan, given how fast he was likely to fall apart if things went wrong, but Meredith had flown across the country to support him, and the least he could do was give her a moment to collect herself.  He felt her hands at the small of his back, clutching his coat, and if he were more relaxed, he would have been amused at his literal conversion to human shield.

The house stank of roasting turkey and pumpkin pie and all the traditional things that would have made his stomach rumble if he hadn't felt nauseated with worry already.  He froze on the front landing, only inches inside the house.  The biting cold at his back went away as he heard the door shut.  Meredith slid out from behind him after a moment to stand by his right shoulder, and he felt good about that, that he'd at least given her the few seconds she needed.

He'd expected noise, but there wasn't any, other than a few clinks and clanks of food preparation coming from the kitchen.  He'd expected people, but only Mark, Rachel, and Kathy stood in the immediate vicinity.  He'd expected--

“Holy crap, Derek,” Rachel said as she charged at him from the left, having wormed her way around Kathy.  She wrapped her arms around him, and she squeezed him like he was a long lost teddy bear she'd found underneath her bed.  His breaths froze in his lungs, but he made himself not jump and not make a startled gasp with every piece of willpower he possessed.

This was what he'd expected.  Getting accosted by hugs.  His family had always been big on hugs.

“You look so much better!” she said, right against his ear, her voice like an icepick in his skull, and he pushed down into his well to keep from flinching despite the horrific invasion of his personal space.  His bristled, though, unable to help himself.  Her explosion of curly black and green hair blocked his view of the living room, and with the front door at his back, he didn't have any space whatsoever.

Pickles, pickles, pickles, pickles he thought wildly, and he knew he wasn't doing what she expected him to do, like, say, hug her in return.  Old Derek would have hugged her.  New Derek stood there like a fucking tree, barely interacting with her at all, but it was the best he could do.  New Derek still loved to hug, but not when he was already so nervous he felt sick, and not when he'd been tackled, and definitely not when he didn't have any space.

Though he didn't tell her to back off, his body language must have spoken to spite him, because she let him go.  The hurt look on her face made him want to curl into a ball.  He'd been here for thirty seconds, and he'd already done two Not Normal things.

“They're judging you,” Mr. Clark said.  “They don't like it.”

“I'm sorry,” Derek blurted.  Rachel's eyes widened, and his heart sank.  Three Not Normals.  Forty seconds.  He felt like there was an imaginary Mr. Clark marking tallies on a blackboard.

Kathy was glaring, not at him, but at Rachel.  She pulled at Rachel's t-shirt.  “Give him some space,” she said in a low hiss, which only made him feel more self-conscious.

Mark, who'd been hovering by the fireplace, well out of Derek's bubble, gave him a big grin.  “Hey, man, glad you two made it!” he said.  He approached slowly and held out his hand.  Derek grasped it.  Mark's palm was warm, and his grip was firm, and nothing in Mark's gaze said anything bad about the three Not Normals, which helped, but not much.

Rachel snorted, and her antagonism wrapped around Derek like a noose.  “A handshake, Mark?” his sister said.  “Did you forget your coffee this morning?”

Derek glanced at his sister and then back to Mark.  Mark didn't usually shake Derek's hand, even with the PTSD, but Mark had gotten good at reading when Derek couldn't handle more than that.  “We... made it,” Derek said.

The clinks and clanks coming from the kitchen stopped.  “Is that them?” he heard his mother call excitedly, though the words were muffled.  Something crashed.  Water rushed for a second.  “Is that them?”

“Yeah, Ma,” Kathy yelled back, and he flinched again.  He couldn't help it.  He sighed.  Four Not Normals.  Kathy's gaze flicked to him, and she adjusted her volume to something more reasonable.  “It's them.”

“Where... is everybody?” Derek managed.

“They're all at the park,” Kathy said.

Rachel rolled her eyes.  “Kathy made Steve and John take them all.  Amy went, too.”

He swallowed.  “Oh.”

