So...it's been awhile. Sorry about that. Life has been insane (in a good way!) and, as much as I love Grey's, I haven't really had time to pay attention to the brilliance that is the Grey's-verse.

I'm back, for however fleeting a time period, with a new one-shot about an old episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one (and that you're still around!). I'm working on updating the serial stories. I promise I haven't forgotten about them, and I have no intention to abandon them. I'm sorry for the dreadfully long wait, and I hope all of you wonderful people have been well while I've been gone!

I'm sorry about the birthdays I've missed as well. LJ enjoys sending me messages about them. If I were a better person, I would've saved said messages and logged in. As it stands, failure and I seem to be friends where online love is concerned.

ANYWAY...new one-shot. Updates on the horizon. I'd post this to the other LJ lists, but it's been so long that I've forgotten how. That's kind of pathetic, huh?

Title: Something Good
Author: MortalCity
Status: Complete
Pairing: MerDer (Old habits die hard.)
Timeline: Post 5.15, "An Honest Mistake"
Summary: "The only thing Meredith knows with more certainty than impermanence is survival, and she knows this: they will survive." One-shot. MerDer. Post 5.15, "An Honest Mistake." In which Derek searches for solace in a bottle of scotch, and Meredith has faith.

( 'I’m not that guy, Mere. The guy that throws you ultimatums on blue prints and goes after unsuspecting brunettes…that’s not me. That’s not who I am.' )

Dignity and SBS chapters are forthcoming. Literally RIGHT after I posted the last entry, I received news that a sibling had been admitted to the hospital and was comatose in ICU.

Long story short, it's been a long week.

Anyway, as promised, here's my one-shot attempt at making sense of the ghost sex. It is dark and twisty and from Denny's point of view. Some of the dialogue has been borrowed from Shonda. I'm sure you'll know which lines.

Enjoy. :)


Title: Selfish
Author: MortalCity
Status: Complete
Pairing: Dizzie, the most appropriately titled couple in history (Denny/Izzie)
Timeline: Post 5.07
Summary: "He lifts his chin and smiles at the thought of an eternity with Izzie. He knows he'll get his wish." One-shot. Denny tries stalking on for size.

( You didn't kill me. You brought me back to life. )

Wow. It's been awhile, huh?

I'm sorry I fail so much at juggling life and fiction lately. I have two chapters of Dignity and one chapter of SBS sitting on my hard drive and waiting to be edited, but I have had little to no time.

I also might've used the spare time I did have typing a one-shot in attempt to figure out WTF is going on with crazy Izzie and the ghost sex.

( Brief thoughts on season 5 so far... )

I can't wrap my mind around the ghost sex. I can't. So, I'm in the process of writing a one-shot entitled "Selfish" to explain to myself what the hell is going on.

Here's an excerpt:


He still wants her.

It's been a year since he walked these halls with Meredith, catching whiffs of Izzie and trying to guide the jaded roommate back to a life of oddly solid friendships and everlasting, angst-ridden love. A year since he closed his eyes and smiled into the ceiling and praised the notion of moments with the ones you love.

Now, as his nonexistent shoes make nonexistent squeaks on the tiled floor, he shoves his hands in his pockets and scowls, because it was all bullshit. Every last bit of it. Whiffs of Izzie are not enough.

Moments with Izzie are not enough.

He wanted the lifetime. The wedding, with the white dress and the fifty-thousand dollar flowers and the cake that Izzie would have baked, layer by layer, over the course of a particularly grueling week at work. The marriage, with the honeymoon and the slow move from Meredith's Intern Inn to a house outside of the city where he could enjoy being a man again and Izzie could enjoy being a woman. A wife.

He knows that she would never have been satisfied to sit back and let him support her--financially or otherwise. Even in her anguish, her stubborn streaks are present, and her fierce independence still surfaces in ways that make him smile.

Sometimes, he wishes he could've seen her face when she first found the eight-point-seven million dollar check. Wishes he could've been present for the fight that would've surely transpired had his death not loomed over them like a fog.

