I know that I probably shouldn't be writing anything else right now, especially when I am woefully behind on the updating, but I was a little disappointed with the MerDer portion of the premiere (the clip was like, what, twenty seconds? Really Shonda? REALLY?) so I felt the need to write something about it. There was so much potential that went unexplored in that premiere from a MerDer perspective, and as a result, this popped into my head. It's a little long for a one-shot, and not nearly as proof-read as my other stories are, but I think it does some sort of justice to the lack of time they spent together in the premiere. There was a lot of emotional stuff that went down for both of them, and they really could have turned to each other for support.
With regards to my other stories, there will be updates for HIA and SoF soon. So hang in there! And please leave a review. I love to get feedback!
Meredith wishes she were drunk. It's been a long time since she's had to resort to drinking to drown her sorrows; marriage and parenthood have abolished that knee-jerk reaction to turn to the bottle every time the going get tough. She has Cristina—or had because FaceTime conversations really aren't the same—and Derek to go to, and so her onetime best friend José Cuervo sits gathering dust in the liquor cabinet. The old Meredith would have lost herself in tequila long ago after something like this, but she hasn't had time these last few months. Everything happened at once: the plane crash, Lexie dying, Derek's hand, Mark, work starting up again, being an attending and having interns, being a mom, Cristina moving to Minnesota and Alex getting ready to go to Hopkins, and she hasn't had time to stop and take a moment for herself. Not that she's really wanted to; she was terrified that if she stopped for a second, everything was going to catch up with her. She had to be strong for Derek and Cristina and Zola at first, and now, it's simply easier not to stop. As Derek once put it, she's the thing that keeps everyone going.
She had one beer at the airport lounge. Not her usual drink—in fact she hated beer—but the shakiness and leftover terror from being on the plane told her tequila would be a mistake. She didn't stay long after meeting Alex, not only because of the little voice in the back of her mind reminding her that she was being a bad wife by staying away, but also because she just wanted to go home. She wanted to be with her husband and daughter and forget that all of this horribleness had ever happened. When she is at home with Derek and Zola, it's easy to pretend that everything is fine. The real world, however, makes maintaining that illusion a little more difficult.
It hits her on the way home. One minute she's fine, fumbling her keys into the ignition, and the next she's a trembling mess. Mark is dead. Well, he many not officially be dead right now, but he will be shortly if he isn't already. And Lexie is dead. And Arizona has no leg. And Cristina lives in fucking Minnesota and can't come to visit because she's too afraid to get on a freaking plane, a fear that Meredith can't seem to get over either. She misses her person so much it hurts, but she can't make herself stay on a bloody plane long enough to get out there and see her.
She curses the decision to move. At the time, it was the right thing to do; they needed a house that was theirs, away from all the old housemates and the memories that filled the old place in Queen Anne's Hill. They needed to mourn and recover in peace, and the house in the woods was the perfect place to do it. And she doesn't regret it—most of the time. Tonight, however, the long drive from the airport to the island is a curse, filled with all the demons Meredith has been so valiantly running from for the last month.
The ferry ride is nearly as bad as sitting in the airplane. Normally, she's okay with it; it makes her uncomfortable—bringing back old memories of drowning in the Elliott Bay—and she's always relieved to get off, but it's not unbearable. This time, she sits in the front seat, drumming her fingers in a panicky rhythm on the steering wheel and trying very hard not to think about the sensation that she is falling out of the sky, or remember the acrid smell of burning metal.
Her fingers are shaking as she navigates the dark, twisty roads up to the house. She can't push the memories out of her head, flashes of the crash that come out-of-order like a disjointed video. Arizona's screaming. The whirring of the plane engines. The awful clanging of the seatbelt clip against the wall of the plane. Derek's scream muffled by a T-Shirt. Her stomach churns nauseatingly, and the car veers slightly. She takes a deep breath and steadies it, trying to push the memories from her head. Pulling the skin of her husband's arm shut with a safety pin was possibly the hardest thing she's ever had to do, beat possibly only by negotiating her dying husband into an OR.
The lights in the living room are on when Meredith pulls up, welcoming her home. Derek is still up, though she isn't surprised; no one is going to sleep on a night like this, least of all him. The darkness upstairs tells her that Zola has gone to bed, and she feels a pang at missing bedtime and piling all the responsibility on Derek.
