POST SEASON 6: Six months after the fatal day, Meredith discovers she is pregnant once again. While she is completely ecstatic, Derek struggles with her past miscarriage and tries desperately not to get attached to the pregnancy.

Hi! This is the first fanfic I have written in.. geez, a long time. So expect the usual rust and bear with me. This is just a story I have been playing with in my mind for a few days. Hopefully you'll enjoy.

Also, Derek surrendered his chiefly rights to Richard shortly after the shooting. But that will be discussed in later chapters.

The first few chapters will be kind of angsty. In later chapters, it will get a little more sunshine and butterflies and all the hoohaa.

Obviously VERY MerDer, with a spattering of other characters. Enjoy! And please review!

DISCLAIMER: I am obviously not Shonda Rhimes, although I would happily give a kidney and a left arm to be her. So, yeah. This goes for all of the future chapters, so I won't be posting it on every one. That would be annoying.

Throwing up was that much worse without someone to hold your hair. Usually, when someone is vomiting up god-knows-what, it's common courtesy to hold their hair back, since this friend or significant other is usually either sick or drunk beyond belief

Or pregnant.

Also, it's usually the only thing you can do for someone, assuming you don't feel like cleaning up vomit.

Meredith promised herself she would appreciate this little blessing so much more. It was hard to throw up and try to keep your hair out of the toilet.

She remembered thinking the exact thing, quite a while ago; when she was in the same predicament for days and didn't want to admit that she didn't just have food poisoning. That was the last time she threw up.

When she had woken that morning, it took her a while to realize why Derek wasn't next to her.

She remembered: they had been rudely awakened by his pager going off in the middle of the night. As usual, Meredith, her brain still slow with sleep, had happily discovered it wasn't her pager, before reaching over to the bedside table, then stretching behind herself to give it to Derek. She hit him in the face, and he groaned, obviously annoyed by the 911 page, and his obnoxious wife.

"Sorry." She mumbled and felt him get up.

Meredith didn't know what time it was when his pager had gone off. She had drifted to sleep before she could be bothered to look, or ask what Derek's page was about. Oh well.

She brushed her teeth, getting all of the disgusting taste out of her mouth, and decided it was best to skip breakfast. Nothing was worse then to vomit all over the halls of the hospital. Nothing spread faster then gossip at the hospital, no disease could top a juicy story.

She had thrown up yesterday morning, too. And the day before that.

It was kind of inevitable, the test. She knew she would take it today, because she hated not knowing what was going on with her body. She was pretty sure. But still.

She felt happy as she drove to the hospital, even though there was some nausea going on there. Not overly happy, more a happy you wanted to contain. You know, don't give your hopes up and all that. Smug happiness kept to yourself.

It had been almost half a year since that dreaded bloodbath of a day. The worst day of her life, which made the tragedy sound petty. Equal to the times when your middle school boyfriend, the one you just knew was your soul mate, dumped you after two weeks of dedicated love.

"You don't understand. I just can't go on.

This is the worst day of my life. My life is just OVER."

It did feel like her life was just over, at the time. Her husband dying in front of her. Her baby dying inside of her. Months of helping Derek recuperate, which was tough both physically and very much emotionally on both of them.

Telling Derek about the baby was the hardest. His obvious pain and utter agony was unbearable to watch. They didn't talk about it much. She had tried to bring it up on one or two occasions, but he was very unwilling and she didn't press him any further, although she felt they really should talk about it. Even when so much time had passed, he still avoided the baby sections of stores like the plague.

This is probably what made her a bit uneasy about the idea of being pregnant again. Derek had always, always wanted children. A ton of them. Lots of hair. Toys. Girly dresses and ballet. Ball caps and soccer practice. Meredith had always been hesitant about the idea of children, obviously because of her own twisted childhood. Thinking of kids as more of a "one day I will…" type thing.

Now it seemed he had taken her place, not talking about children, not mentioning how cute their kids would be or finding a stuffed animal at the store, casually mentioning how it would look cute in a nursery.

But he would be okay eventually. Maybe being smacked in the face with reality would bring him be to his old self. He was his old self, mostly. It had taken a long time for the community to adjust after the shooting, an unbearably long time. But they had all eventually gone back to work, even Derek and Alex, and gone back to the old song and dance, drinks at Joes, living at the hospital, so on.

But she still avoided the catwalk at all costs. She used to love the catwalk, to watch the sun rise and set when she had a spare second, to lean against the rail with Derek in comfortable, companionable, silence. They had both quit that cold turkey.

The supply closet where Reid had died was a ghost town. Alex, Lexie, and Mark, would never take a certain elevator. Little things that reminded everyone of what had happened.

She was sure he would be ecstatic over the news. He loved kids no matter what. Adored babies. He hadn't changed that much, had he?

"Of course not." She murmured to herself.

Meredith tried not to think about the test. It felt a lot like before, but it could be anything. Deep down she knew, of course. Call it instinct. She knew that there was a wrinkly, but still cute pink face somewhere near the future.

Still, her sensible mind told her to wait to pee on a stick.

As soon as she had changed into her scrubs, she slipped quietly into a supply closet, making sure no one was in there first. She grabbed some few pregnancy tests, more then one for good measure, and stuffed them in her pockets before slyly stepping out.

Making sure the sticks weren't showing, and trying not to make it obvious she was doing this, she ran into Derek.

"Hey." She said, smiling, trying to pretend she wasn't startled and a bit pissed at his horrible timing.

He frowned slightly, someone who didn't know him wouldn't notice but he smoothed out quickly. Then he kissed her, sweet hello she would have liked any other day, if she wasn't so anxious.

"I haven't seen you all day." Derek said.

"Yeah, sorry. I'm a little late." She apologized, and then noticed quickly her words had a definite double meaning.

"Why were you late?" Which obviously meant 'What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so jumpy?'

"I just got out of the house late." She shrugged.

He just uttered a little "hmm", obviously dropping it, thinking it was probably one of those dreaded girl drama things.

"What was the 911 about?" She asked, starting to walk down the hall.

"Diana Murrell." He sighed, talking about a recent trauma patient. "Her intracranial pressure was high." His tone and the expression on his face made it clear what had happened.

"I'm sorry." She said quietly, rubbing his arm.

I'm sick of all the death.

"Yeah, me too." He sighed again, wanting to drop the subject of lost patients. "You seem pretty anxious today."

"Uhh. Why would you think that? I'm not anxious. Just want to work, you know? I have stuff to do. People to talk to. I just have stuff to do."

He looked at her critically. "You're nervously talking again. You're lying."

"I am not." She was trying to keep her statements short, being the awful liar she was.

"Really?"

"Really. I'm just busy."

"Okay." She hadn't convinced him, but she had stopped his obvious curiosity and she thanked her lucky stars for that.

"Well I need to go… do stuff."

"Right. See you later?"

"Yeah. See you later."

She had never been so thankful to walk away from him. She really did need to calm down, though, stop being obviously anxious and nervous and all of that. Derek knew that she was lying, but she assumed he thought it was one of those 'maybe I really don't want to know' things.

It definitely was not, or she hoped not.

Sorry! This chapter is pretty short. Usually these chapters would be much longer. I'm just trying to get a feel for the story. I like it so far.

Please, please review! I will even give you that incentive. If you do, I will give you a short preview of the next chapter. If you anonymously review, please include your email so I can send it to you.

Thanks for reading!

This was really bad. This was exactly what she was afraid of.

She wanted him to be shocked, elated, excited, all of those good things.

He was just shocked. None of those other emotions.