Archive of Our Own

You taught me the courage of the stars before you left
How light carries on endlessly, even after death
With shortness of breath
You explained the infinite
And how rare and beautiful it is to even exist
Saturn - sleeping at last

The first time Amelia feels pain is when Derek steals her favorite doll and manages to destroy it in the process. She is so mad that she swears to herself she will never talk to him again.

Her siblings are outside having fun riding their bikes, it is a sunny day and all she wants is to join them but her parents just won’t let her. She is five years old and she is sitting on her fathers lap, pouting angrily while looking up at him.

Sometimes she feels like he is the only one that understands her. Being the youngest of five siblings can be hard, it can be demanding. But when she is with him she feels special and she feels loved. Her father points up to the sky, showing her the barely visible stars:

“Do you see that? The stars and the moon?“
Amelia grins and nods her head eagerly. “Mom says that if you die, you go to the stars.“, she answers and it makes her feel proud of herself - she know something he did not know before.

“Thats right sweetheart. In the stars light carries on endlessly even after death“, he explains to her and she frowns, not understanding what he means.

“So if you die, you turn into light and go to the stars?“ She wonders and her father laughs.

“Something like that“ he answers and then it is quiet. It is a freezing cold but Amelia is sitting on her fathers lap, she feels happy and warm and like this moment could go on forever.

“Can I come to the store with you tomorrow?“ She asks because it is boring at home and Mum never lets her do anything, while her siblings have fun, so she wants to go to the store.

“Tomorrow is Dereks turn sweetheart, you know that. But if you are nice to him, he might let you join us.“ He smiles down at her and her heart lurches. A day with with her dad and Derek sounds perfect.

“I will ask him right now“ she says and scrabbles down from his lap to run inside the house almost running into her oldest sister Kathleen.

“Amy what are you doing running around like a maniac?“

“Sorry“ she yells, as she tries to find her older brother. Derek is sitting in front of the tv with Nancy and Liz and raises an eyebrow, when he sees her rushing towards him.

“Can I go to the store with you and dad tomorrow?“ She asks and widens her eyes in an attempt to make him say yes but Derek just laughs and picks her up. She hates that, has told him multiple times. She is not a baby anymore, she is five years old and she is starting school soon but he can not seem to grasp it.

“Of course Amy“. And that’s that.

The next day when Amelia gets dressed she feels giddy and excited because she loves the store, loves her father, loves Derek and she can not wait to spend the entire day with them.
When they are sitting in the car, her father puts on music and they drive to the store. Amelia feels the wind in her hair as they loudly sing along to the lyrics.

It is a slow day. Amelias father gives her some coins and she proudly announces that she will buy a town one day.
Derek and her Dad just smile at each other amused and Derek takes her hand to lead her to the back of the store.

“Come on Amy, let dad do his job.“

They are sitting on the floor, Amelia puts the coins in the different cracks. Enjoys moving them around and starts laughing.

And then it happens.

At first they just hear loud voices. Amelia looks to Derek and he just shakes his head meaning don’t move and don’t talk. It is not the first time that her father has argued with customers. Sometimes they get mad, sometimes they want to haggle the prize. It has happened before.

But the screaming gets louder, so her curiosity starts to get the better of her. Amelia moves slowly to look around the counter and there she sees two men, holding a gun.
She lets out a whimper and in a second Derek is there, holding her.
She can’t help but watch as the two men gesture loudly, pointing at the watch her father is wearing, the one her mum had bought him for his birthday a few weeks ago.

And then the one guy pulls the trigger and all Amelia can hear is the ringing in her head, the ringing that she hears through her foggy brain. Derek is holding her so tight she can’t breathe and all she sees in front of her is her father falling, it seems like it is in slow motion, he is falling and there is so much blood and the two men run away and Derek finally lets her go.

She bolts forward, there is so much blood and Derek is calling someone and her father is not moving and why is no one helping, why isn’t he waking up, what is happening?

At the end of the day she ends up in her mothers arms in the hospital. Her sisters around her are crying, balling their eyes out and all she can think about is no and he was lying there, and there was so much blood. When she closes her eyes she sees the gun and the blood and she can still feel the ringing in her head.

There are no tears, just a blurry figure talking to her, hugging her and all she know it that he is gone and he is not coming back, he has gone to the stars and then Derek is there, Derek picks her up and no she is five years old she doesn’t need to be picked up, is old enough to walk by herself, but its Derek and he is warm and safe and he smells like home so she lets him carry her to the car where she falls asleep.

Amelia doesn’t talk after that. She watches as her life moves on. She dresses black and goes to the funeral with her family, but everything is a blur.

Every time she hears something loud she flinches, one time her mother drops a glass and Amelia ducks, hiding under the table shaking, screaming, crying and it takes Derek talking to her for over an hour to calm her down.

It feels like she is being broken apart.
She is only six but it does not stop hurting.

Amelia is not stupid, she can see her mother averting her eyes, every time she looks at her. Which is not often because her mother is locked in her bedroom more often than not and when she does come out she looks exhausted, her eyes rimmed red and swollen. Amelia can’t even remember when she talked to her mother the last time.

“Mum come out please“, Derek is trying to get her out, banging on the door but there is no answer and when he turns around to her, there is a faint flicker in his eyes that Amelia does not recognize but as soon as he sees her, it vanishes and he gives her a soft smile.

