She Moves In Her Own Way

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Meredith Grey and her children, Zola, who was now seven years old, and Bailey, who had just turned three, returned to the city of Seattle exactly three months to the day after they had left the city. Accompanied by Meredith and Derek's youngest child, six day old Ellis, with whom Meredith had not been aware she was pregnant with before the plane crash so Derek had not known about their youngest child before his death. The family sat in Meredith's large black SUV while Meredith drove them past Miranda Bailey and Ben Warren's house, and Arizona and Callie's apartment, where they cared for their daughter, Sofia, and Mark's son, Aaron, whom they had recently adopted. The car rolled past Lexie's apartment and the baseball field, past the elementary school where Zola would be attending school in four weeks time after the summer vacation days were over. They drove past Mark's old apartment which had now been put up for sale and Joe's Bar, past Teddy and Cristina's apartment and Shepherd Sloan Memorial Hospital, Meredith's heart ached at the sight of the large sign above the main entrance to the hospital. This sign had once read Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital and before the merger that had changed a lot of things in the hospital, the sign had simply read Seattle Grace Hospital. This had been how the hospital had been known when Meredith's mother had once worked there. Finally, the family passed Meredith's mother's former home where Amelia Shepherd, Addison Forbes-Montgomery, Alex Karev and Ava Bekker were all now living together, renting the house from Meredith. Meredith was hit by a rush of both happy and sad memories.

Soon they pulled into the driveway of the home that Derek had spent the better part of a year building them. Meredith stopped the car and turned off the engine, looking over her shoulder at her three children. Zola was looking out of the window at the house and Bailey, who was looking more and more like his father as the days went on despite his blonde locks of hair, and Ellis, who was the spitting image of her mother, were both sleeping soundly in their car seats. Meredith swallowed thickly and sighed softly, turning back around in her seat. Her mind wandered for a moment to Amelia. She had only contacted her sister-in-law once in the three months she was gone and that was to ask her to organise Derek's funeral as it was too much for her to handle. She had not thought at that moment about how hard this would be for Amelia. Amelia had lost not only her brother but one of the only people in the world who understood the pain she was in, despite losing her father all those years ago. Amelia still felt that pain and Derek understood that pain but now Derek was gone and Amelia was in pain again. The only other person who understood this pain was Meredith and Meredith had disappeared. Amelia felt alone.

Meredith was filled with dread at the thought of seeing Amelia again. Meredith had not realised how much Amelia and Derek looked alike until Derek was gone. Seeing Amelia would break Meredith and seeing Amelia broken and possibly relapsed into her drug addiction would make Meredith feel extremely guilty as she felt she had abandoned Amelia and dumped the planning of Derek's funeral on Amelia's fragile shoulders and that pressure might have just broken her, causing her to relapse. Meredith dreaded to think that she was the cause of Amelia's relapse, it made her feel sick to her stomach. She would find out if Amelia had relapsed the next day at Derek's funeral.

Derek's funeral was the reason Meredith had returned to Seattle so soon after having Ellis. She thought her children deserved to say goodbye to their father properly with the support of all their friends and family. Meredith also wished to say goodbye to Derek properly, plus she wanted to be there for Lexie when she said goodbye to Mark.

Mark and Derek's funeral would be a joint one, Amelia and Lexie had worked together to plan the funeral. Mark's daughter Sloan could not make it to Seattle to plan the funeral, so that power had been bestowed upon Lexie and Sloan felt she knew him better than she did. Sloan was flying in from Dublin in Ireland early the next morning for Mark's funeral and wake and then was flying home again that night.

No one had seen Sloan in years and her surprise arrival three years ago had almost broken Lexie and Mark up for good. Lexie and Sloan were roughly the same age there was only a few months in age between them and this had made Lexie extremely uncomfortable though her age difference with Mark had never been an issue before. Lexie had been a little spooked by Sloan's arrival and that had been coupled with Sloan being pregnant and the idea appearing that Mark and Lexie could take the baby after he or she was born, they could raise it as their own. This had terrified Lexie and she was in no way ready to be a mother, she told Mark they were over and had left the apartment. This was months before the baby was due to be born.

When Sloan had given birth, Teddy had been the one to deliver the baby. She had been dating Mark at the time, this was before she had met Henry and after she had given up chasing Owen. With nothing but one of Mark's shirts and a pair of panties on, Teddy had delivered Sloan's baby on Mark's couch in his apartment, at the time Mark had gone out to pick up a pack of beers from the local Walgreens around the corner from the apartment block. That day had been a disastrously chaotic mess but it had all worked out in the end. Mark took Sloan's son and agreed to raise him as his own. Mark and Lexie had made up and were happily together again. Sloan left to work in Ireland and Teddy met Henry.

"Mommy."

Meredith was dragged from her thoughts by Zola's voice. She turned her head to look at her daughter in the back seat. "Yes, honey."

"Are we going inside? I'm hungry and I think Ellis has pooped in her diaper." Zola said, shifting uncomfortably in her car seat.

It was then that Meredith caught a whiff of the smell coming from her youngest daughter's diaper. "Yes, we will." Meredith said, removing the car keys from the ignition and putting them in her pocket before getting out of the car with a deep sigh, terrified for the funeral the next day.