Searching for a Seattle Sky (5/10)
Title: Searching for a Seattle Sky
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, onlywordsnow for the fanmix and waltzmatildah for the fanart!
Written for the ga_fanfic Big Bang:
Fanmix:
Fan Art:
“What are you watching?”
Meredith put a finger to her lips and gestured to the baby sleeping at her side. Cristina pursed her lips, but came carefully into the bedroom. She stepped carefully over the bag of diapers the pediatric nurse had given Meredith, and angled herself through the small space between the changing table and the foot of the bed.
“This place is a death trap.”
“It’s a stop-gap.”
“Whatever. Don’t tell me you’re exposing her to those stupid baby shows that are always on in Peds.”
“Do you know me at all? No. It’s a video about teaching babies sign language. April suggested it. Apparently, she saw a mom on the floor doing it while she was on Stark’s service. Helps them communicate now and develop language skills later.”
“She’s going to belong to you and Shepherd. I don’t think talking is going to be a problem.”
“Talking, yes. Communicating…not so much. Plus, if she does have problems with her legs, I figure anything that can give her an edge will be helpful. And sometimes when I’m sitting with her I don’t know what to do. I feel like an idiot playing peek-a-boo. It’s not in my genes. But this.” She motioned to the screen. “I can do. I hope.”
“You are a good teacher,” Cristina said. Meredith shrugged, and there was a pause before Cristina blurted, “I hid from him in a supply closet.”
“You hid from Owen?” Meredith whispered, trying to emphasize the I’m being quiet tone. She paused the video playing on her laptop so she could close the lid of and set it on the floor.
“Can we talk in my-in another room?”
“I… She just went to sleep. I don’t want her to wake up alone in here.” To Meredith’s surprise, Cristina didn’t argue with this.
“Guess I’ll have to adjust to being a third wheel.”
“You adjusted to Derek.”
“I tolerate Derek.”
Meredith put her hand protectively on Zola’s back without thinking. The ghost of Cristina’s usual sardonic smirk made her want to shield the baby from the pain radiating off of her.
“And you tolerated Owen… You never really liked him, did you?”
“Of course I did.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a horrible liar?”
“I did. As a doctor, he’s great. And he’s a good man. I just…” Meredith rested a hand behind her head, trying to find the words that wouldn’t make Cristina angry if or when she mended things with Owen, and reexamined this conversation. “After he tried to strangle you, I didn’t trust him. I know he couldn’t help it, and the PTSD is being treated, but… Now that I’ve seen how respectful you’ve been to his needs, it pisses me off that he won’t even listen to yours.”
“Damn right,” Cristina said. Zola sighed in her sleep, and Cristina’s eyes flickered to her. Meredith watched a small, sad smile form on her friend’s face. “He’d be a good dad. And, hell, I’d be a kickass mom, if I wanted to be. But I don’t want to be. What’s so wrong with that?”
Hearing always-stubborn Cristina question her convictions this way made Meredith’s heart shatter as if Gary Clark had managed to come back and hit it with a bullet a year too late. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. People who don’t want kids shouldn’t have kids.”
“Like Ellis Grey? Because that’s not a great example considering how much I’ve benefited personally from her reproducing.”
Meredith shook her head. “No. My mother wanted me in the way a super-villain wants a clone. She just didn’t know how to raise me.” Cristina would read the meaning into her words, the assumptions about herself. It was why their friendship worked so well.
“Meredith.” The calm tone in her voice made Meredith turn to meet her eyes. “Ellis Grey would never be learning how to teach her baby sign language just so she could make sure she knew what the kid wanted a few months before any other mother.”
“True,” Meredith murmured, tracing one of the frogs on Zola’s new blanket with a finger. But also not, she thought, while Cristina opened the laptop and started the video up again.
Because Mom always wanted me to be ahead of the curve. Isn’t that what I want for Zola?
