Chapter Text
You were four years old when you learnt how to throw a punch. You remember Sal Scafarillo pushing you over and saying you couldn't play with them. He said something about cooties that you thought was stupid at the time (you still think it was stupid now - not to mention kinda sexist). You remember running a few feet over to the park bench where your father sat as you told him what happened, crying into his pant leg. He picked you up in his arms and walked you the short trip home.
When your mother came home that night - tired and bruised - he told her about it while he fetched an ice pack out of the freezer. You remember your mother sitting with you later that night, bandaids wrapped around her fingers and her bottom lip split open (it didn't scare you anymore - as far as you were concerned she just always looked a little messed up); she made it very clear that Sal Scafarillo shouldn't have done that to you. It wasn't fair that boy got to throw you around without consequence. She asked you if you wanted to do something about it; you were four years old and desperate for her affection - of course you said yes. When you punched Sal Scafarillo in the stomach the next day, your mother took you for ice cream and told you she was proud of you. Looking back, you think that might have been the only time she ever told you that.
You were five years old when your father left. You remember carefully tiptoeing from your room to the top of the stairs, the sounds of their voices increasing in volume the closer you stepped; you were supposed to be asleep. You never gave them any indication that you weren't, so as far as they were concerned you never heard their argument. You remember every word twenty-five years later.
"Ellis, you are going to die doing this! You are going to die in that stupid costume! I know that there is nothing I can say to stop you from doing it, but please Ellis - for God's sake think of Meredith! Think of us! Is your ego so important that you're willing to leave our daughter without a mother? Is it, Ellis?"
You don't know what your mother said in response. You realised you had heard something you were never supposed to hear and decided whatever came next would only hurt you further. You remember crying when you heard the front door slam shut. The next morning you kept waiting for your father to walk into the kitchen - you hoped he would apologise for oversleeping and give you your cereal with a kiss on the top of your head. You hoped your mother would follow him in with a smile on her face like nothing had happened the night before and what you heard was nothing but a bad dream. Your hopes were not fulfilled.
You were twelve the first time your mother was hospitalised. You remember Uncle Richard picking you up from school that day - you assumed your mother was just busy. You were proven wrong when he took you to the hospital. You had never seen your mother look that frail before, her arm in a cast with pins in her leg and stitches on her forehead. She acted like nothing was out of the ordinary. Your father's words haunted your mind and for the first time in a long time you found yourself terrified. You remember asking her if she was truly okay.
"Oh don't be ridiculous, Meredith. We're not ordinary, you & I."
You never asked again. You remember seeing the news coverage about your mother being injured in a fight with a villain the next morning and Paul Waxman saying something insensitive in first period English. You were suspended for two weeks when you punched him during lunch. When Richard picked you up, he froze. You had a black eye and bruised knuckles and for a moment you saw genuine fear in his eyes. You remember looking in the mirror when you got home and realising how uncanny the resemblance was between you and her. You didn't like the way it made you feel, being compared to her. You made it a point to avoid violence from then on.
You were fifteen when you saw photos of a woman made of fire flying through New York City. You had been around heroes your entire life - when you were younger and your mother didn't trust you to stay home alone, you stayed at Brave Brigade HQ until she was done with work. Superpowers and the people with them should have been old hat. But this time it wasn't. Something felt different about this one; this woman who could burst into flames and soar through the air on a whim. She destroyed everything she touched but always found a way to help people. She saved people from burning buildings and stopped robberies, she walked people home after they had a bad night or needed a guiding light.
They dubbed her Red Rocket and you were obsessed. You remember the fight you got into with your mother later that month. She saw you reading an article about Red Rocket saving a car that veered off the Brooklyn Bridge in a collision; no-one was harmed but the car's chassis ended up melted. Your mother scoffed. She believed in perfection; people with destructive powers shouldn't be heroes. You disagreed. You remember saying that perfection was unachievable, that if someone was able to do good things they had a moral obligation to do those things - to hell with the consequences (you still believe this, you tell it to yourself every time you come home bleeding and questioning why you even do what you do). The two of you agreed to disagree.