Rachel turned to his mother as she came into the room.  “See?” she said.  She jabbed her thumb in Derek's direction, and he flinched at the sudden movement so close to his face.  Five Not Normals.  “He hates it.  He wanted everybody here, just like I said he would.”

Kathy elbowed Rachel.

Mom shook her head.  “Rachel, stop it,” she admonished in a quiet, gentle tone.  And then she pointedly turned to Meredith.  She took one look at his wife, from her cold-nipped cheeks, to her bright scarf, to the coat that bulged at her waist, and his mother's excited smile went nuclear.  “Oh, Meredith.  You look beautiful.  Let me take your coat.”

Derek shrank against the door, now that attention had shifted away from him.  His hands shook, and he stuffed them into his pockets to hide the sixth Not Normal.  They weren't letting him through, and they were crowding him.  His skin crawled, and his legs shivered with the desire to make him move.  He wanted to move, but bolting would definitely not be normal, and he planted his fucking feet with everything he had.

“What did you expect would happen when you were a nervous wreck before you even got here?” Mr. Clark said.

Pickles.  Crunchy.

“Wow, you're just glowing,” Kathy said from far away as Meredith shrugged off her coat.

Meredith froze.  “Glow... wait.”  She frowned.  “Glowing?”

Kathy grinned.  “Glowing is good.”

Rachel sighed wistfully.  “Gorgeous.”

“Being a flashlight is gorgeous?” Meredith said.

“In this family, it sure is,” Kathy said.  “We're going to expect lots of pictures, you know.  Have you picked a color for the nursery, yet?”

“Yes,” Mom said as she folded Meredith's coat over her arm, “I'd like to knit something for the baby.”

“Um... yellow,” Meredith said.  “Maybe.”

“Like a canary yellow?  Lemon yellow?  Shell-colored?” Mom said.

Meredith bit her lip.  “Um...  It was sort of sunshine-y.”

“It's been a few years since we had a new addition,” Kathy said.  “Expect craziness.”

“And lots of presents,” Rachel added.  “I just love babies.  We should go onesie shopping while you're here.  We've been calling and calling, but Derek says you don't have a registry, yet.”

“Derek says?” Meredith said.

Rachel paused her gushing to snap her fingers.  “Oh!” she exclaimed.  “We could get a cute little set of mini scrubs.”

Mark rolled his eyes.  “This family needs a surgeon general's warning when it comes to kids.”

Rachel elbowed Mark.  “We do not.”

“Do, too,” Mark said.  “You guys are like a yapping pack of wolves.”

“It's a baby, Mark,” Kathy said.

Rachel simpered.  “A tiny, tiny person!”

“It's a Shepherd family event,” Kathy said.

“And we always thought Derek wouldn't have kids, so it's even more exciting,” Rachel said.

His mother turned to Derek and held out her hand.  “May I take your coat, Derek?”

He huddled against the door, unwilling to let her have his only suit of armor, flimsy though it was.  His coat rustled as he hugged himself.

“Derek, are you okay?” his mother said, deep concern clutching each syllable.

“I'm... thought...”  He swallowed.  “I thought...”  Swallowed.  “More people would be here.”

Mom frowned.  “We weren't sure what to do because of yesterday.  We wanted you to be comfortable.”

Blush crept across his skin.  “I'm sorry.”

“Nonsense,” said his mother.  “Everybody understands.”

The put-off look on Rachel's face said, at the very least, she didn't get it.  He struggled to focus.  There were too many people too close to him and not giving him any room.

“Why don't we get away from the door?” Meredith suggested.

“They're really all...”  His heart began to pound.  Thump-thump.  Thump-thump.  He swallowed.  “At the park... because of me?”

“They're at the park because they were sticking their hands in my mashed potatoes and eating my pie crusts,” Mom said.  She gave him a sympathetic look.  “And we did think it might be easier for you if we filled the house to capacity gradually instead of all at once.”

“You didn't...”  Thump-thump.  “Need to do that.”

“Told you it was stupid,” Rachel said.  She touched him again.  Put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.  “He's totally fine.  See?”

He tensed.

“Rachel...” his mother warned.

