ONE IN EVERY FIVE STARS

Maddison Christmas oneshot. There were four Christmases Addison was alone, and one where she wasn't.

For my final, happy Christmas, I'm working on what Shonda wanted to do when Eric Dane was leaving (she wanted Mark to run off with Addison, as both their stories were coming to a close, but it didn't seem true to character to have Mark leave Sofia, so they had to kill him ). And for the interests of this story, THAT crossover was just before Christmas.

Disclaimer: I think we established a long time ago that if I owned anything, things would have turned out very differently.

SPOILERS up to the plane crash, and then everything goes my way after that.

One

She was nine, and she had just stopped believing in Santa Claus, that calendar year. It wasn't her parents that told her, she didn't even ask; in the midst of a fight over which of the Montgomery siblings got to choose the Christmas decorations colour scheme this year, Archer had spat "Yeah, well Santa's not real!" after she'd successfully won the coin toss to select red and purple.

So Christmas wasn't the same already, and then that morning a couple of his friends had knocked on the front door and invited him out, and as she'd been getting her shoes out of the cupboard as well, because she always went to play with Archer and the boys, her big brother had slammed the door shut and told her he didn't want her to come play with them, she was 'too young, and to be honest, a little bit babyish'. She'd gone up to her room when he'd left, her mother was taking a nap, complaining about some sort of migraine, and her father was working. He was probably working with his secretary Sylvia, he really seemed to like his secretary Sylvia, and Addison didn't think you'd work with just anyone on Christmas Day. Because despite Santa not being a real man, it was still magical, wasn't it?

She sat on her bed and stared down at her feet, in the new patent black shoes she'd received in a decorated box this morning. They were quite nice. She was starting to really like shoes. Archer should think about that when he accused her of being babyish. Only grown up little girls liked shoes.

She swung her legs, and pretended the tears rolling down her cheeks weren't there.

Two

She woke up, and it always seemed to be the way on Christmas morning; that you can expect to wake up, for one beautiful minute, in another life. For one brief and beautiful moment, her marriage was going to still be perfect, she was going to be as happy as she had been the day of her wedding, and Mark… well, Mark wouldn't be there. Things had been going badly between her and Derek for months now, and he'd been sending Mark as his replacement to all sorts of things. But the night before… the night before had been different. It had been Julie's wedding, one of her surgical nurses, and Derek had promised and promised and promised again that he was going to be there, he was going to pick her up at the brownstone, having come straight from a hospital shift (and she thought he was volunteering for shifts these days, he seemed to be constantly working). And then the car had arrived, and it had been Mark's car, and she'd tried to force a smile onto her face and gotten in the car, laughing, but it had somehow been the last straw.

The wedding reception had been lovely, and no one had even commented this time on how Derek was replaced by Dr Sloan – she guessed they'd gotten used to it. And then Mark was with her in the car home, and he got out and walked her to the door, and she'd had a few glasses of Merlot, but not too many to remember, however; all of a sudden, and she wasn't not quite sure how, his lips were on hers, her back was up against her front door, and he tasted quite wonderful. Completely different, and slightly spicy. And wonderful.

But she'd backed, stunned, into her house, with no words moments later, and she hadn't responded to any of his calls or messages before she went to bed. And then she was waking up, and it was Christmas morning, and she didn't even want to think about how close she had come to cheating on her husband the night before.

She cleaned her teeth, and if she didn't look in the mirror, she could pretend she wasn't crying.

Three

She sat outside, on the steps of the trailer, the cold air whipping hair into her face, her breath just visible in front of her. It was Christmas morning, and so much had changed in the last year. She'd succumbed to both her feelings for Mark and the distant memory of what it felt like to be wanted only weeks after the last Christmas, and then in the spring Derek had walked in on them, and everything had exploded, and was beyond her control. She'd tried to make it work with Mark for a while, but then she'd somehow managed to find herself pregnant, and everything had started going wrong.

