It's Always Sunny in Los Angeles

It's always rainy in Seattle.

That's what Meredith Grey decides when she steps out of her car into the cold, damp, and dreary parking lot of Seattle Grace Hospital where she's been working for the past several years.

Her mother loved it here, or rather, she really loved Richard Webber here, and perhaps that's the only reason she ever settled down here in the first place. May she rest in peace sadly because she passed away several years ago, now.

That's not to say that Meredith has nothing here; of course she has some things going good for her here.

She has Cristina, for one, and that's always a plus because Cristina is her person, and her platonic soulmate.

Plus she has her roommates, and those are always nice to have, in addition to her pseudo-roomates, which she always seems to have also, because she has a penchant for adopting strays. Of which, she's currently hosting her sister, Lexie Grey, because she stubbornly refuses to move in with her very adoring boyfriend, Mark Sloan (Meredith thinks she's playing it a little bit on the safe side with that one, but really, who's she to talk anyway!?), as well as Alex Karev, who would probably otherwise live with wolves in the woods, and also Cristina, because despite her being married to Owen Hunt, that's not going so hot, so she basically lives at Meredith's house full-time anyway.

So Meredith has responsibilities in Seattle, such as her work, and she also has friends and people she refuses to actually call her family - ahem - Thatcher Grey - so she sucks it up, and sticks it out, and stays here in her house on Harper Lane which is totally far from the Space Needle and competes for surgeries and fights over consults while in her heart, she'd actually rather be somewhere else.

She'd rather be backpacking through Europe maybe, or exploring Asia. She's never been to Asia. Nor Africa. Nor Australia, nor the Middle East.

She's only been across a few states, plus that backpacking trip she had once taken with Sadie...

As she collects her coffee from the coffee cart in the morning, Meredith reminisces about her vacations in Europe with Sadie. Ah, Sadie. Her most reckless, wild, and absolutely ridiculous ex.

She was hot, sure, and was she ever great at sex, but she wasn't the most... Practical... Nor loyal... Girlfriend ever...

If Meredith could even call her that in the first place, and see that's where the trouble started.

She thought they were together, and Sadie thought that they were just experimenting and fooling around.

She caught the feels, and she didn't want to admit it to herself, nor to Sadie, so she packed her bags up right in the hostel in Amsterdam, and she landed several hours later in Seattle... And she's never left since.

She told Sadie she had a family emergency before she subsequently blocked her number, and she hasn't looked back ever since.

And she hasn't really met anyone ever since, either.

The closest she'd ever come was the guy she met at the bar who'd come onto her the first night she'd landed, and he said all of this crap about being someone that she could 'get to know and love,' which she thought was awfully arrogant at the time, and she'd told him as such.

And then she'd informed him that she was a lesbian, and well, that didn't go over so well.

As it turns out, that man happened to be Derek Shepherd, who happened to be working at the same hospital that she started her internship, and that man happened to be the Neuro attending, which happened to be the surgical specialty that Meredith happened to have taken a liking to, which happened to kind of suck sometimes, because he always seemed to be looking at her with those... Eyes... Which she really wishes that he'd point over at someone else.