And then everything that had coiled inside like a spring burst apart.  He couldn't hold any of it in anymore.  He jerked back against the door, away from her.  “Please, don't touch me,” he blurted before he could stop himself or try to pretend he was fine.  He wasn't fine, and they weren't letting him breathe.  He swallowed, and swallowed, and swallowed again.  Seven and eight Not Normals, and he wasn't off the welcome mat, yet.  “I... can't.”

“Seriously?” Rachel said.

Kathy grabbed Rachel's shirt and dragged her away.  “She's sorry, Derek,” Kathy said.

“All I did was touch his shoulder!” Rachel said.

He pawed uselessly at the door, because he needed to move.  Needed to move something.  Anything to stave off the need to bolt and add a huge Not Normal number nine, not that there was much of his first impression left to salvage.  “I think I need a few minutes to... to...  I... I... just need a few minutes.”

“What will they think when you collapse?” Mr. Clark said.

“Der, are you okay?” Kathy said.

“No,” he managed.

He was losing it.  His throat started to close.  He grappled with his collar, and he made a noise that wasn't a word.  He needed to get out of here.  His heartbeat became a crush that he could feel.  Thump-thump.  Thump-THUMP.  Thump-THUMP.

“Please, let me out,” he whispered pitifully, giving up on normal.

He just couldn't do it.

Everybody backed off.  Immediately.  The extra breathing room brought him back from the brink.

“Derek, look at me,” Meredith said calmly, and he did.  He did.  Thump-thump.  He could look at Meredith.  “Why don't you show me around?  I'd love a tour,” she said.  Thump-thump.  Thump-thump.  She turned to the blur and said, “That's okay, right?”

“Of course it's okay,” somebody said.  Kathy.  Kathy said.

Thump-thump.

Meredith nodded, and then she looked back at him, her eyebrows raised.  “Please, Derek, I'd really like a tour,” she said calmly, as if he weren't falling to pieces right in front of her.

He stared at Meredith.  Nodded.  “Okay,” he said breathlessly.  Thump-thump.  “A tour.  A tour, I can... I...”

“I'm going to touch you,” she said.  “Okay?”

He might have nodded.

And then he was being pulled.  Normally an upsetting prospect, but he knew it was her doing the pulling with her tiny ineffectual fists.  Knew it because everything around him had become a taffy blur of sensation he didn't want to deal with, but Meredith remained in focus.  He could deal with Meredith pulling.  Meredith could pull him into Hell, and he'd follow.  Not that she would.

The living room melted away as Meredith dragged him underneath the arch into the dining room, where his mother had lain out the white tablecloth she'd embroidered with flowers on the table.  Meredith glanced wildly around the room, taking in the sights of the heavy drapery, the chairs, the big, hulking table, and the china closet full of shiny plates and serving dishes.  A carved wooden box full of silver utensils sat on the tablecloth next to a bottle of silver polish and a dirtied rag.  The forks had been set to the side on the tablecloth and looked resplendent.  The knives and spoons were still in the box and tarnished.

A tour, he thought.  Give the tour she'd asked for, he thought.  But his brain wasn't working right, yet, and his mouth felt dry, and his limbs shook.  He didn't think he could speak that well.  Thump-thump.  Thump-thump.  Thump-thump.

He thought they might stop in the dining room, but Meredith glanced through the archway, back into the living room, where an irritated Rachel and a Kathy he didn't know how to gauge still stood with his Mom and Mark in a semi-circle around the space Derek and Meredith had just vacated.  Still being line of sight wasn't good enough for Meredith, who'd entered flight mode with him, not that he minded.  He felt sick and hot with embarrassment, and he didn't want people staring at him, either.  She kept dragging him, and he followed.

She moved out of the dining room with him into a short hallway blocked on all sides by doors.  Door number one, the left door, she opened to reveal the tiny downstairs bathroom, which was barely more than a sink and a toilet.  She evidently didn't want to drag him into the bathroom, so she closed that door and tried door number two.  She saw the kitchen ahead, and she never tried door number three.  She dragged him forward, her gaze both determined and a precious mix of concerned and worried.

