In my alternate reality Derek gets to work for the President from Seattle and Meredith works hard to step out of her mother and Derek's shadow.
Alert: there may be mistakes, because English is not my first language.
A few months had passed since Meredith had locked herself into one of Derek's offices to write the grant proposal for a clinical trial to cure a tricky kind of liver cancer, when one night she received the precious email that told her she got it. She couldn't believe it, because she was confident about the potential of her procedure, but not really about the grant.
"First you print and kill impossible tumors and now you get to start your own clinical trial?! I'm kind of regretting I left right now!" Cristina, who was being Cristina from the other side of the world, was referring to a tough tumor Meredith had the brilliant idea to print, in order to have a complete visualization of it. She had been even published for this.
The morning after, Meredith and Derek, who had just finished celebrating for the umpteenth time her success, were having breakfast in their kitchen, when Amelia came in, surprised to see them there.
"You're not supposed to be here! You're both supposed to be at work right now!"
"We both pushed our morning plans, because I got the grant! Wait a second, weren't you wearing those same clothes yesterday?" Meredith hadn't finished her sentence yet, when she heard a male voice: "Amelia, you've forgotten your phone!"
It was Owen Hunt. Meredith and Derek exchanged a surprised look, while Owen, since he didn't know what to say, mumbled some apologies and left, and Amelia started congratulating her sister-in-law, to change topic.
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"So, you and Hunt? How serious is this?" Meredith had been thinking about what she'd seen the whole morning and even at work that afternoon. Since Owen was still the man Cristina, her person, loved, she wasn't too pleased about him moving on with Amelia. She felt like Cristina was being replaced by someone else in her life, too. Derek, on the other hand, was not on the same page with her: he was happy his sister was not being a chaotic mess anymore. For now.
"What about him?" Amelia was not surprised by that question. She knew that Owen Hunt, the man she was seriously starting to fall for, was Cristina's ex husband and was scared of the ramifications their relationship could have. That's why she'd tried to hide it.
"Cristina asked me to look out for him and I am!"
Although she expected something like this was going on and she knew Cristina was Meredith's best friend, she was hurt that her sister-in-law was more loyal to someone who was living on the other side of the planet than to her.
"Owen is a man and he doesn't need to be looked out for, especially if the woman who left him is the one asking for it."
***
After the truth had been spilled, the atmosphere at the dream house was tense. Amelia and Meredith were resentful to each other and Derek was trying to be neutral, but was leaning towards his sister's side. Things got worse, when Meredith found herself in surgery with Hunt and asked him about Amelia.
That night, the sisters-in-law got into a huge fight, where they said out loud all those thoughts they'd been keeping for themselves for a while. That same night, though, something caused even more anger, but brought Meredith and Amelia closer at the same time: a call from Kathleen. It was unheard-of, because usually it was Lizzie or Mrs. Shepherd, who called to ask for updates.
Kathleen had called Amelia, because she'd heard that her sister had been published on the Annals of surgery. It would have been nice of her, if, after congratulating with her, she hadn't started going back to everything she'd messed up.
Meredith, who was the only one in the living room with Amy, noticed that her sister-in-law lowered the volume and also tried to hide some tears. In that moment, she realized what Amelia must have gone through her whole life: being always seen as the twin B, who screws everything up. When she heard Kathleen saying that Amelia became head of neurosurgery only because Derek had handed her the job, without even thinking about it, Meredith grabbed the phone and calmly said:
"Amelia may have hit rock bottom, but she climbed back up and this makes her one of the strongest persons I know. She's one of the finest surgeons I know and you should just be proud to have her in your family!"
Amy's eyes were now full of tears, but her pride made her say: "I'm not your charity case!"
Meredith, who knew the fear of being rescued too well, was not hurt by those words.
"Listen, it's hard to believe those who say they understand what you went through, but I really do. I've lived my whole life, feeling inadequate, because my mother would never miss a chance to tell me I was not enough. After she suddenly got to her senses for a day and called me non other than ordinary, I almost drowned myself. I know what it means to get to the point when you ask yourself What's the point of living?, but I also know that the process to recover makes you stronger than ever. You're so much stronger than your sister. As for Owen, I guess I overstepped. It's just that I didn't want Cristina to be replaced for good..."
And with this, all the words they'd said during their fight vanished in a hug.
