A Fight to Remember

Once Upon a Time Pt. 2

A/N:  Picking up right where we left off. Warning **M** rating at the end of this chapter, hee hee.

We travelled up small rolling hills, off the beaten paths, trekked through clearings with small spruce saplings... and I learned of our first intense months together, and the heartbreak that followed... and the healing that started after...

"You drowned?" I whispered as I stared at our reflection in the lake.

Meredith crouched down on the dock, wrapping her arms around her knees. "Mhm," she said. "Not my finest moment..."

Flashes of dark swirling water, reaching... swimming, pushing through...

Her hand on mine pulled me back to reality, I gazed down at her, my wife. "You saved me," she said.

I was pretty sure it was the other way around...

It's like I was drowning and you saved me.

Meredith seemed to want to leave, so I let her pull me away from the dock. We climbed a small ridge, and I found out that I proposed to her in an elevator after I removed a tumor from her friend's brain.

You're about one in twenty people in the world who can save her.

And this... this is when I knew I needed you.

Holding one hand with both of hers, Meredith confessed the day we made our vows on a post-it was the same day her friend George died.

Take care of each other when old, senile and smelly.

We stopped under a grand cedar tree and she kissed my chest, explaining that I had indeedbeen shot.

She told me about trying for a baby after a miscarriage. How we found Zola, tried to cure Alzheimers, lost Zola and almost each other, but got it all back.

How a plane crash took her sister and my best friend and gave us a hospital.

I learned that somewhere, there is a little pink shirt that says 'World's best big sister.'

We stopped halfway around the lake, and I picked up a couple of smooth stones, reminded of Benny, and the life I left behind. Meredith copied me and we skipped rocks as I told her a little bit about that.

She changed the subject, and soon was telling me about brain mapping and Harper Avery Awards and Switzerland. We rounded the lake, the sky darkening from late afternoon clouds heavy with possible rain.

A decrepit old bench beckoned to us, and our tired legs complied. Sitting down, I stretched out and wrapped an arm over her shoulder.

"I get this dream..." Meredith started, sighing as her finger traced an invisible figure eight on my knee. "Instead of me chasing you down to the airport with your passport, you show up back at the house with the kids, all frazzled and mad because you missed your flight."

"Really?"

"Yeah..."

"And I miss the tsunami."

"Yeah..."

I kissed her softly on the temple. As if to say, you're not dreaming this time. "Meri..." A small smile quirked up on my lips. I remembered a dream I've had off and on too. "I used to dream that I'm looking for you... in a clearing... here... I think." I shook my head. "It's crazy... I'm just...so desperate to find you and... there's candles all around, and champagne. You're... I can't see you, can't make out the details, but you're there and something big is going to happen but..." I sighed loudly, and cover her hand with mine.