The kitchen was a larger room, full of oak cabinets.  His mother had been working on various things on the center island, which was a mess of bowls and pans and plates and knives and spoons.  The roasting turkey smell filled the room to the brim and made it hard to breathe without thinking about food.  Normally, Thanksgiving turkey was a prospect that made his stomach rumble.  In this case, though, he just felt sicker, and he was glad he'd seen Meredith take some Zofran that morning.

Meredith pulled them to the tiny dinette set in the breakfast nook, and she sat him down like a sack of rocks.  Or, more, he may have fell that way.  He brought his head down and buried his face in his hands.  He heard cabinets opening and closing at random to the soft, staccato beats of her panicky, but mild cursing.  “Freaking... I don't... invasive... stupid, stupid... do they own any freaking cups?” were the words he heard through the maelstrom of rushing blood in his head.  And then he heard a clink, followed by a running faucet.

A crystal glass full of water appeared in front of him on the small table.  He couldn't think about drinking a glass of water right now.  He couldn't think about what had just happened.

“Definitely a bad first impression,” Mr. Clark said.  “They judged you.  You failed at a simple thing.”

Derek closed his eyes.  Took a deep breath.

“Pickles, Derek,” he imagined her saying.  “I need the little spears, not the circles.  The crunchy ones!”

He focused on that until the house around him faded.  Until he wasn't sitting at a table in a breakfast nook.  Until he stood in the entryway at the market a few blocks from his and Meredith's house.  The rain pattered on the pavement behind him, and he wiped the water from his face.  He'd shopped there so many times, at this point, that he didn't even need to look at the aisle markers to find anything.  He knew where the ice cream was, the produce, the coffee, the cereal, even the tampons, though Meredith hadn't asked him to buy those since before the shooting.

Aisle four.  Condiments.  Salad dressing.  Soups.  Boxed things like macaroni and cheese.  He paused to help a woman reach a can of condensed cheddar broccoli soup from the top shelf.  She smiled.  Said thank you.  He didn't have any trouble with things like that when he was in his head.  He moved forward.

He touched a cold, glass jar of pickle spears.  The fluid inside the jar sloshed.  The green caught the overhead fluorescent light--

“Derek?” the real Meredith said, the word a soft, concerned question, and his imaginary place snapped away from his mind's eye.  He looked at her.  She'd pulled a chair beside him.  Her hip almost touched his.  He hadn't even heard that part, hadn't heard the legs of the chair sliding across the tiles on the floor.

They eye contact, the tacit acquiescence, was all she needed.

She leaned into him.  Wrapped her arms around him.  He didn't explain where he'd been in his head.  With her, he never seemed to need to, anymore.  She got it, anyway.  He still wore his black trench coat like a suit of armor, and her hands sliding across the wool made a soft, rustling sound.

“I didn't even make it off the welcome mat,” he said miserably.

“They didn't let you off the welcome mat,” she said.

He stared at his hands.  “They were just excited.”

She kissed him.  “I think the same could be said for you, couldn't it?”

He shrugged as she rubbed his back.  “I guess,” he said.  His eyelids dipped.  It was hard not to relax when she touched him like this.  “Feels good.”

“Have you really been fielding rabid sister calls because we don't have a registry?” Meredith said softly.  “I had no idea.”

“A few, yeah.  As soon...”  He sighed when her knuckles hit a tense knot underneath his shoulder blade and obliterated it.  “As soon as they figured out you were pregnant.”

They'd wanted to know everything, not just about what to buy.  Sex of the baby.  Due date.  Name.  The works.  April 14th, maybe Anne or Adam, he'd managed to interject into their storm of excited babbling, though not the sex, since he and Meredith wanted that to be a surprise.

Meredith sighed.  “I wish I'd thought about the fact that they would see a video of the wedding when I made that joke about The Hair.”