She tore her eyes away from the baby to watch the disembodied hands in the movie sign more, but glanced back a second later to watch Zola curl her fist around the foot of her stuffed frog. No, she answered herself, with the same gleam of satisfaction she got when she realized she’d mastered a surgical technique she’d never used before.
Because if she never masters a single one of these things, I’ll still love her exactly the same amount.
She and Cristina sat there watching the videos for a long time, until Meredith reluctantly admitted she needed sleep. She was about to offer to let Cristina stay there, but her friend headed to the door without hesitation. A second later, she turned and wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were afraid of a blow coming her way.
“Mer?”
“Yeah?” Meredith stifled a yawn while she stood up to put the computer on the dresser.
“My appointment to get… for the termination, is next week. Do I…should I ask someone else to be my person?”
Meredith hadn’t seen this fragile expression on Cristina’s face since right after the shooting. “Cristina, I will always be your person.” The promise made the air in the bedroom heavy for a long minute before Meredith shrugged. “Besides, who would you ask? Evil Spawn?”
Cristina smiled, which had been Meredith’s intent, but after she left the room Meredith couldn’t help but glance at Zola and sent a silent apology to the powers that be for calling Alex evil. In many ways he was, but she owed the presence of the baby to the one moment he’d chosen not to be.
***
Meredith:
She rolled from her back to her front! Have you seen her do that before??
Lexie rolled her eyes at the third text she’d gotten from Meredith that morning. The first had been a picture of Zola in her Osh Kosh B’Gosh overalls, which Lexie had dutifully shown to everyone who’d look. The second had been a report on Zola’s preference for the bright green stuffed frog they’d bought over her rabbit. (Lexie had already seen that in action when the rabbit had been thrown across the room the night before.) The only thing unique about this message was how the hell Meredith thought Lexie might know more than her. In the two days Zola had been home, she’d only been out of Meredith’s sight when she slept.
“Other Grey, are you planning on paying attention?” Dr. Bailey asked, a split second before she whacked Lexie in the head with a manila file folder.
Lexie winced, and quickly scrolled up in the text conversation. With one tap on her iPhone screen, she enlarged the picture of Zola and held it over her shoulder. Bailey let out an audible aw, and took the phone from Lexie.
Lexie grinned to herself, and turned back to the monotonous man in the front of the auditorium. The chief had flown him in spur-of-the-moment to lecture them all on ethics. A remark from Jackson that the person who most needed to hear this was home, with the crying baby who’d kept them up all night, had gotten him a death glare from Alex, who’d definitely had a hand in getting them into this in the first place. (Some days Lexie thought a flowchart of the relationships at Seattle Grace would be much larger than the surgical board.)
Bailey tapped her on the shoulder. Lexie reached for the phone, and it buzzed between them. Lexie scanned the screen.
She won’t stop crying, and she’s a drool factory. Is this teething?
“How should I know?” Lexie whispered, as if Meredith were there to be questioned.
“I got it.” Bailey took the phone back and began tapping furiously. “Does she have teething rings, or will me telling her to put one in the freezer send her into a state of panic?”
“Um…” Lexie thought back to the contents of the bags they’d dragged home. “Yeah. We’ve got those. I’m not sure Zola’s teething, though. She’s been having trouble letting Meredith out-”
“Some of us are trying to pay attention, you know,” April snapped from her seat ahead of Lexie. Once she’d turned around, Lexie made a face at her back. Jackson touched the side of his hand against hers, but she jerked it away. April may have been his friend, but she hadn’t officially started as chief resident, and she already had a huge stick of rule-following up her ass.
While Lexie tried to focus on the speaker, she heard her phone vibrating periodically as Bailey went back and forth with Meredith. Another few minutes, and Bailey stood, apologizing as she slid out of the auditorium. Lexie imagined her in the hall, using her no-nonsense, I am Doctor Bailey and I have done all of this before you, voice to soothe Meredith. Her sister needed that. She had to be the voice of reason herself too much. Like with Sadie. Lexie rested her head on her forehead, and closed her eyes. For a second she stood in the bar of a hostel, watching two girls have a heated argument from opposite sides of a pool table.