Even in the wee hours of the morning, when his heart was weak and his lungs were sore and he was sick and tired of being sick and tired, he loved fighting with Izzie. He thinks that their life together would've been full of the jovial bickering he so enjoyed.

He wonders if their death together will be.

He imagines touching her. Imagines provoking her with the charming, witty repartee that was immediately his trademark. Imagines sharing yet another moment in which he's intoxicated by her presence and she's irritated by his need to turn everything into a joke.

He lifts his chin and smiles at the thought of an eternity with Izzie.

He knows he'll get his wish.

He wonders if she knows. He wonders if she understands why he's suddenly everywhere, why she can't burn or drink him away.

He wonders if she'll put up a fight when she realizes what's really going on. A part of him hopes so--she is, after all, at her prettiest when angry. But the bigger part of him--the part of him that remembers her skin against his in the wee hours of the morning--hopes that she'll be glad. That she'll see the same potential for fullfillment that he sees.

He sees the way she looks at Alex Karev, and his heart seizes in fear, because even as the sadness lingers in her soft brown eyes, she still looks...happy, almost. Like she's finally found the strength to move on and the man who can help her accomplish the task.

He wonders if she'll spend death shedding tears for Karev like she's spent her life shedding tears for him.

He hopes not.




It's not MerDer, and for that, I'm sorry. It is, however, a nice way to re-enter the fandom.

You haven't seen the last of me. I promise. :)

So apparently I left my FF muse somewhere on a beach in California, and she's having too much fun lying on the beach and sipping bellinis to return. I have plans to kidnap her over the weekend, but we'll see how that works out.

In the meantime, I come bearing sneak peeks...

( Make You Love Me (SBS CH 12) )

And also...

( Pressure (Dignity, CH 3) )


Thank you so, so, so much for being patient with me and hating me only a little while 3D life eats my spare time. I promise that I haven't forgotten about these stories or you guys, and I really, really appreciate that you're still here and still reading.

Hope all is well with everyone!

Hey everyone! Remember me? Once upon a time, I was writing these stories about this crazy group of doctors who have really interesting patients and really complicated romantic lives, and...

Yeah.

I suck.

I'm so sorry I haven't been around lately. Outside circumstances took my attention away from writing for awhile. See...

1) In Real Life, I'm a musician. As a result, job opportunities come and go at odd times. Professionally, I've been really fortunate this summer. Unfortunately, my professional fortune comes at the expense of writing time.

2) Due to the Really Cool Opportunities referenced above, fixing my cute little laptop ended up at the bottom of my to-do list. I don't need a computer to play drums. I songwrite the old-fashioned way--with a piano and a pad of legal paper. When I record, I use a friend's studio. And, as much as I love sweet-talking nerdy boys into estimating data recovery costs, I lost my patience whenever Nerdy Boy #3 told me that recovering data from a hard drive with an HRA failure was "ludicrous." Update: Mikayla the MacBook is currently chilling with Nerdy Boy #4, who has promised to get me data by the end of the week for a semi-reasonable price. I'm so tired of dealing with this that I don't even care anymore. I will, however, be glad to see the lost chapters of SBS and Dignity.

3) I have only one part-time job that allows me the use of an office and a company computer. However, I refuse to check personal stuff (i.e. email, fanfic accounts, etc.) on the company computer for fear of being caught by some sort of corporate spyware. I love my boss, and we're close, but I have no interest in letting her know that I write fanfic in my free time--especially since some of the fanfic gets a little graphic.

4) Did I mention that I suck? ADD and I are like peanut butter and jelly.

ANYWAY, I'm back in business. Professional life is still rockin', so updates might not be all that frequent, but they will be coming. You should see something substantial by this weekend. If nothing else, I'll have a few lengthy sneak peeks coming your way.

In the meantime, thanks for your patience and your concern. I love the Grey's fic community that's been created, and I'm honored to be a part of it in any capacity. You guys are amazing, wonderful people, and I love that I get to be a part of your lives.

So...that's my story. What've y'all been up to?


* Quotation comes from P!nk's latest record. Check it out!