“What do you think Amy? You want to bake a cake with me?“ And that sounds good and lovely so she says yes.

“Is mum ever going to come out?“ She asks Derek and there is a shadow over his face but he is trying to be brave for her, she knows it.

“Of course Amy. She just needs a break for a second. But she loves us all very much and soon she will be back“ it sounds reassuring, it is Derek, he has never lied to her before, has always been honest so she believes him.

She distantly remembers though, her mother reading stories to her at night with hushed whispers and laughter, she remembers her mum kissing her on the forehead and then tucking her in.

All she wants is to feel safe again, to feel like she belongs somewhere because her mother won’t talk to her, she doesn’t know what she did wrong and her sisters have always been too old, too focused on their own lives, too tidy and organized to care about the mess that is going on inside her head.

“Okay“ she just smiles and then they bake a cake together. It is a disaster in the end because Derek does not know how to bake and neither does she and so Lizzy has to tidy the kitchen but they are all laughing and it feels good, feels like the old times.

So Amelia takes that mess inside of her and shoves it away, in a tiny box somewhere deep inside her and tells herself it will get better.

One day, Kathleen drops her phone and she does not flinch, she actually stops flinching at loud sounds all together, and when she needs a new pen, her mother drives her to a convenient store and it is the first time the freezing panic doesn’t get a hold of her.

The pain dulls over time and so do the memories of her father. Sometimes Amelia can’t even remember his voice or his face, it feels like all the memories she has of him are the ones Derek, Nancy, Kathleen and Lizzy tell her about and it sucks because everyone always tells her she looks like him and acts like him and she wants to scream because how did he look like? How did he act?

Amelia wishes she could turn back the time, go to a moment of happiness and look at her fathers face one more time to imprint it deep in her memories so she would never lose it again but it is too late.

She starts stargazing. It makes her feel closer to him and it reminds her of the last conversation they had before he died.

“I would give anything to hear you say it one more time“ Amelia whispers as she stares up at the stars.

Sometimes she wishes, she hadn’t been there that day, maybe that would have made it easier but then again she thinks about Derek having to witness it all by himself and she is glad she was there.

“You taught me the courage of the stars before you left“, she whispers to herself, feeling strong and when she looks at the stars she imagines him up there, watching her and she wants to be strong, wants him to be proud of her so she smiles and takes all the courage that is left inside of her and it works.

Amelias first school day comes and Derek is the only one that’s there.
She is used to it by now, but it still stings. She doesn’t understand why her mother can’t look her in the eyes. What she did to deserve being treated this way.

Derek smiles at her, hugs her and tells her

“Amy I am so proud of you, you will do amazing“, and his eyes are twinkling and that makes it okay.

“I am scared of going to school“ she whispers to him and he kneels in front of her.

“You don’t have to be scared right? You are a superhero, you can do this“

She wrinkles her forehead “I don’t want to be a superhero, I want to be a unicorn. They are magical and they are strong.“
“Fine, then you are a strong unicorn“

In the end all her worries were unjustified.
In school she finally feels happy.

She meets her best friend Michelle there and for the first time since that rainy day in October she feels good again, like she has something to look forward to. She enjoys going to school, enjoys learning something new, it fascinates her.

“Amelia is smart, a lot smarter than children her age normally are.” She hears her teacher telling Derek one day. Most of the times she walks home by herself, it is only a ten minute walk, but sometimes Derek comes and picks her up and those are her favorite days.

She shrugs on her jacket and walks towards Derek. He is smiling and there is something in his eyes that also make her smile.

“What is it?”she asks him because she doesn’t understand why he is looking at her like that.

“Nothing” Derek just answers “you want to go have some waffles?” And Amelia forgets about what she heard, because waffles with Derek might be the best combination existing in this world, so she goes and has waffles with Derek.

Everyday she goes to school and then she goes home. Derek helps her with her homework, when she needs help. He tells her about his day, about how school is going and he tells her that he wants to go into medicine, just like their sisters have. These are her favorite memories, sitting together in the kitchen over her homework, feeling her brain hurt, that feeling that shows her she’s really learning something, Derek next to her also working on his homework.

The occasional glances and stifled laughs, drinking tea together and all she can think about is how thankful she is for him. Amelia cant imagine not having a brother, not having someone she loves with a burning intensity she can’t put into words. Someone who she would give her life for and for who she is eternally grateful for. And that is how her life goes the next few years.

She starts middle school and Derek goes to college and for the first time in years she feels the old familiar ache in her chest. She doesn’t see him that often anymore. He is gone and he meets many amazing people and she is not a part of his life anymore. It’s just her and her mother now and she doesn’t have any help for her homework now. Sometimes she feels numb like she will never be okay again and sometimes Amelia wants to scream and cry because it is not fair. She sees the people at school everyday laughing and complaining about things that don’t matter and all she can think about is that they have two loving parents, that when they come home, they can talk to them and that they are loved.

She thinks this is what she misses most, the feeling of being loved, of being appreciated. Being the youngest of five has always been hard, there is that constant pressure of having to achieve something, of being better than the others. After all Amelias siblings are all doctors, have graduated at the top of their class, and have done amazing things in their short lives. Sometimes she feels ordinary and even though her mother already seems disappointed in her, Amelia fears she will disappoint her even more. So she doesn’t talk, she doesn’t scream, she just does her work and she tries.