“You okay?” Jackson’s hand landed heavily on her shoulder.
“Hmm? Yeah, just memories.”
“About what?”
She parted her lips, unsure about answering. No one knew about that, not even Mark. The chance to respond got taken away from her anyway, by another hiss from Princess April.
Bailey came back a second later, phone in hand. Lexie took it, and saw a missed text from Mark. While Lexie took the phone, Bailey whispered“Let me know when you get off today. I’m going to follow you out to the Residents’ Residence.”
Jackson snorted, but April didn’t make a sound. Lexie found it vaguely satisfying that she still feared Dr. Bailey. Once Jackson seemed to be engrossed once more in whatever the speaker had to say, Lexie scrolled to Mark’s message.
Call me when you get off. Not an emergency, but I need someone to talk to about this. Having a mother on the line is a little too close to home for Callie right now.
Lexie shifted her eyes to Callie, who sat two rows over, her hand entwined with Dr. Robbins’. Lexie’d always had a weird relationship with the ortho resident. First, Callie had been George’s ex-wife, then Mark’s sometimes-lover, then the one who took Mark away from Lexie, without meaning to, again. So, Lexie figured she had a right to be jealous. She felt bad about the situation with Callie’s mom, but there was a small thrill of triumph at being the only person Mark could confide in.
Oh Lex, said a voice in her head, which sounded suspiciously like Meredith’s. I love you, but you have jealously issues, you know? Not just about Mark-but seriously, you’re not even with him! About me, too. With Cristina, Izzie, April...
Oh how well Lexie knew. And funny how the one her head-Meredith left out of the list was the one who’d been the first target of her Meredith-envy.
Sadie.
The sound of applause jerked her out of her daydreams again, and she joined in belatedly. She could have been applauding her own firing, for all she knew. It didn’t matter. One lecture on ethics wouldn’t reform the hospital where a woman had cut her lover’s LVAD wire, and another doctor had given the chief’s wife a drug the computers said she didn’t deserve. (And, really, Lexie wasn’t sure she wanted it to.)
That night, Bailey preceded her into the house, armed with a bag of William George Bailey Jones’s old toys, and her soothing manner. Meredith met them at the door, still wearing her pajamas. “I can’t feel my arms,” she declared. Zola watched them with one open eye, her head resting on Meredith’s shoulder. “She hates the swing. She hates the high chair. She hates the port-a-crib.”
“Well, she seems to love you,” Bailey countered. This, at least, shut Meredith up, and gave Lexie the push she needed to go out to the porch swing and call Mark.
He answered on the second ring. “Hey, Lex.”
“Hi. Is this a bad time?”
“No, it’s perfect. Mrs. Shepherd made me drag Derek back to the hotel so he could get some rest. He’s a mess.” Lexie thought of the stained burp cloth on Meredith’s shoulder and the tangles in her hair. Even thousands of miles apart, they’d make a good pair.
“And you?”
“I’m a mess, too. She’s going to have surgery this week. Bypass.”
“Oh Mark. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, it sucks pretty bad.” He sighed heavily into the phone, but his voice perked up at the next sentence. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time Derek and I put dye in Nancy’s shampoo the week before class pictures?”
“No. What happened?”
“We…er…dyed her hair the week before class pictures. Unfortunately, Mrs. Shepherd took it out six days before class pictures. We perfected our tactics after that.”
“I’m sure you did,” Lexie said, swinging her legs up onto the seat next to her. “I’m sure you did.
Part Three|| Table of Contents || Part Five
Author: chicleeblair
Rating: PG
Summary: During the turmoil of trying for a baby, adopting Zola and nearly tearing apart her marriage, Meredith forgot her fears about becoming a mother. Now she remembers, and Lexie’s the only one who can help rid her of them for good.
