Derek and Addison Shepherd sat across one another in their new lawyer's office They had mutually hired a lawyer to handle their divorce in Seattle. It would be easier than trying to get through it with their former lawyer, who was based in New York. Their son was waiting outside of the conference room where a receptionist was tasked with keeping an eye on the eight year old. He was normally very talkative and curious but the unfamiliar surroundings left him completely silent and concerned.

"We'll be right on the other side of the glass, okay? You can see us the whole time." His mother assured him before leaving. He could see them. But it wasn't helping comfort him.

A middle aged man in a tailored suit walked into the conference room with a file in his hand and sat at the head of the conference table, strategically so as not to be on a side with either of them.

"Dr. Shepherd, Dr. Montgomery-Shepherd," he started. "I called you here today before we have some new information we need to go over that has a crucial impact on this case."

The book gave him a curious look. "Like what?" Derek was the first to ask.

"You eloped, is that correct?"

"Yes." Addison answered while Derek spoke over her. "What does that matter?" he asked.

"You didn't have a ceremony later on?"

"Yes, but not real one. Just for appearances, so to speak."

"Why does this matter?" Derek asked again.

"Because it does, Dr. Shepherd, if you can answer my question so I can put the puzzle pieces together and explain it to you."

"We were planning a wedding. By we I mean my mother. A very big, extravagant wedding. And we were getting ready for our intern exams and we were getting annoyed with the whole process so we flew out to Vegas a month before the wedding and eloped. We came back with the intention of cancelling the wedding but our parents were not very supportive of that idea.. My mother would have killed us both if we canceled the whole thing...and then his mother would have buried us."

"Do you remember the chapel you went to?"

Derek shook his head.

Addison on the other hand, recalled some details. "I don't remember the name. I know that all the good ones were booked for the weekend. We ended up leaving the strip to this tiny, sad little chapel because it was the only one that could do the service that night."

"Oh yeah," Derek smiled at the memory. "It smelled like urine and alcohol."

"And that's where you got your marriage license?" The lawyer asked to confirm.

"Yes," Addison replied.

"Well, the chapel you went was not licensed to perform weddings and it was not ordained in any way to sign off on city authorized marriage licenses. They were caught seven years ago and their trial just reached its verdict three years ago. Someone was supposed to call you to let you know."

Derek and Addison stared blankly at him.

"What are you saying?" Derek finally asked.

"You're not legally married."

"I don't understand." Addison replied. "So we've been living a lie?"

"No, not necessarily. You have what's called a common law marriage. But a common law marriage can be ended at any time with no need for a legal divorce."

"No, you don't understand. We've been living as a legally marriage couple for almost 12 years. We've been filing our taxes as 'married, filing joint!' If we're not married, that's tax fraud!" Addison explained on the verge of a panic attack. "Oh my god, I'm a white collar criminal."

"The IRS is not going to come after you for tax fraud," the lawyer assured. "This is an extenuating circumstance."

"We're not legally married?" Derek asked again in disbelief.

"No." the man replied patiently, knowing this must be difficult for them. "So there is no need for an official divorce. You can just separate your joint assets and go about your lives. The only thing that gets a little complicated is custody."

"I left my house, my practice, my friends. Christopher left his school, his cousins, his friends, his house, his tennis team. We left everything to come to this raining swampland, to live in a tin can in the middle of nowhere and work on our marriage! Now you're telling me I have no marriage?!" Addison exclaimed in hysterics. She stopped to take a breath but when her eye's met Derek's stunned one, she got up and stormed out of the room.

Derek sat there quietly for a minute before turning to the lawyer. "What now?" he asked.

After the meeting at the lawyer's office, Derek headed back to work where he expected to find Addison. He ventured up to the NICU, fully expecting her to see her standing beside She always went straight to the NICU when she needed to comfort herself. At first, he didn't understand it. Sick babies were hardly comforting. But over the years he had learned that sick babies often didn't have anyone rooting for them and fighting for them, especially in lower socioeconomic families. Sick babies were a burden and left abandoned soon after birth. He learned that medical intervention did work miracles, but sometimes they needed to be held and loved.

"Hey," he said when he saw her sitting in a rocking chair in the corner with a baby in her arms.

"What are you doing here?" she asked coldly.

"I came to see you, make sure you're okay."

"Why? You're not my husband, you don't have to do that." she reminded him.

"I'm really sorry, Addison." He said softly. "I wish there is something I could say to make it better."

"It doesn't matter anymore, okay? We can just go our separate ways. It's easier this way."

"It is, but that doesn't make it any less painful. And we still have Christopher to think about," he pointed out. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"What's there to talk about?"

"Well, you can yell at me."

"I don't want to yell at you."

"Are you sure? I know you love yelling when you're upset."