You were seventeen when you were accepted into Dartmouth. You remember your hands clamming up as you took the letter out of the mailbox and holding your breath when you opened the envelope. You remember the shaky laugh that escaped your mouth when you read the words 'congratulations' and 'accepted'. Your mother came home late that night slightly less beaten than usual and you remember the way her lips curved slightly upwards when you told her the news.
"Good." She said, "I did raise you to be extraordinary, after all. I expected nothing less from you, Meredith."
You remember the disappointment in the pit of your stomach when you realised that was all she had to say. When it came time to select your major, you gave pause. Your knee-jerk reaction was Criminal Justice - it felt natural, like everything you had lived was leading up to you becoming Grey Ghost II. You changed your mind when you remembered the horror in Richard's eyes when he picked you up from school for fighting. You decided on Paramedicine instead.
You were nineteen when you got into a fight again. You remember going to a frat party with your roommate and losing track of her in less than twenty minutes. You remember doing tequila shots with a guy in your Human Anatomy & Physiology class. You remember wandering off to find the bathroom. You remember seeing a girl backed into a wall looking uncomfortable while a guy talked to her, his arm keeping her in place. You started trying to talk to the guy and distract him so the girl could get away. He told you to piss off as he tried to cop a feel of the girl. You threw the first punch.
The girl patched you up in the bathroom ten minutes later. Her name was Sadie. She thanked you with a smile and you felt like the luckiest girl in the world. You remember her running a thumb over your broken lip and holding your face in her hands; you remember kissing her, lips that tasted like lime and vodka. You woke up the next morning hungover, limbs tangled in her sheets as she slept soundly. Everything with her felt like a rush - your ears ringing, your hands shaking, your lips numb. She was a drug and you were addicted.
You were twenty-two when you graduated. You remember the phone call you had with your mother the previous night - she wouldn't be able to come to the ceremony because of some stakeout that you no longer care to remember the specifics of. You remember Sadie kissing you gently and leading you into your bed as her way of cheering you up. You remember getting a call that morning from Richard, who was going to come in your mother's stead. It wasn't the same - it was never the same any time she sent him to be there for you as a substitute but you didn't care anymore. After you threw your cap into the air he hugged you and said he was proud of you. You remember the way your eyes welled up with tears at the words as you cried into his shoulder. Sadie took a photo of the two of you with your terrible digital camera. You hated that photo - your eyes were still puffy and your hair looked matted but Richard loved it (he still keeps it framed on his desk, all these years later). You and Sadie moved in together after graduation - a shitty little apartment three blocks away from the hospital you both worked at. You loved every second of that life with her before it came crashing down.
You were twenty-three when you died for the first time. You & Sadie had been called into the aftermath of a domestic incident. You remember entering the house and seeing the blood on the floor. You remember an officer restraining the husband as you and Sadie put the wife onto a stretcher. You remember loading her into the back of the ambulance and closing the door. You remember the husband running out of the house with an officer's gun. You remember feeling the pain before hearing the gunshot.
You saw the officers tackle the husband to the ground. You smelt the smoke coming from your chest. You felt your blood stick to your uniform. You heard Sadie scream your name. You remember waking up in the hospital with the taste of iron in your mouth. The doctors said it was a miracle you were alive - the bullet went straight through and hit nothing vital. It was the easiest surgery they had ever performed. You couldn't shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong. You remember Sadie treating you differently after it happened. It wasn't the same anymore - she acted like you were fragile, damaged goods. You bought tickets for Amsterdam in an attempt to reignite the passion. You broke up in your hotel room.
"No, Meredith, you don't understand, I watched you die! You - you shouldn't be alive right now. You lost too much blood - you didn't have a pulse! I don't know what happened... but I know what I saw, Meredith and it scared the fuck out of me. I'm sorry... I love you... but I can't do this."
Your father's words echoed in your ears on the flight back home.