Pairings: Meredith/Derek, Mark/Lexie
Thanks literary_critic to for beta, onlywordsnow for the fanmix and waltzmatildah for the fanart!
Written for the ga_fanfic Big Bang:
Fanmix:
Fan Art:
“What are you watching?”
Meredith put a finger to her lips and gestured to the baby sleeping at her side. Cristina pursed her lips, but came carefully into the bedroom. She stepped carefully over the bag of diapers the pediatric nurse had given Meredith, and angled herself through the small space between the changing table and the foot of the bed.
“This place is a death trap.”
“It’s a stop-gap.”
“Whatever. Don’t tell me you’re exposing her to those stupid baby shows that are always on in Peds.”
“Do you know me at all? No. It’s a video about teaching babies sign language. April suggested it. Apparently, she saw a mom on the floor doing it while she was on Stark’s service. Helps them communicate now and develop language skills later.”
“She’s going to belong to you and Shepherd. I don’t think talking is going to be a problem.”
“Talking, yes. Communicating…not so much. Plus, if she does have problems with her legs, I figure anything that can give her an edge will be helpful. And sometimes when I’m sitting with her I don’t know what to do. I feel like an idiot playing peek-a-boo. It’s not in my genes. But this.” She motioned to the screen. “I can do. I hope.”
“You are a good teacher,” Cristina said. Meredith shrugged, and there was a pause before Cristina blurted, “I hid from him in a supply closet.”
“You hid from Owen?” Meredith whispered, trying to emphasize the I’m being quiet tone. She paused the video playing on her laptop so she could close the lid of and set it on the floor.
“Can we talk in my-in another room?”
“I… She just went to sleep. I don’t want her to wake up alone in here.” To Meredith’s surprise, Cristina didn’t argue with this.
“Guess I’ll have to adjust to being a third wheel.”
“You adjusted to Derek.”
“I tolerate Derek.”
Meredith put her hand protectively on Zola’s back without thinking. The ghost of Cristina’s usual sardonic smirk made her want to shield the baby from the pain radiating off of her.
“And you tolerated Owen… You never really liked him, did you?”
“Of course I did.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a horrible liar?”
“I did. As a doctor, he’s great. And he’s a good man. I just…” Meredith rested a hand behind her head, trying to find the words that wouldn’t make Cristina angry if or when she mended things with Owen, and reexamined this conversation. “After he tried to strangle you, I didn’t trust him. I know he couldn’t help it, and the PTSD is being treated, but… Now that I’ve seen how respectful you’ve been to his needs, it pisses me off that he won’t even listen to yours.”
“Damn right,” Cristina said. Zola sighed in her sleep, and Cristina’s eyes flickered to her. Meredith watched a small, sad smile form on her friend’s face. “He’d be a good dad. And, hell, I’d be a kickass mom, if I wanted to be. But I don’t want to be. What’s so wrong with that?”
Hearing always-stubborn Cristina question her convictions this way made Meredith’s heart shatter as if Gary Clark had managed to come back and hit it with a bullet a year too late. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. People who don’t want kids shouldn’t have kids.”
“Like Ellis Grey? Because that’s not a great example considering how much I’ve benefited personally from her reproducing.”
Meredith shook her head. “No. My mother wanted me in the way a super-villain wants a clone. She just didn’t know how to raise me.” Cristina would read the meaning into her words, the assumptions about herself. It was why their friendship worked so well.
“Meredith.” The calm tone in her voice made Meredith turn to meet her eyes. “Ellis Grey would never be learning how to teach her baby sign language just so she could make sure she knew what the kid wanted a few months before any other mother.”
“True,” Meredith murmured, tracing one of the frogs on Zola’s new blanket with a finger. But also not, she thought, while Cristina opened the laptop and started the video up again.