She sits in the car for a minute, staring up at the house Derek has built for them, trying to pull herself together. It's beautiful, and she wishes for the hundredth time that their move could have been different. They were supposed to do it together, celebrate the house of dreams that was finally theirs so many years after the original plans were unveiled. Instead, she, Alex, and Jackson moved most of the stuff in by themselves while Derek was still in the hospital. The housewarming party Lexie insisted on has been abandoned, too, given the circumstances.
Her hands are still shaking when she gets to the door, resulting in several minutes of fumbling with the keys before she actually fits them in the lock and opens the door. She's barely able to keep herself from cracking, but she's determined to be strong for Derek.
She thought she was fine today. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't going to be easy, but she was okay with it. It couldn't be any harder than letting go of Lexie, and she dealt with that fine enough. She was going to be strong for Derek, who would take this harder than anyone else. But sitting in those chairs outside his room, watching Derek and Callie watch the heart monitor, overwhelmed by guilt and the sensation that there was more she could have done to save him, was too much for her to handle. She couldn't sit there and pretend to be fine, and she wouldn't sit there and be anything less than fine.
She hadn't run in a long time. She felt like a coward doing it, and the shame creeps up now as she sees Derek sitting on the couch, staring into a glass of scotch with a broken expression. She did it to keep herself together, so that she could keep being fine and strong enough for everyone, but—despite the logic behind her reasoning—she can't help feeling an overwhelming sense of failure. He needed her today. He needed someone there with him, to support him, and she—his person—had abandoned him for purely selfish reasons.
He doesn't look up when she closes the door gently behind her, and she can feel her heart contract, precious composure slipping a little. The last time she saw him like this, he spent a week at the trailer and batted her engagement ring into the woods. She reaches up unconsciously to touch the chain around her next from which hangs that very same ring, found by some stroke of luck a couple days later, and twists it between her fingers nervously.
She puts her keys on the hall table, kicks off her boots, and pads tentatively into the living room, setting her bag down on the floor by the couch. Derek knows she's here, they're attuned to each other's presence; he's probably just too wrapped up in what's happened to acknowledge her arrival.
"He's gone." His voice, raw with grief, stops her in her tracks. She's probably reading more into this than there is, and she's sure that if she isn't imagining it, it's not intentional, but she can't help feeling the accusation in his words, which only succeeds in multiplying her guilt in abandoning him tenfold. Mark is dead. He's gone. Never again is he going to come in with that full-blown, charming grin, or make inappropriate comments, or lighten the mood with his dirty humour and massive ego. And while he and Derek haven't always had the best of relationships over the years, Mark has been the one constant in Derek's life. Things are going to be very different without Mark around, and even though he hasn't really been around for the last month since the crash, it's different now that he's officially gone. "Mark's gone."
"I got on a flight to Minnesota." The words fly out of Meredith's mouth before she has time to pull them back, and a stunned silence settles over the room. Derek is blindsided by this confession, while she told Bailey and Jackson to tell Derek she had gone to the airport to meet Cristina, she mentioned nothing about going to Minnesota herself. Meredith can't believe she's actually admitted to it. When she got off the plane and made the short, agonizing walk across the tarmac back to the main terminal, she resolved never to tell anyone about what had happened. She hadn't ended up going to Minnesota, so there was no need for Derek or anyone else to know. She would just go home and pretend it never happened.
"I wasn't planning on it," she begins hastily, desperate to wipe the shocked, hurt look of Derek's face. She wasn't trying to run from him, he has to see that. "I was just going to the airport to meet Cristina, but then she didn't come in on her flight, and I ran into Alex who was going to Baltimore and I tried to get him to stay but he said he wasn't going to wait around here just because I was going to be alone, and I—" She knows she's rambling, and cuts herself off because Derek hasn't and she can't listen to the sound of her voice anymore.
Derek isn't even looking at her anymore, back to staring into his glass of scotch like it's going to present him with some answer, some explanation for this problem that's presented itself. His face is full of hurt and confusion, and Meredith wishes she had just kept her mouth shut. He doesn't need to know these things tonight of all nights, and to make matters worse she's doing an abysmal job at explaining the reasoning behind her madness.
"Why?"
The question hangs in the air for a few minutes, as Meredith tries to make enough sense of her scattered thoughts to come up with a reply. She's rapidly losing any shard of self-control she might have possessed, which is only making matters worse.
