fragments of my life [MERDER]

THIRTY-ONE

Meredith was still recovering. There was no doubting that fact, and she wasn't going to deny to Derek, or anyone else, that she was one hundred percent fine because they knew otherwise. They knew better than to believe that.

She was not fine.

They knew Meredith well enough to know that when she said she was fine, she was in pain, that she was being tough by attempting to hide it; at this point, she didn't bother lying to them, because it was expending more energy than it was worth.

She didn't want to argue, she just wanted to forget.

She managed to find solace in the fact that, although her physical injuries still left her in immense amounts of pain, and the arduous mental struggles that came with it had not disappeared yet, Noah was back home, safe, healthy, and unscathed by the kidnapping, with his brother and sisters and mother and father. He had also recovered almost entirely from his prematurity too, and there was no longer any need for any medications or special measures; he was just a normal baby, just like his brother and sisters.

They were all back in the house Derek had built for them, together and warm. On the outside, they were safe again. She found peace in the fact that her son was okay, and the rest of her children were completely unbothered, unbeknownst to what had happened. She just wished the same could be said for herself and her husband.

Delaney was still out there, and he could come back to finish what he started at any moment. Meredith felt like she couldn't turn off for even a second until he was somewhere where he couldn't hurt her family again.

Physically, Derek was also fine, but he too hid the true struggle he was facing since his son had been taken from inside his house, when he was there; to put it bluntly, Derek felt like a failure as both a husband and a father, and quite frankly there was nothing Meredith or his four beautiful children could say or do to convince him otherwise. It would just take time, Derek thought, but it didn't stop him staying up all hours of the night thinking, sneaking, and wriggling out from Meredith's side to sit in the nursery, eyes wide open on his four children, constantly. He would take an hour before sleeping each night to lock every door and window in the house, and him and Meredith would insist on doing everything themselves, refusing to ask for or hire help because of what had happened last time, which tired him out further. Although they knew most nannies were not out to get them with a pre-assigned agenda like Jemimah, there was no shaking that feeling now that it had happened. He barely slept anymore, and Meredith could tell, but she didn't ask him because she didn't have the mental strength to tackle the ensuing argument in that moment; plus, she had been doing the exact same thing.

Meredith felt constantly fatigued, probably from a mixture of recovery and the lack of sleep. Either way, it made her just not have the energy to argue or fight with Derek. She sat in bed whimpering at night, willing that things would go back to the way they were before. Her and Derek were just becoming normal again, becoming them, and with everything that had happened, Meredith had completely lost sight of everything.

A week after Noah had been safely returned to the two, Derek, as he always did, snuck out of their bed, and hurried across the room to take up his position in their children's room. Except this time, Meredith was sleeping uncharacteristically light, and she noticed her husband's silhouette scramble across the room and out across the corridor. She also got up, avoiding the creaky floorboards, bringing a teal-blue blanket with her that they kept at the end of their bed. She followed Derek into Ava, Luca and Noah's room, and Zola's too now that they'd temporarily moved her crib into there so Derek could keep watch of all four. She stared at her drowsy husband as he lay in the rocking chair, not allowing his eyes to close for a second.

"Derek..." She sighed, walking over to join him on the chair.

"I know." He replied with a yawn, putting his arms on Meredith's waist as she fell into his lap, the blanket sprawled across the two of them.