indecision [MERDER]

FOUR

- aka HEARTLESS EXHAUSTING BITCH -

Derek didn't actually hate working under her as much as he expected he would. He didn't really hate it at all.

He found working with her oddly cathartic, allowing himself to remember the memories they shared back for those six months as interns before she left; before he made what might have just been the worst mistake of his life. Allowing himself to finally see Meredith as an incredible neurosurgeon and being privileged enough to not only be able to watch her work, but to also work with her, was a gift Derek wasn't expecting to enjoy as much as he did. As his boss, she hadn't been nearly half as hard on him as he had expected her to be. He was expecting her to freeze him off cases entirely and watch his mind go insane from the boredom. He had expected that he would have to trudge up to Mark's office every day of every week she was his superior and complain she wasn't allowing him to work, to do the job that he was paying Derek for. She had instead accepted that Derek was the second-best neurosurgeon the hospital had, a fact that Derek also acknowledged, and reluctantly given him challenging and intellectually stimulating cases, some of which she worked on alongside him. It felt like the beginning of their intern year all over again.

Derek was elated with his decision to ask Mark for a job all those weeks ago, but not for the reasons he first imagined. It was unfortunate for Derek that Meredith simply did not feel the same way.

They could work together easily; Derek was in awe of Meredith's flawless technique, and Meredith begrudgingly credited Derek as her first port of call whenever she needed an extra set of hands on a complex case. She still refused to allow him to call her Meredith, and she was always Dr. Grey to him, but she wasn't entirely cold and bitter every time they spoke anymore. They had a decent professional dynamic, mostly because Derek silently endured being a subordinate without protestation, and that both Meredith and Derek recognised the surgical hierarchy; she was first, and he was second, and that was not going to be changing so long as Meredith was living and breathing, roaming this earth.

She dissolved the restraining order she had in place against him, although he still wasn't allowed to go anywhere near Kaiya; that was the next part of his mission. Another one of Meredith's conditions for her somewhat healthy working relationship with Derek was that neither one of them were allowed to mention Kaiya, not for Derek to grovel and plead to see her, and not for Meredith to bring her name up, or refer to her as her daughter only, for the sole purpose of spiting Derek. She wouldn't let him see her, not yet, for the uncomplicated reason that she refused to trust him, or a word that came out of his mouth. She repudiated any idea that Derek could hurt Kaiya just like he hurt her all those years ago, and had continued to hurt her since, and thought she was doing what was necessary to protect Kaiya.

That day, Meredith had called in Derek's help on a highly complex and slightly experimental case where they would be attempting to resect a gliosarcoma that had invaded the patient's carotid artery. Meredith had constructed a plan which involved going in through the carotid, inserting vascular balloons into the patient's brain to preserve healthy brain tumour. Meredith's plan itself was well thought out, however Meredith had a minor problem; she had to do it in 90 seconds or under, or her patient would stroke out and be at risk of permanent, irreversible damage, a fate which not one of Meredith's patients had suffered in over two years. She set up a simulation in the neurosurgery lab, except no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get below 97 seconds by herself; she was furious, and after eight tries at 97 seconds, she threw the timer at the wall.

It was at that point that Meredith accepted that she'd have to ask for help on this one, Derek's help, and of course, being Derek Shepherd, the self-proclaimed great god of neurosurgery, he shot down her idea almost instantly. After some arguing and explanation, and Meredith slipping in the notion that she was his boss, and she could and might make his professional life a living hell, Derek unenthusiastically agreed to help her, asking her to show him how her method worked. He didn't think there was a way, in fact he knew there wasn't a way, but he also knew that there was no chance of stopping her, and on the off chance that this worked, Derek wanted to be there with her when it did; Derek just wanted to go down trying.