A/N: Alright so the first one up in Prompt Friday. This is where my head went for some reason. Enjoy the craziness!
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We are surrounded by relics of a life, a life that no longer exists...
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The problem is that it has been the same dream for the last ten days. Not that she's counting or anything.
Ever since she finally gave in and went there with Pete after an extraordinarily horrible day she has had this dream. And it isn't one of those fuzzy ones with dotted edges and blurred pastels of memories. It's bright and vivid and haunting. More like a hallucination than a dream.
She goes to sleep at ten, and she knows it's pathetic, but it's routine. When she doesn't have any weird practice on-call shifts or hasn't been able to coax Naomi from Sam's arms for the night it is ten on the dot. She relaxes her body and thinks about fields of clouds and being weightless and then the dream happens. She wakes up seven hours later shaking, alarmed and still surprisingly in California living in her amazing beach house that is supposed to be everything she ever wanted for her life.
Tonight she has a plan. One relaxing night with no co-workers, no phone calls, no pagers (that honestly serve little purpose these days) and utterly no stress. She settles into the tub at seven, faced scrubbed clean and feeling vibrantly young like she can handle tomorrow's monotony at the clinic without wanting to go crazy and shoot up the place. She soaks slowly letting the water get luke warm and then peals herself from the jets and steps onto the cushy white bathmat while drying off. Admiring her new pedicure she tiptoes to the counter and brushes her teeth until they are sparkling and then heads off in search of a good old movie that won't affect her sleeping pattern until it is time.
Because sleep is psychological. Because Addison thinks dreams can be controlled.
She finally hauls her tired limbs upstairs and collapses onto the bed fully prepared for another lusty dream about some random nurse from the lab or even Dell, she'd settle for dreaming about Dell for crying out loud. Anything but this. She succumbs half worried and half prepared for what she knows she will see.
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"Pass the jello!" Derek shouts to Addison who has to adjust her hearing aid down just a touch in order to not want to smack her ex-husband with the head full of gray hair senseless. Why does everyone have to suffer because he is too stubborn and self involved to finally give in and get hearing assistance?
"Here." She crones and pushes the plate of melting red gloop his direction.
"I wish they would serve the green." He mutters digging his spoon in and taking out his fake teeth. She doesn't question the logic, it's part of the routine.
"They serve the green on Mondays Derek." She snaps and fingers the gold brooch on her light blue sweater. She doesn't know the significance; she's never seen the item before.
"Hello old people." Mark chirps, sliding his walker in next to the table and slouching into the open chair next to him. He's got on gray old man slacks and a white undershirt with black slippers because he can't be bothered to dress himself appropriately anymore. He claims it's because it takes too long to get out of the get up when the ladies need him.
"You're old too or you wouldn't be here." Derek smacks, pieces of gelatin sliding down his chin, dripping onto his tray. He wipes it free with a paper napkin and fingers the pills in the cup next to him.
Sometimes Addison wonders if they all drove each other crazy. She hates that she remembers all of this when she wakes up and then is forced to convince herself that that is not her reality for a good portion of the day.
"I'll never be old." Mark puffs out his chest. "You know Margie? In 33D? Well, she's got 33Ds, I can tell you that much." He smirks at Derek who is too engrossed by his meal to care that Mark is still a player and then looks to Addison who is sitting quietly in her chair.
Her hair's still a bright color of red, never fading much unlike her wrinkled skin and bagging eyes. He never sees them shine anymore and she always has the same look on her face. "You wanna play checkers Addie?"
"We play checkers everyday, Mark." She always replies without looking up.
"Yeah and I always kick you ass. So what d'ya say? Maybe Derek can play the champion." He brushes her warm cheek with the back of his hand and then dips down to her tray and removes the two tiny blue pills. "You gotta take these Addie. You feel better when you take them."
"I don't want to." She states softly and looks up at Derek.
"You have to take them or they'll make you take them like last week. You don't want that again do you?" Derek manages rubbing her hand that is lying securely against the hard table.
And then it drifts away. And she never remembers the people in the background but she is sure they are there in the beginning. She knows that when it all starts there is bustling all around and other residents slurping their own red jello without teeth. She is certain that there are children running the floor while their parents visit with grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends but no one ever comes to see them. It's always Derek, Mark and Addison and that's it.
Then she asks what she always asks and gets the proverbial answer. "Why are we here?"
"Because we aren't done with each other yet." Is the reply but she is always looking down at her tray and the two drugs and never sees whose mouth it comes from. She can't decipher the voice and then….
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She slams down onto the floor more upset than she was when she went to bed trying not to have the dream in the first place. Slamming her fists down into the hard wood she finally gives up. Clambering back into bed she knows she has two choices, 1. Call Violet and ask what the hell this all means, which would invariably lead to her discussing far more issues than she cares to think she has...or 2. Put herself back to sleep and hope that it goes away but Addison has never been that kind of lucky. It took sleeping with Pete for fantasies of Pete to finally go away and she knows there is really only one way to solve this.
Slowly she reaches across the fluffy white comforter and grabs her cell phone unplugging it from the charger. She pushes down the number three button and holds her breath until she hears his voice.
"Hello? Hello…" She hears the rustling and she is certain he is finally looking at the caller information. "Addison?" He falls quiet again. "Addie are you there?"
"I had a bad dream." And she chides herself for how stupid that sounds; how childish she feels for using those words and actually wishing that he was here holding her and telling her that it will all go away.
"A bad dream?" He scrubs the sleep from his eyes and sits up nearly whacking his head on the low bars above the bottom bunk.
"A nightmare." She clarifies dropping her tone and curling into a tiny ball on the side of her bed. This may be the last time she ever hears his voice and she wants to savor it.
He grins and then is torn for a moment when someone above him grumbles something about getting his fucking ass out of the room if he isn't going to sleep. He tells Derek that not everyone is fighting with their girlfriend and needs to use the on call rooms for sleep. Met with a pillow to the head he slips out the door and slides against he wall in time to hear a shattered voice on the other end wavering, "Mark? Are you there?"
"I'm always here." He smirks and knows she would probably slap him if she was in the vicinity. "Tell me about your dream." He offers stretching his cool legs against the tile and watching the sunrise out the window opposite him. He wonders if the rays are trying to burn through the fog there but instead listens as she rambles on.
And when she gets to the end of the story, after he's been silent for ten minutes, she knows the meaning.
They'll never be done with each other. She can't escape by choosing a new state, it doesn't work like that. They're Derek, Mark and Addison after all.
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