I read somewhere tonight that Shonda Rhimes was one of the writers involved in Crossroads, the disastrous excuse for a movie starring Britney Spears.

Again...did anyone else just have a lightbulb-over-the-head moment?

Don't get me wrong. For the most part, I loved the finale. Then I read Shonda's blog, and I was immediately reminded why I sometimes wonder if Grey's is run by a bunch of delusional fourteen-year-olds.

Crossroads, kids. Seriously?!

In other news, the next chapter of Dignity is forthcoming:

"You didn't call my bluff. I called yours."

So, um...I spoke to the lovely nerdy boy on the phone today. He and his army company of nerds have taken a look at my poor little laptop's hard drive, and they feel "pretty confident" that they can recover all the data. In fact, if they can't recover the data, they won't charge me at all.

If they do recover the data, though, they'll charge me--are you ready for this?--$3,518.50.

...

Three. Thousand. Dollars.

That's more than I paid for my laptop. Hell, that's more than I would pay for three laptops.

I almost had chickens.

I'm in the process of getting a second opinion. I'm hoping the next army of nerds will be slightly more sympathetic and slightly less greedy. (Hello? Money does not grow on trees, people. I CLEARLY chose the wrong majors in college if they're making $129 an hour.)

The good news is this: I finally managed to check out the flash drive onto which I had backed up most of my data. The first 6 chapters of Dignity are (mostly) intact. I will have to do some revising, but ultimately, not all is lost.

Thank God.

...

Three thousand dollars. Seriously?!

I know I've sucked a little on the keeping-in-touch front lately. I also know that I'm not faring much better on the updating front, and I'm embarrassingly behind with feedback replies.

I really, really, really appreciate all of your wonderful comments. I've always been a bit of a feedback whore, and y'all constantly reply to these stories with insights, grace, and eloquence that continue to astound me. I cannot say thank you enough.

That said...I might be MIA for a bit longer, because the hard drive on my cute little laptop went up in flames, and I'm now operating from a desktop that still runs on Windows 98 and demands to be restarted every ten minutes. I tell you this not for sympathy, but because the latest, like, ten chapters of Dignity went up in flames with the hard drive. I sent it to a very nice, very nerdy fellow who is examining the parts. I'm hoping he can recover some data without charging me a firstborn and a few unnecessary internal organs. That said, I really don't want to RE-write the chapters of Dignity until I know everything is officially lost.

Hope springs eternal, right?

Anyway, I am replying to feedback at a slow, ridiculous pace. I am reading fics at a slow, ridiculous pace. I will return to the e-land of the e-living eventually. Promise.

Thanks for your patience. :)

I have no idea how to articulate my thoughts on the finale yet, so I'm giving you this instead.

This is the longest SBS chapter ever. It clocks in at somewhere around 8,000 words and 23 pages. The editing process almost killed me. I've written and cut, re-written and re-cut, and I can't look at it anymore. ;) I've researched everything from Hemingway plots to ferry schedules. I'm done, lol.

That said, if you haven't yet read Great Expectations, I'm sorry. :P

As always, thanks for your encouragement and your patience. Enjoy!

Title: Step By Step
Author: MortalCity
Part: 11/?
Pairing: The resurrected ship (Mer/Der)
Timeline: Post 4.07 (Physical Attraction, Chemical Reaction)
Summary: Sex and mockery evolves.

Disclaimer: Great Expectations and the characters therein belong to Charles Dickens. The Sun Also Rises and the characters therein belong to Ernest Heminway. Analysis is skewed for the purposes of this plot.

( You can do this. You spent years with your mother. You spent all night with your not-sister. You can totally do simple. )

First off, thanks for responding to my impromptu survey. I swear there's a point to it. :)

Secondly, I'm holding the last scene of the SBS chapter hostage for re-evaluation. It went somewhere totally unexpected during the writing process, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. It might have to sit in the freezer overnight, but I'm going to attempt to chip at it for a little bit longer. However, I did mention an update by tonight, so...in honor of lovelovelovegry, here's the first scene of the chapter:

( Rain Like Wine, Part 1 )

The whole thing should be posted tomorrow!

