Authors Note: For anyone who's following my story, I'm attempting to update regularly, but I'm leaving tomorrow for a weeklong camping trip, so I won't update for at least that long. I do appreciate the comments people have left me, and I would love it if you guys continued with suggestions/comments/criticism. =]This chapter is slightly longer to hopefully make up for my time away.

~Kayleigh

"Truth. Simply put, it's a bitch. Whoever said the truth will set you free must have been wrong, they were wrong because it hurts too much, it hurts to see other people in pain, it hurt for them to know."
"Meredith," Derek pleaded weakly as the pain meds started to pull him back to unconsciousness. He opened his eyes long enough to make her promise to tell the next time he woke up. She silently nodded and held his hand as he fell asleep.

Meredith thought long and hard for who knows how many hours. She was resting her head on the edge of his bed with her eyes closed. Her eye lids were so heavy they refused to open for a time, and the last thing she remembered before she joined Derek was the door opening.

"Don't wake here Nancy, the poor girls been through so much, just let her sleep." She recognized that voice vaguely, but she couldn't stay awake long enough to make a connection.

This time as she drifted off to sleep, she was standing behind Mr. Clarke, watching as Derek turned at the sound of April Kepner running in, then turning back to stare at the gun that shot him seconds later. Onl She silently nodded and held his hand as he fell asleep.

Meredith thought long and hard for who knows how many hours. She was resting her head on the edge of his bed with her eyes closed. Her eye lids were so heavy they refused to open for a time, and the last thing she remembered before she joined Derek was the door opening.

"Don't wake here Nancy, the poor girls been through so much, just let her sleep." She recognized that voice vaguely, but she couldn't stay awake long enough to make a connection.

This time as she drifted off to sleep, she was standing behind Mr. Clarke, watching as Derek turned at the sound of April Kepner running in, then turning back to stare at the gun that shot him seconds later. Only this time she was about eight months pregnant, and as Derek crumpled to the floor, she instinctively knew her baby had died inside her. She felt no signs of life, and she pressed a hand frantically to her hand searching for a pulse that was impossible to feel on normal circumstances.

"You killed my wife." Mr. Clarke accused of Derek, he took three steps closer, leaning down to press the gun to his forehead.

"No!" Meredith cried, running forward. "Kill me, kill me! I'm his wife, I'm your eye-for-an-eye!" Mr. Clarke turned to face her, but it wasn't Mr. Clarke anymore, it was her mother, with the gun pushed up under her jaw, finger on the trigger. Meredith tore her eyes away from her husband who was losing too much blood too fast.

"Be extraordinary Meredith." The shot echoed around the catwalk, and Derek started to bleed faster. There was so much blood, and her baby…. Her baby and Derek were gone.

"NO!" Meredith yelled, pushing away the hands that were grabbing at her, sitting up quickly and looking around. "No…" she whispered, trying to blink away the image of all that blood. Derek was looking at her like it was paining him to watch her, and she looked around the room, recognizing his sister Nancy and his mother. Mrs. Shepherd was gripping her wrists, and Meredith realized her face felt raw and torn at. Had she been digging her nails into her skin?

Derek struggled to sit up, and she reached out quickly to put a restraining hand on his shoulder, easily breaking through the grip his mother had had on her wrist. "No Derek, I'm…." She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I'm fine."

"Meredith, every time you say you're fine, it's a lie. You might as well be saying the complete opposite." Derek said. His voice was still quiet, but he was talking easier, and that at least made Meredith feel a little more assured.

She shook her head, then flicked her eyes in the general direction of his mother, hoping he would understand. His eyes drank in her expression, as if there were words explaining everything covering her face. Then he reached up with one hand to cup her face, and she knew what he was asking for. She didn't particularly care that his mother was in the room. Meredith leaned in and gave him a kiss, which ended up slightly more passionate than either had anticipated.

When someone cleared their throat, and Meredith distinctly heard a small child say "eww," she pulled away, smiling slightly.

"Are having Dark and Twisties?" he asked her with a small smile, and she nodded.

"Yeah, Dark and Twisty Meredith is back." She shrugged. "Relapses happen."

Derek nodded, obviously trying to think things through. "Why don't you go find Christina? She's better for the Dark and Twisty Meredith,"

She giggled a little, and kissed him quickly on the lips. "I'll be right back."

"Christina," Meredith said, walking up to the computers at the nurse's station. The hospital was practically deserted, and she suspected it was because people were too afraid to come there. Normally this would peeve Meredith. No people meant no surgeries, but she wasn't working. Christina, however, was obviously in a bad mood.

She made a scoffing noise and stood up. "You lasted barely twelve hours. You could've at least used a wheel chair," But she didn't sound too annoyed. She turned to Mark Sloan, who Meredith only just realized was leaning against the wall drinking a coffee and eating a doughnut at practically the same time. "You owe me twenty bucks."

He sighed and dug around in his pockets, balancing his doughnut on his coffee. "Thanks a lot Grey."

Meredith looked between them incredulously. "You were betting on me?" she asked, leaning against the counter.

Christina shrugged, and snatched his doughnut. "Hey!" Mark cried, trying to get it back, but Christina had already taken a bite.

"There's nothing else to do," Christina explained morosely, sitting in a chair lazily. "And you were short a dollar Sloan," she snapped, slapping away his hand that was still fighting in vain for his doughnut.

Christina shuffled some papers around on the desk, then clasped her hands in front of her and, looking up at Meredith she used a fake, sincere voice to say, "Now, what can I do for you?"

"I have a problem," Meredith explained, and she was about to continue, but Christina jumped up, walked around the desk.