They'd wanted to tell his family in person.  Unfortunately, they'd given burned video discs to his mother to carry back to New York with her after their wedding.  Nobody had said anything blatant during the wedding like, “Meredith is pregnant!”, but Meredith had made a remark about Derek's hair being passed down through genetics that both she and Derek had forgotten about.  It had taken his sisters about five minutes upon first viewing to call him and ask if said baby was hypothetical or not.

“I didn't think about it either, until they called in a tizzy,” Derek said.  He looked at Meredith.  Gave her a lazy, relaxed smile, because she was starting to make him melt in his seat.  She punched out another muscle knot with her tiny fists, and a groan caught in his throat.  “But see, Mere?” he said when he'd gathered himself.  “They love you.  And they're excited.  You have nothing to worry about.”

“Neither do you,” she said.  “They seem thrilled just to see you.  They don't care if you're jumpy.”

He frowned.  “I think Rachel hates me.”

“She doesn't hate you, she just doesn't get you, yet,” Meredith said.  “It's hard to see somebody you love be so dramatically different.”

“Well, I can't be the person she knows anymore,” he said, frustrated.

“I know,” Meredith said, the words soft and sure, but not condemning.

The conviction in her tone brought him pause, and he stared at her.  The fact that she spoke from personal experience wasn't lost on him.  At all.  And it struck him all over again how much she'd changed since he'd first met her.  How much she'd sacrificed.  She'd gotten so strong.

Fearless wasn't the right word, because he knew she got terrified.  She'd been terrified today.  Possibly still was.  But there wasn't anything wrong with being afraid, a sentiment he and Dr. Wyatt were trying very hard to pound into his head.  He'd never thought less of Meredith for being afraid.  Some things in the world, like being threatened with violence, or committing to something you'd been brought up your whole life to fear, were very frightening.

Sometimes, he could convince himself that he wasn't less for feeling fear, either.  Other times, he couldn't.  But he'd gotten better at it.  Better than before.  Better at admitting he was scared shitless and either pushing through it or taking a break to try again later.  People asked him if he was okay, and he could say no, sometimes, without feeling awful about it.  His family seemed to make him hit the rewind-to-square-one button on that growing mentality, but he'd gotten a lot better at work, and a lot better at home with his Seattle family.  With Mark and Meredith.  Even Lexie and Cristina and Alex, though less so.

You're my role model, you know, he'd said at one point as he and Meredith had lain together, naked in the sheets.

Meredith had looked distinctly ruffled.  Who, me?

Yes, he'd said, and then he'd kissed her.

Why? she'd said, the word a tight gasp of confusion.

You used to run, he'd said.  Now, you don't.  It helps me think I'm not hopeless.

You're not hopeless, she'd insisted.  You're not hopeless, Derek.

I'm trying, he'd said.

She'd wrapped her arms around him.  I know, she'd said.

Courageous, he decided.  Courageous was the right word.

He shrugged off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair.  “Thank you for doing this,” he said, because he didn't think those words could be said enough.

“Sure,” she said.  She smiled at him, though she fidgeted self-consciously.

They were broken from their moment by the kitchen door creaking open very slowly, as if whoever was on the other side was taking great care not to startle anybody.  His mother poked her head and left shoulder into the kitchen.  “May I come in for a moment?” she said in a hushed whisper.  “I'm so sorry to disturb you; I just need to check on the turkey.”

“Crap,” Meredith said.  “You probably need the kitchen on Thanksgiving.  I wasn't thinking.”

His mother smiled as she came into the room.  “It's quite all right; I needed a little break anyway.”  She looked at Derek.  “Rachel made your favorite kale salad, by the way.”

Derek's eyebrows rose.  “Really?”

“Not a lot, since you're the only one who will eat it, but yes,” his mother said.  “She worked really hard on it.”

He didn't know what to say to that.  A small seed of hope burgeoned.  Maybe, he was overreacting.  Maybe, Rachel was, like Meredith said, just a little overwhelmed with the differences in his behavior right now.