"I'm not upset with you. It's not your fault." She assured him. "And hey, now we're not adulterers," she tried to joke.

"Just cheaters," he smirked with a small laugh. "And we don't have to carry a divorce under our belts."

Addison sniffled as she tried to hold back her tears. "We wasted so much time. We lived a complete lie for years."

"It wasn't a complete lie. We believed we were married, we still had feelings for one another. We saw one another as spouses. It wasn't a complete lie."

"Derek, if we knew that were weren't legally bound on paper, our relationship would have been over years ago." Addison pointed out.

He just started at her blankly after that comment.

"You would have left me when work gained momentum for you. Or I would have left when work became more important to you than anything else. We wouldn't have hurt each other so much."

Derek nodded, "Yeah, I guess that's true but we didn't know and we did the best we could."

"Can you really say you did the best you could, Derek?" she asked almost bitterly. "Were these last six months in Seattle really the best you could do? You've treated me worse than ever before, Derek."

"You cheated with my best friend! Of course I was doing my best."

Addison rolled her eyes as the baby in her arms started crying. She held him closer and softly rocked him. "I'll be gone by next week." she told him. "And we can keep our individual assets and liquidate and split the profits on joint assets. Okay?"

Derek nodded. "Actually, I had something else in mind."

"I'm not agreeing to pay you alimony just because I made slightly more than you did. In fact, we're not legally married so you don't get alimony."

"I wasn't going to ask for alimony. I was going to say that we don't have to split all of the joint assets. I just want the land in Seattle. You can keep the Hamptons and the Brownstone. You can keep the stocks and bonds. I just want Seattle."

She stared at him as if he were crazy. "Derek, you're giving up millions in assets. Do you realize that?"

"Yes, I do. But I just want Seattle."

"Okay," she agreed, getting up to put the baby back down in his incubator. "You can have Seattle. I'm leaving anyway so Seattle is all yours."

"You're leaving?" That detail caught Derek by surprise. He knew Addison had a contract with Seattle Grace and she was not the type of person who would break a professional contract for personal reasons. "What about your contract? What about Christopher ?"

"Richard will be meeting with the board to discuss it. I've offered to buy out. And I don't know. I haven't really thought about custody arrangements yet."

"Well, where are you going to go? Back home?"

"Where is home, Derek?"

"New York?"

She briefly meet his eyes, "New York was home because we made it home. It's not home anymore." Technically, home was Connecticut. She was born and raised there, but she never felt at home in her childhood house with her family. Home quickly became anywhere Derek was. They made their home in New York, his family became her family. Without him, she was back to having no home.

"Then where will you go?" he asked curiously. He hadn't appeared this concerned about her in years.

"I don't know. Does it matter?"

He stared at her, "Of course it matters! I need to know where my kid would be."

"Well, he won't be in a tin can so I can already tell you it'll be a better living situation than he's got now."

"I'm not giving up custody, Addison. Just because we're not legally married does not make him any less my son."

"I'm not asking you to give up custody. But I'm not giving you primary physical custody after you took off in the middle of the night and left him behind for months without so much as trying to call him."

"I wasn't walking out on him. I was walking out on you." Derek reminded him.

Addison glared at him. "God forbid you miss an opportunity to rub that in my face." She rolled her eyes and got up to put the baby down in his incubator. She spared Derek one more glare before leaving the NICU without another word.

The following morning Derek came into work and, as luck would have it, his first patient needed an OB consult. He had her paged, but when she didn't answer, he decided to go find her. He checked the NICU, expecting to find her rounding on her tiniest patients first. She wasn't there. Next he tried labor and delivery but no one had seen her since the previous day. He checked the OR board but she wasn't scheduled for a single procedure. He tried calling her a few times but she didn't answer any of the calls. Just as he was about to give up, he ran into Richard in the hallway.

"Oh, thank god you're here. Have you seen or heard from Addison? I've been going crazy trying to find her and she won't answer her phone. I need an OB consult."

"She left. You'll have to call someone else. We've got plenty of other OBs here." Richard said simply. "You know, I never understood why you two specifically paged one other for field specific consults. Is it a billing thing? Like if you call her, she bills for the consult rather than a stranger and that's more money in the household. Because that's unethical. Not illegal, per se but unethical."

"Left?" Derek questioned, ignoring everything else Richard said. "Left work for the day?"

"Left Seattle. I don't know when she's coming back. I don't know if she's coming back. She took a leave of absence while the board determines if they will let her out of her contact."

"And if they let her out, she's not coming back? What about my kid?"

"I would assume not," Richard shrugged. "I don't know."

Finally thought of a story plot to contribute to this amazing Addek revolution that's going on. I'm super excited about it and I hope you guys like it. Please, please let leave a review and let me know what you think so far. :)