She tries her absolute best everyday, even though she misses her dad, misses her brother, misses how everything used to be, misses the loud laughs and the good humored arguments over the dinner table. Her father always having to backtrack in the end talking about how unfair it is, that there are so many girls in the family and only him and Derek as a counter position. She remembers her mother’s quiet smile, the love brimming between her parents, the way they looked at each other. She remembers everything and sometimes she is filled with such an aching despair, a longing after something long gone and forgotten, that she can’t breathe.

Michelle gets a boyfriend. They are only fourteen but apparently boyfriends are starting to be a part of their lives now and Amelia doesn’t know what she thinks of that. Louis, that’s his name, is nice and caring and a few years older. She likes him and he is good to Michelle. They start being invited to parties and more times than not they are the youngest there. Amelia starts enjoying dressing up. She likes putting on dresses, high heels and make up. Her mother doesn’t care, just tells her to “be careful and not stay out late“, but then again she never controls when exactly she comes home so there is that.

She drinks alcohol for the first time and at first she hates the fuzzy feeling that comes with it. Amelia is used to being in control, likes it even, so the blurring lines between her thoughts are unknown and not pleasant. But after some time she learns that it helps her keep her thoughts out. When she drinks, everything is gone, there is no pain, no memories, no “the universe was made to be seen by your eyes”, no gunshots, there is just silence.

She is starting to enjoy it and at some party she meets him. David. He is seventeen, a junior, and he has nice hair and smells nice and most of all he has friends that get them booze. Her sisters are gone and Derek is gone and her mother doesn’t care, so Amelia drinks and parties and has sex for the first time. It is incredible and she feels loved and comforted, as David’s hands stroke over her body, smooth and loving. Her grades slip. She notices it, but then again it’s no big surprise. Michelle and her have been going out every weekend. She doesn’t even remember the last time she did her homework, the last time she actually sat down and studied and she doesn’t care.

At one of the parties she goes to, her friend offers her a pill. Amelia knows she shouldn’t take it, knows it because she is the youngest of five and she can’t even count how many times she’s heard the “drugs are bad“ speech before, but everything hurts and everyday she feels less like herself. Inside her it’s swirling and rumoring and all she wants is for it to stop.

She wants to stop her thoughts and stop the pain, so in the end she does take it. It is a good decision. She can feel it in her blood, in her brain, everywhere in her body. Amelia feels like nerve endings she had never known existed, start to burn and she finally feels alive. She feels alive and good, and the sick feeling deep rooted in her stomach is finally gone. It has been years since her father’s death, since she had seen his body fall to the ground, sat in his blood, nine years precisely and she feels like she can finally finally breathe again.
Eyes hooded, feeling a recklessness cursing through her veins, the feeling that she is unstoppable, that no matter what happens she can survive it, survive it and come out stronger on the other side.

When Amelia comes home at five in the morning no one is awake. No one is waiting for her or worried for her. Not even the feeling of not being important, of having no one, can dim her mood, she feels good and happy and Amelia wonders if that is maybe how normal people feel everyday, people that didn’t have to witness their father being shot in front of them, people that grew up with a loving mother, a loving father, a loving family. Deep inside of her, buried in the depths of her brain Amelia seems to remember dinner evenings before everything had gone to hell. Her parent’s laughs and Kathleen cooking, Nancy helping Lizzy. Maybe that is how it feels to grow up without a single problem or traumatic event.

She continues going to parties, the pills starting to become a welcoming presence in her everyday life. No one notices, Amelia has always been good at putting on a mask, making people feel the way they want to feel, smiling and laughing, pretending everything is fine. She hides it well when Derek comes to visit, him and her sisters too caught up in their own busy lives to notice their sister is falling apart, that she never comes home and Amelia slips deeper and deeper into her addiction.

It gets to a point where she can’t get through the day without the welcoming feeling of a pill in her system and at that point she knows this isn’t normal, that she should probably stop but she can’t get herself to do it when it’s the first thing in her life that has ever made her feel good.
Boys like her, they flirt with her, they come after her and most importantly they sleep with her. It makes her feel wanted and worthy of love.

Amelia feels good, even when her family slowly starts catching on, the late nights, missed exams and homework slowly but surely catching up to her and it’s okay she thinks, they already hate me, they want me gone, no one here would miss me anyways, so she doesn’t stop. She pretends she can’t hear her mother sobbing in her bedroom, she pretends Derek’s eyes don’t look wary and disappointed every time he looks at her and finds her pupils blown so wide the green of her eyes is barely noticeable. It’s something they all ignore, and tip toe around, no one dares to bring it up. Amelia has a drug problem, she is an addict, and yet her entire family sits down once a month and they eat and talk and everyone pretends things are as usual.

They think it’s just a phase, Amelia knows that. Everyone fucks around when they’re young, so they don’t care and they don’t try to stop it. She meets Derek’s new girlfriend at Christmas and Addison is nice and caring so she decides she likes her. Derek starts coming home more often, Amelia doesn’t know if it’s because of her but she strongly suspects it is. He starts spending more time with her again, asking her questions about herself and even though she is angry that he basically ignored her for the many years prior she can’t help but feel happy that her brother is talking to her again.