He watched as his mother pulled on her favorite oven mitts, ones that looked like big-eyed, smiling cows.  She slid open the oven door and checked the meat thermometer quickly before sliding the oven door closed again.  The turkey was huge.  Well over twenty pounds, if he could guess by sight alone.  The skin had turned golden brown, and the smell that wafted into his nose didn't make him feel sick, now that he'd calmed down a little, and his stomach had stopped churning.

“We've missed you, sweetheart,” Mom said as she pulled off her mitts.  She peered into a pot she'd left simmering on the stove, but seemed satisfied after she'd stirred it twice, and she looked back at him.  “It's so good to see you home.  Everybody is excited.”  She beamed at him.  “It was very hard to get the kids out of the house, because they didn't want to miss you.”

He puffed up and grinned.  He couldn't help it.  “I am the awesome uncle,” he said to Meredith, who giggled.  The beautiful sound robbed him of his last coil tension, and then, at last, somewhere in the middle of all his nerves settling like fallen leaves on the wet ground, he felt home.  The feeling he'd been hoping to find again all morning.

He was home with his family, new and old.

His mother winked as she left the room.

He stared at the table.

“Dad, how do you do this?” he said as he erased another line of gibberish numbers.  “I don't get it.”  He'd been struggling with this stupid problem for twenty minutes.  It didn't make any sense.

Dad looked up from a big stack of bills and peered across the table to the problem in Derek's textbook.  He squinted.  He frowned.  Ran his fingers through his black hair while he thought.  Then he scooted his chair closer.  He put his index finger on the problem and read.  Dad seemed to need to touch books to read them.

“This is dimensional analysis,” his dad said after a moment.  “It's not hard, but it can be a little confusing until you get the method down.”

Derek frowned at his book.  “It's stupid,” he said.  “When will I ever use this?”

Dad squeezed his shoulder.  “I have you do this at work all the time, you know,” Dad said.  “It's actually pretty useful.”

Derek looked up.  “You do?  It is?”

Dad nodded.  “If I have thirty boxes of nails, and they sell for seventy-five cents each, how many dollars will I make if they all sell?”

“This problem is like that?” Derek said.

“Well, what units are you starting with?” Dad prodded.

Derek reread the problem.  “The guy's jogging eight miles an hour.”

“And what units do you need at the end?”

“How many centimeters he ran in forty minutes.”

Dad nodded.  “So, what do you think might get you from miles an hour to centimeters per minute?”

Derek took his pencil and started scribbling.

Derek blinked at the table.  A sheen of wetness stretched over his gaze.  He rubbed his eyes.  That was the sort of math problem he could do in his sleep, now, but he'd learned it here.  From his dad.  In the same spot he sat in, now, thirty years later.  A lump inexplicably formed in his throat.

“Kale salad is your favorite?” Meredith said gently, bumping him out of the long lost memory.

“With strawberries,” Derek said, nodding.  “You might like it.”

She made a face at him.  She called it her ick face.  “Maybe the strawberries,” she said.  “Kale is... kale.”

He shrugged.  “More for me, then,” he said.  He looked around the kitchen.  He had so many memories in this room alone.  They all danced in his head, and he felt... warm.  Warm and home and all sorts of nice things.  He took a deep breath.  “I went off the deep end a little.”

“Unexpected stuff happens,” Meredith said.

“I need to be better at handling people who aren't quite sure how to handle me.”

She kissed him.  “So, work on that later, and go enjoy your family, now?”

He touched his forehead to hers.  Peppermint welled against his nose.  Peppermint and whatever flowers had been in the hotel's shampoo.  He hadn't read the label.  “I really love you,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.  Nothing could have made him happier.  “Ready to go back out?”

He looked dubiously at the kitchen door.  He was happy.  He was so happy to be here, and he felt like he was home, finally.  But it was one thing to think and feel that in the empty kitchen, or chatting one-on-one with his mother, and another entirely to go back out in front of his sisters, who he'd just panicked in front of, Rachel in particular.  As if on cue, Rachel said something in the living room, and the bare sound of it, though unintelligible this far away, carried through the air.  The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.  He swallowed.

He didn't want to go back to that, yet.