"I—I thought I could do it." She knows it not really much of an explanation, but it's the best she's got. "She keeps saying she's going to come and never does because of some thing or another, but we all know it's a lie; she just can't get on the plane, and I thought that I..." She can't even say the rest of it out loud, and resorts to wringing her hands together instead, in a desperate attempt to try and explain what she can't say.
"But why did you come back?"
And then it clicks. Yes, he's slightly hurt that she would go to Minnesota without telling him, especially today, but he's confused about why she's here and not there as opposed to why she would want to go in the first place.
"Because—I couldn't," she whispers. "I was on the plane, sitting in my seat, and they were doing all the pre-flight demonstrations—and I just couldn't. I had to get off." Her voice wavers dangerously on the last word, and just like that, something snaps and she's sobbing, great, nasty, hiccupping sobs that wrack her tiny frame and send rivers of tears pouring down her cheeks. "I couldn't do it, Derek."
He looks at her now, really looking, as if he's noticed for the first time that she's there. His eyes are sad, but it's not the endless grief that she saw when she came in. It's a sadness that she's much more familiar with, a sadness veiled with love and understanding that she sees whenever she finally lets her guard down long enough to admit that something is wrong. "Meredith," he whispers, and his voice trembles, too. Both of them are barely keeping it together tonight.
She wants to stop crying and be able to comfort him in his grief instead of forcing him to comfort her, but she can't stop the tears. She hasn't cried since the crash, not when they buried Lexie, not when Cristina left, or Arizona quit, or Derek thought he was never going to be able to use his hand again. She built a fortress around herself and put everything behind her, and now the walls of the fortress have all come crashing down. It's like the aftermath of the shooting all over again: she's held herself together for as long as she can, supporting everyone else, until she cracks. Back then the breaking point was the shooting at the college. This time it's Mark's death.
Strong arms wrap around her, drawing her gently against him. Meredith buries her face in his chest, breathing in the crisp scent of his aftershave and the soft, worn smell of the laundry detergent that clings to his sweater. It's been a long time since she's been able to simply let herself relax in Derek's arms like this; there have been too many things for her to do, too many things for her to worry about these last few weeks.
"Hey," he murmurs, pressing his face into her hair. "It's okay, Mer. It's okay."
She's forgotten what it's like to be comforted; so rare are the occasions where Derek can soothe her. "I—I couldn't," she sobs, wrapping her arms tighter around hi and enveloping herself in his familiar, comforting warmth. "I just kept thinking about the crash and I—I..."
"Shh," Derek whispers, rubbing her back gently with one hand, the way they soothe Zola when she's upset. Cristina would scoff at the idea of being soothed like a child, tell her it made her soft, but Meredith finds it surprisingly effective, perhaps because she was never comforted that way as a child. "You don't have to do it until you're ready, Mer. No one's going to force you."
They stand like that for a while, clinging to each other. Meredith cries are quieter, but Derek continues to rub her back soothingly. He's the strong one now, and for that, she is selfishly glad. It's not until she hears his trembling breaths that she realizes he isn't able to hold back the tears either.
Meredith can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she has seen Derek Shepherd cry. He, like her, is not the kind of person who likes to display weakness, and compartmentalizes his emotions, pushing them out of the way so that he can carry on. Very rarely does he lose his cool. When he does, it's transforming. The good-humoured, charming, overly optimistic man that Meredith fell in love with at a bar many years ago become dark, bitter, harsh. He lashes out in brief bursts of anger, but most of the time he is quiet. He can go for weeks on end without speaking to someone. She knows better than anyone; it's been more than once that she's been on the receiving end of Derek's cruelty.
She takes a deep, shaky breath, managing to gain some semblance of control. She needs to be strong right now. Her husband is going through one of the worst days of his life right now. He needs his person. She lets herself have one more moment to cling to him, to let him be her lifeline, before disentangling herself gently, wiping a few stray tears from her face. "It's late," she says quietly. "We've had a long day."
Derek nods, the ghosts of the last few months painfully evident on his face. Grief has aged him, giving him a look of constant exhaustion. He is like Atlas, carrying the weight of everything that has happened on his shoulders. She would gladly bear all his troubles and her own silently if it meant she could see him smile again the way he used to. Unfortunately, she's not the one who can call Addison and the rest of Derek's family tomorrow to tell them Mark is finally gone. All she can do is sit by him and hold his hand, or massage his scalp the way he likes while he relives his grief six times over. She can try and ease his pain, but she can't take it away.
"Okay," Derek says shakily, rubbing his face with both hands, as if trying to erase the red, raw eyes and telltale tear tracks that show he's been crying. "Let's go."