In Addison she finds a true sister. Addison does her hair for her prom and she celebrates her birthday when Amelia finally turns seventeen. They don’t talk about Lizzy, Kathleen and Nancy acting like she doesn’t exist at all. Addison picks her up from a party more than a few times and at this point Amelia has gotten quite used to sitting on the cold floor of Addison’s bathroom, violently vomiting out all the toxins in her system. She knows they are worried but it feels too good so she doesn’t stop.

The first time Amelia starts having hallucinations after taking something, she thinks she is going to die. She has started experimenting, trying out cocaine and heroine, and deep down she knows this isn’t good but she has started becoming too used to the pills, the effects barely noticeable anymore. She is going down a slippery road, a dark path that will destroy her and everyone around her if she continues. Amelia doesn’t care, she likes feeling at peace, likes the silence the substances bring her, all she wants is to hide and never come out.

Her friends are reckless, they dare her to do something, they put an idea in her head and Amelia knows she shouldn’t do it, knows that it’s going to ruin everything but she is nothing if not self destructive, revels in the pain the disappointed faces of her loved ones brings her so she listens and does it.

When she wakes up, she’s in a hospital. She can hear the reassuring tones of the machines controlling her heartbeat. The last thing she remembers is driving a car, Derek’s car, her eyesight wild and hazy, her entire body buzzing with the need of getting something more. At that point Amelia definitely knows she has a problem, knows it deep in her bones but she’s too far gone, too selfish to stop it. She doesn’t owe it to anyone to stay alive, not when life has never been kind to her, has taken everything from her, has cut her open and ripped out her heart dripping in blood and broken, leaving behind a shell of a girl she was, a girl she might’ve and could’ve been had she not been subjected to the horrors of watching her own father die before her eyes.

When she looks up she sees Derek in front of her. He looks tired, his eyes bloodshot and red, he is shifting on his feet looking like he doesn’t quite know what to say and it has been months since Amelia last saw him, a sob bubbling up in her throat.

As she looks down to his hands she sees him holding a prescription pad. “Derek” she says, “what happened?”, and he looks at her and there is so much rage but also worry in his eyes that she feels sick again. “Amy”, he breathes, “how dare you?”, and then it all comes back to her, telling her friends about her brother being a doctor, and them coming up with the idea for her to use him as a way to get more pills. She remembers taking his prescription pad, getting the the pills, the pleasant buzz that had come, the fuzziness and the happiness. She remembers sitting down in her room and suddenly feeling very sick. “Overdose”, “your heart stopped for three minutes”, “if your brother hadn’t reanimated you, you would be dead”, she hears those words like they’re being spoken through a fog, the shame and embarrassment curling in her belly with a warmth of a thousand blazing fires.

“Do you even know what you did?” Derek’s voice is quiet. “You stole my prescription pad and my car, you drove to get pills with my signature, then you took god knows what. Mum found you in your room. You were dead Amy. Your heart stopped beating. She has lost so much already and you’re being selfish and putting her through even more. How dare you?”

Amelia wants to scream. She has lost so much? Yes she has, but what about me? i was only 5 and I needed her. I needed a mother, I needed help but most importantly I needed affection and love and she never gave that to me. You all made me the person I am today, you pushed me to turn into this. In the end she stays silent because if there’s one thing she has learnt it’s to make herself seem as small as possible, to protect herself from damage and she knows Derek wouldn’t understand in the end.

Everyone deals with grief differently and while Amelia had fallen apart and tried her hardest to find something to bring sense back to her life, Derek had put all his energy in doing his best. While she had destroyed herself, he had succeeded and Amelia doesn’t understand how he does it. He experienced the same thing as her and still it seems as if he is completely fine while she struggles to even live one day without help.

“Derek, I’m sorry” she says in a small voice, the gravity of the situation occurring to her. “I didn’t mean to, Derek you have to believe me, I’m so sorry Derek please”, she’s begging but the look in his eyes stays cold and unforgiving. This is it, she thinks, you’ve managed to push away the only person in this world who still gives a shit about you, and deep down she knows she’s self destructive, she thinks she deserves only the worst for everything she has put her family through, but she also can’t help but feel like the last parts of her heart are cracking open, she feels like she’s slowly bleeding out from the inside, as she watches Derek turn around. “Derek, don’t go, please don’t go” she cries, but he doesn’t turn around, simply opens the door and walks out.

In the end Derek comes back. He always does. He holds her hand and he drives her home from the hospital though Amelia can’t help but notice him averting his eyes whenever she tries to look at him. There are a lot of “I am sorrys” and “ill never do it agains” and she can feel the tension, it is thick, she can’t seem to cut through it.

Amelia can’t help but notice that her mother and sisters never showed up at the hospital. She feels like that is the last crack, the final crack, the one she will never be able to put back together again. She can feel it in her bones that nothing will ever be the same.

Everything changes after that, she feels like she has hit rock bottom, as if nothing will ever be okay again and for the first time she wants to be sober, really wants it.

So she puts that energy in something else. Her grades are horrendous and her dream of becoming a doctor seems far away but Amelia sits down and studies. She never stops, to the point where she forgets to eat, forgets to sleep, becomes obsessed and sometimes when she’s sleeping she still sees her fathers face in front of her, sees his wide eyes, and the gunshot right through his head, through his brain. She makes it her own personal mission to find out everything about the brain, to find out how to operate brain tumors or head gun shots.

