The Ga on call room

The big talk

As he watched Meredith walk away, a smile gracing her face as she listened to voice on the other end, he was struck with a sense of reality.

"It's Lachlan'

Lachlan. That was his name. The lucky bastard who had Meredith. Lachlan was the man that Meredith shared a life with on the other side of the world. Lachlan was the man that had everything Derek wanted four years ago; everything that Derek still wanted. Lachlan had obviously waited or had been in the right place at the right time in Meredith's life. Derek had never bothered to ask Mark what Meredith's boyfriend's name was, for the fear that he would quite possibly have a nervous breakdown.

As Derek sat there, he realized that putting a name to this guy made Meredith's new life even more real. She had truly moved on. When he hadn't known Lachlan's name it was easy for him to dismiss the guy, after all, he was only just a guy and who knew how long he would be around for. Not knowing his name meant that Derek was able to imagine Meredith in London, missing him just as much as he missed her. However, now that he knew the guy's name was Lachlan, he could no longer live in denial.

Even though this fact alone should have been enough to deter Derek from any thoughts involving Meredith, he couldn't help but think of what was to come. Soon enough, he was reminded of something Meredith said to him years before, "Best Man, Maid of Honor, kind of perfect". He thought of the dinner rehearsals, visits to the church, the awful dance lessons that they would have to attend together and somehow he knew that he could no longer live in denial.

Lexie's words came back to haunt him:

"And the triangle becomes a square."

Truer words had never been spoken. Four years later and they were still caught in some sick and twisted triangle. Meredith probably thought there was no triangle, because she just seemed so indifferent to him and Rose, but Derek knew better.

Derek knew that he and Meredith were like a magnetic force. They couldn't be in each other's presence without feeling so much passion; whether it was a passion that led to them tearing one another's clothes off or a passion that made them want to tear the other's throat out.

A love like that didn't just go away. Four years couldn't change that. Even though his head told him to give up, and finally accept that he and Meredith might not have their happy ending, his heart just wouldn't let him. That's why he couldn't bring himself to commit to Rose completely, because somewhere, deep inside he knew Meredith would be back. If he thought that she would have forgotten about him, about their love, he never would have let her go.

Isn't that what epic love was? It spans across time and oceans full of heartache and bloodshed? Well perhaps not so much the bloodshed, but you get the picture.

The one thing Derek knew was that he wouldn't actively try to seek out Meredith's heart again. It was that twinkle in her eye that stopped him. He didn't want to take that away. He just had to let fate run its course and just hope that it was on his side.

Derek was soon jerked out of his thoughts and brought back to the booth in Joe's bar, by the sound of his pager. As he looked down at it he realized that although it wasn't an emergency, just one of the nurses paging him, perhaps just to sign some charts that could wait until tomorrow, he could still use it as an excuse to get away from Rose's incessant touching of his thigh and breath on his neck.

"I better take this, it's a 911" Derek lied as he jumped up, a bit too eagerly for Mark's taste. Before Mark or Rose or anyone else for that matter could wonder why they didn't get paged if it was an emergency, Derek continued, "Thanks for the eventful evening, and I'm glad that my life could once again be used for your amusement." He directed at Cristina