Later, when they are lying in bed, she realizes she hasn't asked him about Mark. The whole point of today was she was supposed to be his support system, and yet he's the one who's ended up comforting her.
"Hey," she says softly, praying he hasn't fallen asleep.
"Mmm?" Derek's voice is muffled in the back of her neck, but she takes it as an invitation to keep talking. "Are you okay?"
He sighs, a heavy, pained affair that make her heart ache. "No," he says after a moment. "I—It was awful, Meredith."
The guilt from earlier creeps up again like a cat and settles itself comfortably on Meredith's chest. She should have stayed. She should have kept it together, if only for him. "I'm sorry I wasn't there."
His arms tighten around her reflexively, pulling her closer against him. "It's okay," he says wearily. "It wasn't easy on you, either."
"But I should have been there," she protests, quietly but stubbornly. "You needed me to be there, and I wasn't."
Derek's breath, warm and feather-light, caresses her neck as he buries his face in her shoulder. "You're here now," he murmurs. "Just being with you makes it better."
"Okay." This makes her feel a little better. She may not have been there before when he needed her, but she's here now. She's helping now.
"Derek?" Her voice sounds small and child-like in the silence.
"What?"
"What if it never goes away? What if I can never get in an airplane again?" the question is one that's been stewing in the back of her mind for weeks now, and the thought of it terrifies her. Not being able to fly is crippling, both personally and professionally.
For a moment, Derek says nothing. He hasn't been in a plane since the crash—at least not that he can remember—though she can tell from the tense silence that he's given it some thought too. "We just won't ride airplanes. We'll drive, or take the train, which, if you think about it will save a lot of money in the long run. Or we could be one of those families that always take cruises. There are other methods of travel besides airplanes."
Meredith's' mouth twitches at the hint of Derek's old humour poking through, something she hasn't seen in a long time. This is a good sign. If he's still able to crack jokes...well, maybe things are going to be okay after all.
"We'll be okay, Mer," he continues quietly, tone serious. "This won't last forever."
Meredith chews on her bottom lip, unable to squash the little voice in the back of her head that whispers despite everything that things will never be okay again. Things haven't really been getting better, and pessimist that she is, she can't shake the feeling that they wont. "It's been a month, Derek," she reminds him, twisting his fingers between her own nervously.
"And things like this take time," he replies reassuringly. "It's going to be a long haul, but we'll make it." He seems so confident, so sure, and she wants to believe him, she really does. That's the one thing about him that hasn't changed in all this: his belief that they will make it out okay. It's a belief that she hasn't always shared, but she really tries to now. She wants everything to be okay. She doesn't want things to be like this forever.
"It feels like everyone is getting better and I'm not." Her confession is quiet and reluctant. This is another secret fear that's been eating at her for a while. Underneath the tough exterior she projects, she's a mess, barely able to keep it together, constantly haunted by memories of that week in the wilderness. It's not something she wants anyone to know—she doesn't want anyone hovering, making sure she's okay—but she can't keep it to herself anymore. And if she can't tell her husband, who knows her better than anyone, then who can she tell?
"That's not true," Derek says quietly, disentangling his fingers from hers to rub his hand along her arm. "You're doing better than any of us, Mer."
"I'm not." She closes her eyes briefly, and tries to concentrate on the warmth of Derek's hand running along her arm to try and keep from crying. "I can't stop thinking about what happened. Every time I close my eyes..."
"Everyone is haunted by what happened, Mer. It's normal after something like this."
"But Cristina is fine and you were in the OR today—"
"My hand went numb in the OR today."
Meredith feels as though she has been turned to ice. Derek's hand is supposed to be fine. Callie cleared him for surgery weeks ago. He's supposed to be over all this by now. A relapse now could mean any number of things, most of them not good.
She can feel the frustration and fear rolling off her husband in waves. He wants to be ready; he wants to be fine. She knows that. She thinks he's been pushing himself too hard, but he told her this morning that he was ready, and she was more than willing to believe him. Now, however, she wonders if she shouldn't have said something more, tried to get him to stop pushing himself until he was sure.
Meredith rolls over to face him, trying to squash the fear and dread that creeps up from the pit of her stomach at the thought of all the things that could be wrong with his hand. "Derek, I'm sorry."
"It's fine," he says curtly.