When she makes it into Harvard she doesn’t feel an ounce of happiness or pride, there is just this hollowness in her, knowing that the people she would like to celebrate with the most are either dead or not speaking to her. Amelia has always had an obsessive personality, it’s why she was so easily influenced to liquor and drugs, it’s why it is so easy for her to study multiple hours a day without missing the social life she used to have, she knows it’s not healthy but she has a goal and she has a dream and she knows she will do everything possible to achieve it.

Derek becomes a big name in the neurosurgery field and Amelia feels jealous because once again someone else has come first, has beaten her and the fact that it is her own brother makes it hurt even more. She wanted to be the only Shepherd associated to brains but now everyone will look at her and they will only ever see Derek’s sister.

Did you choose neurosurgery for the same reason as me? goes through her head every time she sees Derek, do you want to save children from witnessing what we did too?, she feels rage and anger but she’s older now so showing it feels immature, feels unprofessional, so she doesn’t. When she graduates Harvard at the top of her class only Derek shows up to the graduation. They’ve managed to repair their relationship over the last years, slowly filling up the cracks with memories and shared laughter, but Amelia can’t help but feel like it will never go back to the way it was before. There is something that fundamentally changes when you hold your dead sisters body in your arms, when you forcefully have to push her heart to beat again and no matter how many times Amelia apologizes and tries to make up for it she knows that in some part of Derek’s mind there will always be resentment, and she tries her hardest to come to terms with it, to understand that no matter what she does there will always be an inherently wrong balance in their relationship.

After her residency is over, she goes to LA to assist her boss on a case and sees Addison again, it’s a welcome surprise, having not talked to her a lot since her very messy divorce with Derek, but Amelia has always felt fondness for her former sister in law, she can’t help wanting to stay, be somewhere familiar and safe, so she does.

Addison’s private practice is great for Amelia, she has friends, and she enjoys working with the other doctors in the practice. She has been sober for almost ten years, an achievement she proudly carries with her. It all changes when she drinks alcohol at a wedding. It wasn’t supposed to happen, she had asked for a non alcoholic drink but the waitress messes up and now Amelia can feel herself teetering at the edge again.

She is not addicted to alcohol, it has never been a problem, but she is impulsive with an alarmingly low level of self control so anything that lowers her inhibitions, that makes her more likely to grab those old, familiar pills is an enemy in her eyes so that cocktail, even though it was only one sip is more of a problem than she’d like to admit and before she knows it, she’s back in a bar, drinking until she passes out and there is so much shame in her but she can’t seem to stop.

Amelia operates on a patient while being drunk, and Charlotte, being the responsible boss that she is suspends her for a month. Amelia only feels hatred and jealousy, seeing how Charlotte has her life together, how she is an addict too but has not let it take over her life and she feels humiliated and weak for not being able to resist, for constantly putting her wants and needs before her health.

Michelle visits her and Amelia is happy, though she knows her best friend has an illness that can’t be healed and when Michelle asks her for assisted suicide, Amelia agrees, even though everything inside her is against it, even though she would rather rip out her own heart and give it to her instead of having to suffer through yet another loss but it’s her best friend and this is her choice so she helps. It doesn’t work in the end, Michelle being too scared to actually go through with it and Amelia feels satisfaction and happiness at that, though she pretends she doesn’t. Michelle and her have always gone through everything together so they promise each other, Amelia will stay sober as long as Michelle doesn’t commit suicide.

It’s a good pact and it works for a while, until one day Amelia comes back from a long tiring day in the practice and when she walks into her bedroom she sees Michelle lying on her bed, pills spilled next to her head and she doesn’t even have to check her pulse to know she is dead. When the coroners come to take her body with them, Amelia smiles, I’ll be fine, she says, ignoring the skeptical looks on their faces.

The second they leave, she succumbs to what she has wanted to do for ten years, the fight that has brought her to where she is, leaving her body at once. If Michelle can break the pact then so can she, so Amelia takes one of the pills Michelle left on the bed and it feels like she is finally okay again. As if all the chaos and hardships, the fight she had against her addiction for the last decade is finally gone. She doesn’t even have it in her to condemn herself for failing again, because it just feels so good.

Amelia disappears for a week and meets someone. His name is Ryan and she is in love. They do drugs together, they have sex all day everyday and it’s the best she has felt in years. She is young, happy and doesn’t need to work. She could live her entire life like this. Addison and Charlotte are worried about her, she knows it so she shows up to the practice to appease them.

They corner her, stage an “intervention” and it’s so ridiculous Amelia almost has to laugh. Everyone in the practice has issues, and they are trying to tell her how she should live her life when she’s feeling great, it’s ridiculous and she doesn’t appreciate it. She gives the watch her father died over to Ryan and when Addison screams at her, she doesn’t even feel bad about it.
Though when Addison turns around to tell everyone the story of how her father died, Amelia just loses it.

“You do not tell that story, it is not your story, it was not your dad, it was my dad” she sobs, the pain in her voice so unimaginable that everyone around her stops and just stares. She feels like she’s being ripped open again, like the wound she has so carefully stitched together has started bleeding, they’re all staring at her and she feels like a caged animal, she just wants to leave, wants to never see their faces again so she takes Ryan’s hand and they leave together.