Because Mom always wanted me to be ahead of the curve. Isn’t that what I want for Zola?
She tore her eyes away from the baby to watch the disembodied hands in the movie sign more, but glanced back a second later to watch Zola curl her fist around the foot of her stuffed frog. No, she answered herself, with the same gleam of satisfaction she got when she realized she’d mastered a surgical technique she’d never used before.
Because if she never masters a single one of these things, I’ll still love her exactly the same amount.
She and Cristina sat there watching the videos for a long time, until Meredith reluctantly admitted she needed sleep. She was about to offer to let Cristina stay there, but her friend headed to the door without hesitation. A second later, she turned and wrapped her arms around herself, as if she were afraid of a blow coming her way.
“Mer?”
“Yeah?” Meredith stifled a yawn while she stood up to put the computer on the dresser.
“My appointment to get… for the termination, is next week. Do I…should I ask someone else to be my person?”
Meredith hadn’t seen this fragile expression on Cristina’s face since right after the shooting. “Cristina, I will always be your person.” The promise made the air in the bedroom heavy for a long minute before Meredith shrugged. “Besides, who would you ask? Evil Spawn?”
Cristina smiled, which had been Meredith’s intent, but after she left the room Meredith couldn’t help but glance at Zola and sent a silent apology to the powers that be for calling Alex evil. In many ways he was, but she owed the presence of the baby to the one moment he’d chosen not to be.
***
Meredith:
She rolled from her back to her front! Have you seen her do that before??
Lexie rolled her eyes at the third text she’d gotten from Meredith that morning. The first had been a picture of Zola in her Osh Kosh B’Gosh overalls, which Lexie had dutifully shown to everyone who’d look. The second had been a report on Zola’s preference for the bright green stuffed frog they’d bought over her rabbit. (Lexie had already seen that in action when the rabbit had been thrown across the room the night before.) The only thing unique about this message was how the hell Meredith thought Lexie might know more than her. In the two days Zola had been home, she’d only been out of Meredith’s sight when she slept.
“Other Grey, are you planning on paying attention?” Dr. Bailey asked, a split second before she whacked Lexie in the head with a manila file folder.
Lexie winced, and quickly scrolled up in the text conversation. With one tap on her iPhone screen, she enlarged the picture of Zola and held it over her shoulder. Bailey let out an audible aw, and took the phone from Lexie.
Lexie grinned to herself, and turned back to the monotonous man in the front of the auditorium. The chief had flown him in spur-of-the-moment to lecture them all on ethics. A remark from Jackson that the person who most needed to hear this was home, with the crying baby who’d kept them up all night, had gotten him a death glare from Alex, who’d definitely had a hand in getting them into this in the first place. (Some days Lexie thought a flowchart of the relationships at Seattle Grace would be much larger than the surgical board.)
Bailey tapped her on the shoulder. Lexie reached for the phone, and it buzzed between them. Lexie scanned the screen.
She won’t stop crying, and she’s a drool factory. Is this teething?
“How should I know?” Lexie whispered, as if Meredith were there to be questioned.
“I got it.” Bailey took the phone back and began tapping furiously. “Does she have teething rings, or will me telling her to put one in the freezer send her into a state of panic?”
“Um…” Lexie thought back to the contents of the bags they’d dragged home. “Yeah. We’ve got those. I’m not sure Zola’s teething, though. She’s been having trouble letting Meredith out-”
“Some of us are trying to pay attention, you know,” April snapped from her seat ahead of Lexie. Once she’d turned around, Lexie made a face at her back. Jackson touched the side of his hand against hers, but she jerked it away. April may have been his friend, but she hadn’t officially started as chief resident, and she already had a huge stick of rule-following up her ass.