"Follow," she said, and Meredith did, the brisk pace making her stitches stab her painfully. It had been the luckiest gun shot wound anyone had ever seen apparently. It missed everything but muscle. No organs or main arteries. All there seemed to be was a lot of bleeding and ripped muscle tissue. Luckiest GSW, but it didn't feel like it to her. The trauma had given her a miscarriage after all, or, well, it could've been all that stress….

"Sit," Christina instructed for the second time that day, rolling a wheelchair towards her. Meredith didn't complain this time.

When Christina started to push her, she started to talk. "Derek knows there's something I'm hiding. But I can't tell him, can I?" she asked, looking up at her person.

"How should I know?" Christina shrugged, turning into the cancer wing of the hospital. "I didn't tell my baby daddy, and look where that got me."

Meredith sighed and slumped in her seat. "I know he has a right to know, but I don't want to tell him right now. But he's so worried. Then I had to go and be all dark and twisty even in dream land and make a fool of myself…."

"hah!" Christina laughed, shaking her head. "Like the dreams you were having when you and McDreamy got back together for the umpteenth time?" Meredith knew she was referring to the dreams she'd had after the house of candles, like the one where he died in a car crash.

"Worse," Meredith grumbled. "My mother's there, as if she needs to ruin this half of my life too." She closed her eyes and willed herself to think of happier visions that didn't involve her mother shedding her own blood for love.

Actually, the more she thought about it, she realized she had been willing to do the same thing. She offered herself to a mad man with a gun intent on killing her husband. She offered to be a replacement, even knowing she was pregnant.

"Oh God," she moaned, sinking lower into the wheelchair. "I'm just like my mother."

"Believe me Mere, you are no where near as heartless as Ellis Grey," Christina half reassured, half laughed.

"But I am," Meredith insisted, believing it more and more as she went. "My mom tried to break up Doctor Webber's marriage, and even though she couldn't do it, I did the same thing to Derek and Addison, only I won! Oh God, she's in the dirty mistresses club!"

"There's a dirty mistresses club?" Christina asked, intrigued. "Who's in it?"

"Me and Sloan," Meredith said offhandedly, still thinking about how much alike she and her mother really were.

"It takes two to break up a marriage Meredith," Christina rationalized. "Or in this case four."

"Four?"

"Derek, Addison, Sloan, and you." She explained, stopping the wheelchair at the next corner they came to. "Addison was the first to make the mistake, and at least you tried to give Derek and Addison a chance. Look," Christina said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail, "you can either tell Derek, let him comfort you in ways I never ever will, or you can not tell him, and settle for complaining to me for years and years until finally someday, surrounded by all your chatty perfect haired children, you cant hold it in any longer and he hates you for never telling him.'

Meredith raised an eyebrow at her for a second, and then sighed. "I guess you're right."

"Of course I am," Christina said brightly, moving back behind the chair to round the last corner. "And you can go tell him right now."

They were outside Derek's room, which was empty of his family as of now. Maybe he asked them to go in case she got back, or maybe they just knew….

"When did you become so wise?" Meredith teased her best friend, who gave her a slight glare and a head jerk towards Derek.

Meredith let out a big breath and pushed herself out of the chair. "Fine…."

He was still awake. Someone had tilted his bed us so that he was sitting up, and he was as far over to the left side of the bed as possible.

"Well that can't be comfortable," Meredith said, raising an eyebrow at him.

He smiled at her. "Well it isn't yet," and he patted the open space next to him in what was an obvious invitation.

"You know the rules as well as I do Derek," Meredith told him, wanting to join him so badly but knowing that jostling the bed with her weight could cause him pain.

Derek laughed at her. It was breathy and short, but it was the first time she'd heard him really laugh since… well, since before the shooting. "I enforce those rules Meredith. And right now I say that they are stupid rules and if I want to share a bed with my wife, I can." And he patted the bed once more, and it was impossible for her to resist.

"You are very persuasive," she murmured, getting onto the bed as carefully as possible. He immediately wrapped an arm around her, putting on a brave face in spite of the pain.

They just sat in his bed, holding each other for a while, and it felt so good to be back in each others arms, that Meredith had momentarily forgotten why Christina had gone through all that effort to be wise and uncharacteristically understanding and comforting. That is, until Derek broke the silence.

"Did Christina help resolve the dark and twisties?" he asked quietly, turning his head slightly to look at her.

Meredith shrugged. "A little,"

More silence.

"I was thinking while you were gone. You wanted to tell me something the other morning… is that what this is about?" as he spoke he entwined his fingers with hers and ran his thumb slowly back and forth across the back of her hand.

She just nodded, staring up at the ceiling, trying to get the courage to break the news to him.

"Do I still get dirty sex?"

It was such an unexpected question, she laughed. "When your better," Meredith promised, placing a kiss haphazardly on his cheek, then returning to her ceiling watch. This was the hard part, and it was coming sooner than she had expected. She wasn't ready. This was the hard part, and it was coming sooner than she had expected. She wasn't ready, but she knew herself well enough to realize that she would never be ready for this conversation.

"What is it you wanted to tell me Meredith?" He asked her quietly, gently turning her so that she would meet his eyes.

Meredith swallowed the lump again then before she knew it, the words spilled out. "I was pregnant."

The silence was still and air suddenly became hard to breathe as she waited in fearful anticipation for his reaction. His expression hadn't change, except for his eyes. They were calculating.

"Was?" he asked her after long moments, and she just nodded, but he still looked confused, like nothing could add up in his brain.

"Derek," she said fiercely, making his eyes focus on her. "I was pregnant. I only found out that morning, and I came up to tell you but… you were in a mood and I thought it should be special, you know?"

He didn't answer her question. Then, all of a sudden his face fell.

"Oh. Was."

"Truth's a bitch ninety nine percent of the time, and sometimes letting it go makes us feel better inside. Lean into the fear. If you don't take the next step, no matter how much it hurts, how can we ever move forward?"