They book a hotel, and they talk about their futures. How they want to get married and have children someday and together they decide they want to be sober. Amelia goes to flush the last pills down the drain to reduce the temptation as soon as possible but then Ryan turns around and says one more time and who is Amelia really to deny him when she wants it so badly too so they take the remaining pills and fall asleep, the last thought in her mind being the big house with their family they will have in the future.

When she wakes up she feels cold. Everything around her is dark and cloudy and she can’t even lift her head enough to look because all she feels is a drowning headache and the body under her is ice cold which is not right so she looks and Ryan’s face is gray, his lifeless eyes staring back at her and Amelia breaks down.

She doesn’t remember calling the hotel reception or the ambulance coming or Addison wrapping her up in her arms shivering and small because all she can think is no not again please not again as she clings onto his dead body, sobs rattling through her body uncontrollably. It seems like she has never felt pain like this before and isn’t that almost laughable considering loss is an old friend in her life, someone she greets every once in a while with contempt and hatred in her heart, but this feels different because they were just about to get sober, they wanted to build their own lives and now she will never talk to him again or see his face and if she had just flushed down the pills when they wanted to do it this wouldn’t have happened so it’s all her fault, and the world feels so crushing she wants to hide and never come out again.

Addison, being the great friend that she is, admits Amelia to a rehab and visits her, even though Amelia has been nothing but awful to her for months, even though she had to see her spiraling once again and now that Amelia is back in her normal self, her judgment not clouded by haziness, she feels embarrassment and judgement again and wonders if it will always be like this, if this will end up being a circle of hell, of her messing up and having to apologize while feeling so ashamed.

She’s at zero again and how humiliating is that, having to exchange the ten year chip she used to proudly carry with her everywhere against a thirty day chip and have to go back to her old narcotics anonymous group talking about her relapse watching all of them look at her with pity in their eyes and she wants to scream because she doesn’t deserve their pity, doesn’t deserve their sympathy, she deserves hate and contempt because she has fucked up again and she needs someone to hold her responsible because if she goes down that path again she is not sure she will ever return.

A few weeks later she finds out she is pregnant and at first she is not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse but once she actually accepts she is carrying a life inside of her she feels lightness in her heart, this new unborn life already making her feel better, making her fight against her addiction easier. It is Ryan’s baby and even though she still feels pain at the thought of him never getting to meet his child, she still cherishes the life that has come out of what was arguably one of the darkest times in her life.

But Amelia is used to pain at this point so when she has an ultrasound and Addison looks at her with worry in her eyes she is not even surprised. Of course is all she thinks, it would simply be too much to let me have something good for once, but she still holds on to the hope that maybe the diagnostic was wrong for once, that maybe this time luck is on her side and she has managed to convince herself of that so when Addison comes back and tells her her baby doesn’t have a brain she almost has to laugh at the absolute irony of what is happening. She is a neurosurgeon and her baby doesn’t have a brain. It is almost as if the universe or god or whoever is making her suffer through so much pain is having a laugh at her expense and Amelia has never felt so much despair and hatred in her, it is like she is shaking with fury about the unfairness of this situation.

She decides to carry him out full term and donate all his organs, a decision that is frowned upon and not one hundred percent legal in the state they are living in, but she wants something good to come out of this unimaginable grief she will be experiencing, knows that if she can spare even one family of feeling the same it will be worth it, and so she lets herself daydream and pretend for the next seven months. She acts like she is carrying a beautiful healthy baby boy, like she will start her life once he is born and it helps her get through the worst of it.

The twenty minutes after he is born, before he dies are the best and worst minutes of her life. Amelia gets to hold him in her arms, gets to kiss his face, eyes that will never open, a mouth that will never speak, and she imagines what he would’ve looked like if he had gotten the chance to grow old and her heart aches so badly that she needs to give him away as quickly as possible, knowing that his organs are going to save lives being the only positive outcome of this whole situation. She names him Christopher after her father and she hopes with everything inside of her that even though she doesn’t believe in god, even though she has lost her faith after everything she has been through, that maybe they will reunite wherever they are and look down to her.

Afterwards Amelia feels numb. She goes to work, she smiles and laughs but inside everything hurts. She watches Addison adopt a baby boy, she watches Charlotte have triplets and even though she is happy for her friends, knows they deserve it more than anything else, she can’t help but feel jealousy sometimes. Amelia hates herself for it but she is only human after all and so she distances herself, to not say anything she doesn’t mean and over time it gets easier. She’s staying strong, because no matter how much she wants to take away the pain, she remembers what happened the last time she did, so she doesn’t.

She hears that Derek got shot in a hospital shooting in Seattle and can’t help but think back to that fateful day in the convenience store years ago that had changed her life forever. Amelia calls Derek multiple times but because he is stubborn and an asshole sometimes, he doesn’t answer so she decides to fly to Seattle to see him.

Derek is not happy at first but she pushes through and helps him with a complicated surgery and finally gets to meet Meredith. Even though things between her and Derek are still fragile and she feels like he will hold her addiction against her for the rest of her life, she has fun and she decides she likes Meredith. Derek is doing okay, so the overwhelming panic that started creeping in after Amelia found out he got shot starts to ease a little and she feels proud of herself, thinking of all the progress she has made in the last years.

