Title: Echo
Rating: PG
Pairing: Addison/Derek
Summary: Addison packs up the brownstone in preparation for her new life.
Disclaimer: Not mine, Shonda's.
Reviews are love and much appreciated.
Her footsteps echo in the now empty brownstone, devoid of the life it was once so full of. The movers aren't coming until tomorrow so she has the whole day to sort through 11 years of a life together. Derek phoned earlier to inform her that he had already taken everything he wanted, and therefore the rest was hers. She doesn't want it all though, she doesn't want to much in her new life that reminds her of her old life. And Derek. She has enough of that already. Everytime it rains, it reminds her of Seattle; when she waits in line for her morning paper, one glance up a wedding magazine reminds her of her own wedding. Reminders of her old life seep into her new one, like the way the Seattle rain used to seep into the crevices of the trailer on rainy nights.
Everyday she's reminded of Derek, and everyday she files those emotions away into the small box labelled "Derek" in her mind.
She can't let him seep into her new life.
She hopes that packing up and selling the brownstone will give her the closure that she needs. She has to end her old life before she can move on with her new one.
She wanders into the living room and slowly traces the empty spot where their wedding picture used to stand. She removed it the morning after he left, not able to look at their younger, happier faces. As she traces the mark the dust flies up, only serving as a reminder of how long it's been since the house was really lived in.
She pulls various objects off the shelf, trying to ignore the empty marks and piles them into a box. Moving from the living room she moves through to the kitchen, she'd never been much of a cook and neither had Derek, preferring instead to eat out or get take out. She removes the pots and pans from the cupboard, noticing how unused they look. Derek had bought her cookbooks but she never used them, instead declaring that if she could master neonatal surgery she could master cooking. The first set of pans they had bought had been ruined by her, she lost track of time and burnt all the food. Derek had spent hours scrubbing the pans but the burn wouldn't shift so in the end he begrudgingly threw them away and they ordered in.
She picks up the cookbooks Derek had bought her, all lovingly inscribed with his sloping handwriting.
"To Addison, in the hope that it will make you a better cook! All my love, Derek"
Her fingers run over the the looping l's of "all" and "love", the letters and handwriting she's become accustomed to seeing everyday and has committed to memory.
Closing the book, she puts them all in the box along with her pots and pans. Maybe she'll try to learn to cook again. Packing up the rest of the kitchen she moves upstairs to the room she's been dreading the most. The bedroom. Even when she was living with Mark and had to return for bits and pieces she avoided the bedroom as much as possible.
Its where it all happened.
Memories flash across her mind as she steps into the room. Good one's from Derek, and guilty ones from Mark. She tries to shift the latter one's to the back of her mind, as she begins the arduous task of sifting through what's left of her and Derek's clothes.
It takes her a while to get to an item she hasn't worn for 11 years.
Her wedding dress.
Carefully she removes it from it's bag and lays it on the bed. Taking a seat next to it she fingers the fine lace and beading as carefully as she did the first time she touched it. It's just as beautiful as it was when she wore it all those years ago. She's unsure whether or not to keep it. She didn't keep the rings after all. The dress is different though. She had hoped to one day pass onto her daughter, but that dream is now unlikely to happen. Carefully she puts it back in it's bag and places it on the "to keep" pile. It's memories, and its Derek but she can't bear to part from it. Looking further in the wardrobe she discovers Derek's wedding suit, and decides that even though he said he didn't want anything she'll send it to him.
She can't just throw it away.
Packing up the rest of the clothes she leaves the bedroom and finishes the other rooms. As she makes her way downstairs her footsteps once again echo in the empty house. She'll miss this house, not for the wonderful things that made them buy it in the first place but for the memories that she and Derek made here. She'll also miss all the events that could have been, her and Derek starting a family, growing old together.
All the hope that was once in the house for them is now reserved for some other couple.
With both heart and head full of emotion she piles the boxes full of things to keep in her car ready to take them to her new life. Twisting the keys off her keyring she places them on the shelf where her wedding photo once stood, and for the last time hears her footsteps echo as she leaves the brownstone.