"No it's not," she insists, gathering his hands in hers and massaging them gently, a habit she's developed since the crash. "It's not, Derek," she repeats. "I know you want to get back in the OR, and I know you've been cleared for a while, but maybe you should just take it easy for a little while."
She can feel the muscles in Derek's hand clench as he tenses. "What do you think I've been doing since Callie cleared me for surgery? I'm not trying to give Nelson more hours."
Meredith sighs. She hates what this is doing to him: taking his self-confidence and chipping away at it bit by bit. "I know," she says softly. "But things like this take time, remember?"
Derek's silence stretches for so long that Meredith thinks he's fallen asleep. She's just about to close her eyes and surrender herself as well, pressing her face deeper into his chest, when he speaks.
"What if I can't operate again?"
His voice is thick and trembling, his fight against tears breaking Meredith's heart. This is his greatest demon, the thing that keeps him awake at night and haunts him every day. She's tried to help him overcome it, to be supportive, but it's hard when he's so unfailingly optimistic about his own recovery. Had he not been so hesitant to get back in the OR, she never would have known that it was something he was genuinely worried about. Thinking about it herself makes her feel slightly queasy, and she closes her eyes briefly. Callie has said Derek is fine, but nothing is guaranteed until he's back in the OR regularly. Still, there is no room for her own fears right now. He needs her strength right now.
"Your hand is going to be fine, Derek." She slips her arms around his waist, rubbing her hands up and down his back. "But if it's not," she continues, sensing his protest. "We'll be okay."
From where it's trapped between their bodies, she can feel him clench and unclench his left hand, a restless habit he's developed since the bandages came off. "You can't say that," he says quietly, and there is a hint of anger mingling with the desperation and misery in his voice. "You don't know that."
"I know that I'll always love you, no matter what." There's more conviction in her voice than she's felt in a long time, and she knows as soon as she says it that everything is going to be okay. It may not be exactly the way it was before—it wouldn't be—but as long as they had each other, they would be okay. "And as far as I'm concerned, that's all we need to be okay."
Derek says nothing, and the cold feeling is back. The fact that he doesn't agree with her is concerning. She knows they'll be okay, but if he believes that they won't...well she doesn't know what will happen. He has to believe that things are going to be okay. Otherwise, there may not be a love great enough to carry them through what's to come.
"If there's anyone that can get through this, it's us," she murmurs, hands moving from his back to massage his shoulders and arms. "We've been through so much freaking crap together and we've survived, Derek. We survived. And if that's not enough of an indication for you that we'll be okay, then I don't know what is. It's enough of an indication for me, and I'm the pessimist." Meredith hopes that this last comment will lighten the mood a little, but she's not sure that anything can lift the black cloud tonight.
"You'll still love me if I'm not a surgeon?"
Derek's voice is quiet, so quiet that she can barely hear the question. She's startled by the insecurity, though a small voice in the back of her mind whispers that it's rational—not only is she the queen of running when things get tough, but she did tell him once before that she wouldn't love him if he wasn't a surgeon (though she would have thought that all the crap they've been through since is proof that she loves him, regardless of what he is). He's so good at keeping his insecurities hidden under the surface that Meredith often forgets the extent of them. The Derek that the world sees and the one that exists under the surface are two very different people, but the façade is so well done that it's very hard to tell.
"I'll love you no matter what you are," she says firmly, nestling herself closer against his chest. "I don't care what you do or don't do, so long as you don't leave me."
"I'm never going to leave you," he mumbles, soothing another one of her secret insecurities, the way she has just soothed his. "I don't think I could, even if I wanted to."
"Then we'll be okay," Meredith repeats, beginning to believe it a little more every time she says it.
To her great relief, he nods, wrapping his arms around her once again. "As long as we have each other, we'll be okay."
Meredith closes her eyes for a moment, relishing in the sound of those words and the security that they promise. No matter what happens, they'll make it work. They'll tough it out together. Their love will see them through.
"I'm glad you're alive," she whispers, resting her lips gently against the juncture between his throat and shoulder, right along the collar of his T-Shirt. "I couldn't do this without you."
Derek presses a soft kiss to her temple. "I'm glad you're alive, too."
They aren't ever going to forget those who have been lost. The memories of Lexie and Mark will forever live on in their hearts and minds, and in all the milestones they will celebrate from this day forward that the deceased should be able to share with them. But they're moving forward. They're forging their way into the future. And no matter what happens, good or bad, everything will eventually turn out okay because they have each other. Their love will see them through.
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