She goes back to LA and works there, enjoying it and even though the city is tethered to horrible memories, her found family there makes everything better. She visits Derek and Meredith and babysits for their children and then slowly but surely she falls in love again. James is nice and sweet and most importantly nothing like her ex boyfriends. Amelia learns that it is possible to love without pain, that relationships can be easy and comforting which is exactly what she needs after Ryan and thinking she would never be happy again.

When Derek calls her a few years later and asks her to take over his job, because he will be in Washington DC working with the president, she jumps at the opportunity. She would be the head of neurosurgery at one of the best hospitals in the entire country, and even though she is sad to leave behind Charlotte, Addison and all her other friends she has learned to love so deeply, she is ready for a new phase in her life, leaving LA and all the pain it has brought her behind. James and her break up, but it’s mutual with both of them not wanting to have a long distance relationship and Amelia has felt the end coming for a while now, but James has taught her what a good relationship is like and now she will never settle for less again.

Amelia likes Seattle, she enjoys spending time with Meredith and her nieces and nephews, she has fun working with all the other doctors in the hospital and things work well for the first months but then Derek comes back and he is insufferable because he has always thought he is so much better than her and it’s clear as day to Amelia that he regrets giving her his job, because now she is his boss and Derek keeps taking away surgeries from her or making decisions behind her back without consulting her and even though he is her brother and she loves him, she can’t stand him sometimes.

They fight a lot, because Amelia has always felt like she is in his shadow, like people always expected her to be the same as him. She has memories of standing in an OR hearing whispers of I wish the better shepherd was here, and she’s trying her hardest to prove herself so Derek actively working against her every step of the way feels like even more of a burden than he probably realizes.

So she’s not even surprised when one day a member of her old narcotics anonymous group shows up with her mother and announces loudly that Amelia is a drug addict to the entire ER, Derek doesn’t even bat an eye and takes over the case. When Amelia finds out he lied to Owen, the chief of the hospital, to get her job she sees red. They are siblings, they are supposed to love and care for each other, and even though he has given her this job to begin with and she is trying her hardest to do a good job, to start a new life he is trying to take everything away from her.
Amelia enjoyed working in Seattle, knowing that no one knew of her troubled past, but now it is all gone because now everyone is looking at her with curiosity and pity again and she feels like she is drowning because she hates being defined by her old mistakes, her old life, she wants people to see her the way she is now and it is all ruined.

Derek apologizes and Amelia gets to keep her job but she can’t shake the deep sense of betrayal she feels in her body every time she looks at him so she can’t act like she’s not a little bit happy when he goes back to Washington.

Their relationship gets better again, the way it always does, their bond simply too strong to be broken, even though it had been bent and slightly ripped over the years, so when Derek tells her he decided to move back to Seattle for good, she can’t help but feel excited. Amelia hasn’t lived in the same city as her brother since they were children and she misses him so deeply sometimes that she can’t wait for all the great memories they will make together. She knows it’s probably going to be difficult to find a balance with their jobs, and it is going to take some time for Derek to accept that he needs to do what she says but she deeply believes they can do this together.

For the first time in a long time, Amelia feels seven again, running around the house with her brother, making cookies, decorating the Christmas tree, watching old movies, doing their homework together and she can’t wait to get back even a tiny bit of the childhood she had thought she lost.

Derek is on his way back to Seattle, they talk on the phone and his mobile data runs out so they hang up and Amelia finishes the surgery. It takes her multiple hours, the tumor being so ingrained in the brain it feels impossible to cut around it at first, so when she gets out of the OR she feels satisfaction and pride in herself, the way she always does after a long and grueling surgery that she can’t believe she actually managed to do. She walks in the washing rooms to clean herself and suddenly the door bursts open.

When she looks at Owen’s face she knows. It is in the way her heart starts beating faster, her skin starts flushing and she feels goosebumps all over her skin but hearing him say it makes it all real and she can’t breathe, she doesn’t want to feel like this, she needs it to be over, because Derek is dead and she will never be held by him again, and now the only person who has ever truly understood what she’s been through is gone, the only person she has loved with a passion so fierce it has felt like she could move mountains sometimes, the one person who had sat by her and helped with her homework, baked with her when she had felt at her lowest, her favorite person in the entire world, her brother is gone and she can’t believe the universe could be this cruel. She feels like she’s holding the weight of the entire world on her shoulders, like Derek had helped her stem it before and now that he is gone she has to do it all by herself and she wants to scream because she is way too young for this, she deserves better than this and nothing will ever be okay again.

It is a car accident, is what Amelia hears. His brain swelled up and there was nothing they could’ve done. Some irrational part in her asks why didn’t you call me, I’ve brought back people from the dead before I could’ve done it again and she knows that there was nothing she could’ve done but she can’t stop thinking about the what ifs, and now she has another person she can add to the long tally of people she will never see again, people she will have to miss dearly every single day of her life.

Amelia finds out Meredith pulled the plug without even telling her and she doesn’t even get to say goodbye to her favorite person on earth and deep down Amelia knows Meredith was grieving, she didn’t do it on purpose but she can’t believe the selfishness because she knew him first, she grew up with him and now she doesn’t even remember the last words she said to him. The worst is that Meredith doesn’t even see what she did wrong, she is convinced it was her right and for a long time Amelia feels hatred for her, but she can’t hold on to it because this is Meredith and Derek loved her, his love will live on in her forever so who is Amelia to hate her.

