All I Want Is This

29

After their short walk through the park and their short moment of tenderness, Mark drove Meredith back to his apartment.

"So what's your plan?" Meredith asked him as they walked inside.

Mark chuckled as he closed the door. "Take a look around you."

Meredith did as Mark told her to do and looked around. Nothing out of ordinary caught her attention; Alicia's clothes all over the place, Mark's work papers, rest food, everything was part of their living room picture. She looked at Mark, clueless, and shrugged.

Mark chuckled again and walked in the middle of the room. "Pay attention," he smirked.

Meredith narrowed her eyes as she looked suspiciously at him. "To this room?"

"To this room and to every other room," Mark smiled.

Meredith looked around her again. She really couldn't understand what he was saying.

"Clean up the house, Grey!" Mark shouted. He took off his jacket, throwing it on the couch and then started picking up his daughter's things.

Meredith looked, surprised as that wasn't what Mark had hinted about earlier in the park. "So you brought me here to clean up your apartment?" she frowned.

"No. Actually I brought you here for a belly dance," he laughed. "You can do Alicia's bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen and I'll do my room and the living room."

Meredith shrugged, wondering why she had believed they were there for something more romantic when she knew Mark so well. She started gathering Alicia's things too, while Mark took care of his.

Meredith had put all Alicia's things in order in her bedroom and she was now ready to vacuum the carpet. Before she turned it on, Meredith considered it would be safer if she checked under the bed first. It proved she was right about that. Along with pencils, papers and shoes, Meredith also found Kitty, the stuffed kitten that Mark had given her to make her forget about the real kitten. Meredith smiled, shaking her head. Alicia was not easy to fool. Luckily, the bed had high legs, so she could crawl under it to get to the toy. Then she noticed for the first time an object that looked like a suitcase. Meredith looked at it for a moment, wondering what was doing in there and if she should take it out and check if it still had some of Alicia's things from New York. Something told her not to. She got out of the bed, shook the dust off her clothes and started the vacuum cleaner. Once she cleaned the carpet, the room looked neat and clean again. Meredith smiled, proud of the results and turned to walk outside the bedroom. Her feet automatically froze in the doorway. That suitcase kept making her ask what it contained. She peaked outside on the hall and heard Mark throwing something into his room. Meredith walked back inside Alicia's room and closed the door.

She pulled the suitcase outside and sat down on the floor as she opened it. She found it full of papers and folders- probably Mark's, she thought. Something else caught her attention as she dug in through those papers. At the bottom of the suitcase, Meredith found a small, rectangular, pink box. She took it out and stared at her, wondering if she should peak inside or just put it back. There was something about that box; it was probably its pink color and its pink ribbon, which made Meredith think there were some of Alicia's things. Meredith hesitated at first, but then she decided that it was no rudeness if she wanted to see Alicia's things. The curiosity won and Meredith took out the lid. She smiled as she saw the baby photos inside.

She picked up the first one and had no doubt that Alicia was the baby from those pictures. The first one she took was a foreground of Alicia sleeping, with her fists curled under chin. The next picture of Alicia, another foreground, but this one was brighter and Meredith thought it had been taken somewhere outside, showed Alicia like she had around 6 or 7 month old and the camera had caught her laughing at it. Meredith looked through the rest of the photos, all of them with Alicia only, sleeping, eating from her bottle, crying or laughing. The more she looked at those photos, the more she noticed how less Alicia looked like her father. There was no one else in those photos; not a single picture of Alicia's mother, but Meredith was sure Alicia was the spitting image of her mother- fair skin, delicate features, blue eyes and the golden hair.