"The thing I've always wanted to know about Derek Shepherd is ____________."

I swear I haven't forgotten about Step By Step. After the last episode, I needed time to recover and remember why I like Derek.

This chapter will be long. L-O-N-G. Like, Ch 9 long. Extensive research was involved. As of now, I'm still writing.

UPDATE, 8:00pm EST: The chapter is entitled "Rain Like Wine" unless I change my mind. There are about 5000 words. 16 pages. I'm roughly 3/4 of the way through the chapter. I have today off, though, so I'm making decent progress, thanks in part to determination, in part to your encouragement, and in part to Sister Hazel and their amazing song "Your Mistake."

Anyway, as usual, I come bearing a tidbit:

“I brought you something.”

Derek’s mouth curled in a smirk. “I’m sure you did,” he murmured, giving his eyebrows a suggestive wiggle. “Decided to reconsider yesterday’s proposition about the office, did you?”

Meredith’s eyes widened. “Derek!” she hissed, smacking him lightly with her free hand.

“What?” he laughed, sliding his warm hands from her shoulders to her waist. “Relax. There’s no one around. We won’t even have to be quiet.” He grinned wickedly and leaned forward, lowering his voice with mock solemnity. “You probably shouldn’t scream, though.”

And another:

Meredith tilted her head gently to the side and frowned teasingly. “Mark,” she exclaimed softly, “are you actually being sensitive?”

Mark narrowed his eyes to mere slits. “No,” he snapped. “‘Sensitive’ was searching through four different Bed, Bath, & Beyonds for lavender-scented tiki torches to redeem myself in the eyes of your lame-ass boyfriend. This is scholarly concern.”

After two hours at the gym and thirty minutes spent sifting through episode commentary, here's what I've come up with:

( WARNING: Spoilers for 4.15 )

End rant. ;)

As usual, there will be detailed commentary later, when I've had a chance to process. However...

Initial reaction to tonight's episode?

W.T.F.

( On second thought... )

I've started the next Step By Step chapter six times. SIX.

I now have six paragraphs of description leading up to a conversation that I'm not even sure I like anymore.

I had a plan for this chapter. I still have a plan for this chapter. The plan is just proving a little bit difficult to execute.

( Here's some proof that I haven't totally abandoned you guys... )

I don't listen to the podcasts. I don't read the blogs--Debbie's, Joe's, or the writers'. (For a woman who writes for umpteen million characters, Shonda has serious issues changing her voice in writing. Seriously. She can't even pretend to be different people?)

I do, however, read TWoP occasionally for updates. They have a forum topic called "The Writers' Blog: We Could Do Better." Occasionally, it includes quotations like this little gem:


Betsy: Therapy.....
Shonda: Which we thought was interesting simply because you know because I've always been very against the idea of people being in therapy.


Did anyone else just have a lightbulb-over-the-head moment?

Frankly, the title of this episode makes me think of a sci-fi horror movie. Maybe I watched too much Star Trek as a kid (don't judge), but I kept hearing the theme song for "The Exorcist" while visions of the Borg danced in my head...

That's totally not the point. ( The point is this... )

It's probably best not to get used to this kind of productivity. ;)

Title: Dignity
Author: MortalCity
Part: 1/?
Pairing: Who else? (Mer/Der)
Timeline: Post 4.11 (Lay Your Hands On Me)
Summary: He was dating, and she was fine, but one night in a bar changed everything.

This chapter would not have been finished (ever) without Alanis Morissette's lovely song. Give it a listen and tell me that it's not Derek Christopher Shepherd's theme song.

Suggested listening: "Wake Up (Acoustic)" by Alanis Morissette

( I fucking hate Starbursts. )

Okay, the subject is a little corny. Sue me. I couldn't resist. I've been writing angst all day, and I needed to crack a stupid joke.

I know this is long overdue, but I feel the need to weigh in with a little bit of nonfiction. So...

( Thoughts on 'Piece of My Heart'... )

So there you have it, folks. Contributions welcome.