She lives the next year in a state of derealization. She goes to work, she operates on people, she cracks jokes and laughs at stories. Amelia feels like she is watching herself, like she is floating outside of her body seeing it go through the motions it has started to get accustomed to, and she can’t breathe, but the alternative is feeling nothing and every time she even considers that, she remembers Derek’s face when she woke up in the hospital all these years ago and even though Derek is dead and she doesn’t owe him anything it feels disrespectful to even entertain the thought so she doesn’t.

In the end she breaks, she buys pills and then she falls apart in Owen’s arms before getting the chance to take them, the pain so raw and forceful that she buckles to her knees, feeling like she’s being split open in half, like the world is ending. The universe keeps taking and taking and never giving anything back and she is sick of it. Why me, she keeps thinking, why is my life full of loss?, my father, my best friend, my fiancé, my baby and now my brother. She can’t lose anyone anymore, the feeling of loss so deeply ingrained in her heart that she doesn’t know who she would be without it. Sometimes it feels like I am nothing without my grief, she thinks, and how sad is that because she is only 34 and she has lost more, has grieved more than most people do in a lifetime.

She starts being okay again after that. Owen and Meredith help a lot, the feeling of support and love, something Amelia has been missing for almost all her life, wrapping her up like a warm hug.
She falls in love with Owen through the endless support he gives her and life is starting to be better again.

Amelia and Owen get married very spontaneously and after a few months Amelia already knows it was a mistake because he wants children and she is not sure she will ever be able to give that to him, the pain inside of her still too fresh to even think about the possibilities, so they get divorced and even though it is hard, Amelia knows it was the right decision.

She mainly focuses on her work after that, she enjoys it, excels in cutting people open, respects holding their lives in her hands and she does well. There are no people left in the medical field who don’t know who Amelia Shepherd is, the woman who operates on tumors scary enough to have even the most courageous doctors step back from them, the woman who looks death in the eyes and says not today, the woman who despite all the hardships she has suffered is still capable of laughter and love, and for the first time in her life Amelia feels pride.

She did this. She achieved her life long dream, she is a neurosurgeon and she managed to turn her life around. If Amelia went back to her scrawny fourteen year old self and told her everything would be okay someday, she would have hardly believed it.

At a conference she meets the love of her life. Amelia had long accepted she would never be in love again, that maybe she just wasn’t the type of person people felt romantic love for, that she had tried and failed and that was okay but there he is. Link changes her life in ways she thought were unimaginable. Where she is loud and chaotic, he is quiet and calm, her rock, keeping her grounded and sane when she feels like her thoughts are getting loud again.
Their relationship is rocky at times but she has grown up, she doesn’t run for the hills at the first signs of trouble, they communicate and they work it out. It feels almost impossible that this is something she can have, that Amelia gets to go to sleep and wake up next to an amazing man she loves so dearly, and despite of her deep fear of losing him she lets herself enjoy it.

When Amelia finds out she is pregnant again, her entire world stops spinning. She is scared, because she remembers what has been taken from her, but most of all she is happy. Maybe this is her chance at redemption, at a second chance. Maybe this time she will be able to love and protect the life growing inside of her the way it was supposed to be. She spends her entire pregnancy being carefully optimistic, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to handle another disappointment so when the due date creeps closer and closer and nothing bad happens, her baby is still healthy and well she starts to actually feel happiness.

They have a baby boy and Amelia names him Scout Derek Shepherd Lincoln after her brother, and when her baby opens her eyes and looks at her she can’t help the sobs that burst out of her. It seems almost too good to be true. She has gotten accustomed to the pain of losing and grieving so something good happening to her, something that hasn’t been taken away, feels surreal.
She is finally at a point of her life where she knows she deserves it, that she is worthy of happiness and love.

Sometimes Amelia still dreams of Derek, of him hugging her and telling her everything will be alright, and when she wakes up her pillow is tear soaked and her heart feels so heavy she calls in sick for work because just the idea of looking at brains the entire day, something that had bonded her to Derek makes her feel like dying. She goes into convenience stores and sometimes she still flinches when she hears loud sounds. Amelia sees a teddy bear and she thinks of the baby that never was, the baby that went to heaven before she even got the chance to know him, to see him grow into the person he would’ve become, and sometimes it feels like her entire future has turned into ashes.

But then she remembers her son, she remembers Meredith and her beautiful nieces and nephews, Addison, Maggie and Charlotte her best friends, and she feels alright. She operates on exciting and horrifying brain tumors, she makes the unimaginable possible, she makes a name for herself. Amelia Shepherd is a world known neurosurgeon with a family and she is happy.

Knowing that her father never saw her become a doctor, that Derek never got to meet his nephew makes her sad but deep down she hopes that maybe they are all looking down on her, being proud of what she has achieved and someday when she has lived a long and fulfilled life she will join them and they will finally be together again but until then Amelia focuses on her life.

The loss will always be a part of her, she will always carry the people she has loved so deeply in her heart, but it doesn’t feel like a burden anymore. Breathing doesn’t feel as heavy anymore and she knows she can’t take it for granted, that bad things can and will still happen but she has let go of that unimaginable rage and despair that had almost destroyed her from the inside and she has come to terms with loving her life and still mourning the what ifs. Because those are both sides of existing, two sides of the same coin, love - hate, happiness - despair, anger - tranquility.

Sometimes she can’t help thinking how beautiful it is to even exist.