While Lexie tried to focus on the speaker, she heard her phone vibrating periodically as Bailey went back and forth with Meredith. Another few minutes, and Bailey stood, apologizing as she slid out of the auditorium. Lexie imagined her in the hall, using her no-nonsense, I am Doctor Bailey and I have done all of this before you, voice to soothe Meredith. Her sister needed that. She had to be the voice of reason herself too much. Like with Sadie. Lexie rested her head on her forehead, and closed her eyes. For a second she stood in the bar of a hostel, watching two girls have a heated argument from opposite sides of a pool table.
“You okay?” Jackson’s hand landed heavily on her shoulder.
“Hmm? Yeah, just memories.”
“About what?”
She parted her lips, unsure about answering. No one knew about that, not even Mark. The chance to respond got taken away from her anyway, by another hiss from Princess April.
Bailey came back a second later, phone in hand. Lexie took it, and saw a missed text from Mark. While Lexie took the phone, Bailey whispered“Let me know when you get off today. I’m going to follow you out to the Residents’ Residence.”
Jackson snorted, but April didn’t make a sound. Lexie found it vaguely satisfying that she still feared Dr. Bailey. Once Jackson seemed to be engrossed once more in whatever the speaker had to say, Lexie scrolled to Mark’s message.
Call me when you get off. Not an emergency, but I need someone to talk to about this. Having a mother on the line is a little too close to home for Callie right now.
Lexie shifted her eyes to Callie, who sat two rows over, her hand entwined with Dr. Robbins’. Lexie’d always had a weird relationship with the ortho resident. First, Callie had been George’s ex-wife, then Mark’s sometimes-lover, then the one who took Mark away from Lexie, without meaning to, again. So, Lexie figured she had a right to be jealous. She felt bad about the situation with Callie’s mom, but there was a small thrill of triumph at being the only person Mark could confide in.
Oh Lex, said a voice in her head, which sounded suspiciously like Meredith’s. I love you, but you have jealously issues, you know? Not just about Mark-but seriously, you’re not even with him! About me, too. With Cristina, Izzie, April...
Oh how well Lexie knew. And funny how the one her head-Meredith left out of the list was the one who’d been the first target of her Meredith-envy.
Sadie.
The sound of applause jerked her out of her daydreams again, and she joined in belatedly. She could have been applauding her own firing, for all she knew. It didn’t matter. One lecture on ethics wouldn’t reform the hospital where a woman had cut her lover’s LVAD wire, and another doctor had given the chief’s wife a drug the computers said she didn’t deserve. (And, really, Lexie wasn’t sure she wanted it to.)
That night, Bailey preceded her into the house, armed with a bag of William George Bailey Jones’s old toys, and her soothing manner. Meredith met them at the door, still wearing her pajamas. “I can’t feel my arms,” she declared. Zola watched them with one open eye, her head resting on Meredith’s shoulder. “She hates the swing. She hates the high chair. She hates the port-a-crib.”
“Well, she seems to love you,” Bailey countered. This, at least, shut Meredith up, and gave Lexie the push she needed to go out to the porch swing and call Mark.
He answered on the second ring. “Hey, Lex.”
“Hi. Is this a bad time?”
“No, it’s perfect. Mrs. Shepherd made me drag Derek back to the hotel so he could get some rest. He’s a mess.” Lexie thought of the stained burp cloth on Meredith’s shoulder and the tangles in her hair. Even thousands of miles apart, they’d make a good pair.
“And you?”
“I’m a mess, too. She’s going to have surgery this week. Bypass.”
“Oh Mark. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah, it sucks pretty bad.” He sighed heavily into the phone, but his voice perked up at the next sentence. “Hey, did I ever tell you about the time Derek and I put dye in Nancy’s shampoo the week before class pictures?”
“No. What happened?”
“We…er…dyed her hair the week before class pictures. Unfortunately, Mrs. Shepherd took it out six days before class pictures. We perfected our tactics after that.”
“I’m sure you did,” Lexie said, swinging her legs up onto the seat next to her. “I’m sure you did.
Part Three|| Table of Contents || Part Five