You were twenty-five when your father died. You remember walking out of the hospital after handing in your letter of resignation (you couldn't stay there anymore - Sadie kept looking at you like you were seconds from exploding into pink mist and your breath caught in your throat every time you got called in for a GSW). You remember your phone ringing and seeing a number you didn't recognise with a Washington State phone number - you answered, assuming it was another one of your mother's burners.
It was instead your stepmother. She got your number from your mother - who had already RSVPed 'No' to his funeral as quickly as humanly possible. Your father had suffered a heart attack and passed away the previous week. Susan - you learnt her name was - asked you if you were interested in coming. She knew it had been decades since you saw him (it felt like longer, you could barely remember his face anymore) but he was your father and that fact was never going to change (no matter how much you wished it did). You opened your mouth to fabricate an excuse or simply muster up the courage to say no; instead, quiet mornings with a bowl of cereal in front of you as he ruffled your hair filled your memory and you found yourself telling Susan you would be there.
You met your sisters at the wake. Molly was seventeen and didn't talk to you besides a stilted introduction. Lexie was nineteen and desperate to know you - rambling nervously in between mouthfuls from the charcuterie board. You wanted to hate her - you were entitled to, after all; why did she get to have your father in her life when you didn't? No matter how hard you tried though, you couldn't bring yourself to. When you looked at her, all you could think about was the scared little girl who used to cry into her father's leg and get excited over chocolate-covered donuts. Could you have been like her if things were different? Were you sweet once? Despite your instinct to push her away, you let her in. You gave her a hug and tried to tell her a story about your father (it wasn't hard picking - you only had a few).
You remember Lexie's sobs as you watched your father being lowered into the ground. You remember Susan handing you the shovel to throw the last bit of soil over his coffin. You remember the bouquet of Marigolds you dropped in front of his headstone. You remember standing in front of his grave as everyone else left, your heart sinking as you finally realised you would never have a relationship with him again. You remember calling your mother for the first time in months and laughing when you heard her voicemail.
You were twenty-seven when Richard offered you a dispatcher job at SDN. You were slowly growing to hate New Hampshire; everything reminded you of Sadie or made the scar in the centre of your chest sting. You moved back to Seattle a month later. You remember calling Lexie before you flew in and practically being able to hear her smile as she offered to help you move in. You remember smiling for the first time in weeks and being happy you had your sister in your life.
Lexie was helping you move in when the two of you discovered her powers. She had just finished helping you get the last box into your apartment. You remember offering to cook dinner as a pseudo-payment. Lexie laughed, insisting she help you. You remember a fire starting and Lexie hissing as the flames engulfed your poor chicken. You remember blinking and seeing the chicken wet and burnt, Lexie's hands covering her mouth in shock.
You remember you & Lexie's first day at SDN; she was crawling out of her skin with anxiety and you were thinking about the irony of your father's second daughter becoming a superhero - especially considering powers were a recessive gene.
You were twenty-eight when your mother got herself killed. Your shift had just ended when Richard rushed to your desk - he had gotten a call from the hospital. You remember how frail your mother looked. It was different from when you were twelve and she had just broken a leg, or when you were fourteen when she had lost her left kidney or even when you were twenty and she was in a medically-induced coma for two weeks. She was on her deathbed - something about internal bleeding in her heart and her lung collapsing. You remember the way your hands shook as the doctors told you she had signed an order to not resuscitate. You remember sitting by her bedside for hours, Richard leaving minutes before she woke up.
"Meredith..."
"I'm right here, Mom."
"Meredith, I want you to... continue."
"What?"
Her breathing was laboured, her eyes were half-shut, "Continue... what I started... as Grey Ghost."
"Mom-"
You remember the way she used the last of her strength to speak, "Meredith, this is my dying wish. I raised you to be an extraordinary human being, don't disappoint me by choosing to be so ordinary."
You remember the way she wheezed the word ordinary before the light vanished from her eyes.
You were freshly twenty-nine when you finally gathered the courage to walk into your mother's house for the first time in over a decade. It had been a month since the funeral and your mother's lawyer telling you in no uncertain terms that you were the sole benefactor of her estate. Your stomach churned when you thought about her dying wish. Everything was exactly as you remembered it and you found it deeply unsettling. You remember walking into the garage, seeing the suit laid out on the desk and your mother's motorcycle standing in the corner. You remember the grief burning the back of your throat as your eyes stung and your vision blurred. You remember putting on the suit for the first time. It was a perfect fit - you felt sick. When you put on the mask and looked at your reflection, you realised that it was always going to end this way and there was nothing you could have done to stop it. You stared into the mirror and your mother stared back at you. You remember the sound the glass made when you broke the mirror.
You were thirty the second time you died and realised something was very, very wrong with you. You remember leaving the SDN building after your shift, exhaustion seeping into your body as you mounted your mother's (you still haven't thought of any of this as yours yet) motorcycle. You remember going just a little too fast. You remember losing control. You remember flying off the bike headfirst. You remember hearing your skull crack open.
You woke up five hours later with a migraine and two black eyes. You remember your hair feeling sticky as you tore off your helmet, cringing as it pressed against the bruises behind your ears. You gasped for air as you felt your nose run, resisting the urge to throw up into the gutter. You picked yourself up off the ground - your hands shaking and muscles aching - and drove away.
You remember seeing the lights of the 7/11 and breathing a sigh of relief. You remember panicking as your brain took notice of the woman sitting down right where you were speeding to park, your body too slow to respond in time. She sat crumpled on the ground, absentmindedly licking popsicle fluids off her fingers with a despondent look in her eye. You were painfully reminded of the twenty-three year old that moped around the apartment after being shot in the chest. You remember your jaw falling to the floor when the woman burst into flames and flew into the air before you collided. You remember the way Red Rocket scolded you, bitterness in her tone. You can't remember what you said, all you can remember is the anger in your chest and the sadness in your throat - tears in your eyes as your heart pounded in your ears. You felt uncontrollably hysterical and hated every second of it.
You remember stumbling into the 7/11 asking to use the bathroom. The cashier took one look at you and squeaked out a "sure, over there.". Your looked awful; your scalp was coated in dried blood - your blood and the bruising somehow looked worse than it felt. You cautiously touched a finger to your scalp, expecting to come away with a soaked red hand. Instead you felt a mild soreness, your hand dry. Sadie's voice echoed in your ears like a song you couldn't get stuck out of your head and you ran out of the store in a panic.
You can't remember how you got to Lexie's doorstep, all you can remember is finally regaining feeling in your extremities when she opened the door and muttering, "I didn't know where to go." Before collapsing on her carpet. When you woke up the next morning - grateful you had the day off - you told her everything. Being shot, your miraculous recovery contradicting your/Sadie's accounts of what actually happened, and everything that led up to and followed your crash.
Lexie nodded along as she dug into a bag of mini peanut butter cups, eyes wide. When she froze the next mouthful on accident, she sighed and set the bag down on the coffee table.
"Meredith, do you think that maybe... you have powers?"
"I can't. That's impossible."
"We're sisters, Mer. If I have powers-"
"Half-sisters, technically. And it's recessive."
"It's the only explanation."
You swallowed a lump in your throat and ran your hands through your hair.
"But my mother-"
Lexie sat down next to you, "I know, Mer. And I'm sorry. But if everything you said is true - and I 100% believe you're telling the truth - it's the only thing that fits."
You sigh, your head in your hands, "No one can know, Lex."
"But-"
"I'm serious, Lexie. I don't want to know what would happen to me if people found out I can't die. Not to mention-" You gestured frantically to your crumpled, bloodied suit on her floor, "I'm already a legacy killer. I don't want this on my plate too."
Your phone buzzed from it's resting place on Lexie's couch, screen cracked after the previous night's events. It was a text from Izzie, "Mer, are you okay???? Where are you?"
You turned back to face your sister - you felt wracked with guilt, "Please, Lexie."
She sighed, "Alright, no one will know."
"No one will know."