To begin with, things had been beautiful. Mark had bought the Yankees onesie and marked out the date on the calendar, but with hindsight she guessed he was covering himself. He was terrified. She'd walked in on him and one of the scrub nurses in the on call room, and after that she hadn't been thinking straight. She didn't think she'd been thinking straight until she took steps out of the abortion clinic, feeling suddenly and indescribably empty, and started mentally brainstorming what she was going to pack to go and find Derek in Seattle.

And so here she was, outside Derek's trailer, in the cold, and for once, not completely alone, but she somehow still was. Because despite everything, despite what he was kidding himself he was trying to rebuild, his heart wasn't in the trailer, in his wife's bed.

His heart was with Meredith Grey, she wasn't stupid enough not to realise that.

She wiped her eyes fiercely, telling herself it was the cold that was making them water.

Four

Despite everything, and all the places she's been at Christmas, she thought maybe alone, through choice, with her cat, was probably the worst. The last few weeks, through the holiday season, had been particularly hard, since everything that had happened with Mark and his daughter and their moment of chance, again.

She'd thought she was tougher than to hurt that much over a man, these days, but she couldn't explain the tightening of her chest and the sinking feeling in her stomach with 'I'm so sorry, Red.' He'd broken her heart, and she wasn't stupid, she wasn't living under any illusions, she knew she'd broken his before, but it hurt to be on this side.

She'd been his booty call, his desperate attempt to pretend he wasn't in love with another woman, and that had really hurt. She hadn't thought she'd ever have found herself there.

Pete and Violet had offered she spend Christmas with them and Lucas, but that was still awkward, and even Archer had called her a few days before to see if she wanted to join him in Vegas for Christmas, but she'd politely declined. She didn't seem to fit in anyone's Christmas, so she supposed she was supposed to be on her own.

Because she was alone, she did far too much thinking, and had come to the conclusion, with tears in her eyes she'd given up pretending weren't there, that she had loved Mark Sloan. She had really loved him, and now what she supposed was her last chance at that had gone down the drain, too.

Five

She's on the beach this Christmas, a man's arms around her shoulders, her eyes fixed on two little children scampering in the sand.

It had happened so quickly, in the end. It had been a number of months after she'd heard about the plane crash with the doctors from Seattle, and the loss of Lexie Grey. She'd thought for a moment about contacting Mark, but then she'd figured he'd lost the woman he loved and he was probably struggling, he didn't need her to intervene. And then she'd been faced with the choice between Jake and Sam, and she'd chosen Jake for a while, but she supposes neither of their hearts were fully in it, and it had all come to nothing before she'd hardly had a chance to settle in. So it had just been her and Henry, but that was alright.

And then, months down the line, there'd been a knock on her door in the late evening, and Mark Sloan had been there, eyes slightly red from a hangover, face unshaven, and words spilling out of his mouth.

"I've been drinking myself sick these last weeks, Red, since I've been out of hospital… Lexie Grey just died, right there, and I didn't think I was supposed to be able to go without her, but I have, and then I was drinking and I-" he trailed off, looking down at the floor.

"Mark, I-"

"Hear me out, Addie. Then I realised I had loved one other woman as much as I loved Lexie, hell, maybe more than I loved Lexie, and the last I'd seen of her… I think I broke her heart. And maybe Lexie wasn't really the one I was supposed to be with, maybe it's always been you, Addie…" he sighed, biting his lip slightly, as if it was all or nothing, right there, right then. "I realised I've been here the whole time, Red. I've been stupid, and I've been an ass, and I've ruined it all more than once, but so have you. And I'm still here… I haven't got anywhere else to be. Am I too late?"

And she had opened her mouth to say something about them never being good for each other, never working out, always causing more pain than good, but what came out had been entirely different.

"I love you too." Was all she'd said, in a slightly incredulous tone, as if she hadn't fully realised it herself before. And there'd been stunned silence for a moment, as Mark replayed what she'd just said in his head, and then they'd been in one another's arms, and things had finally been back the way they should be.

So that's how she's here, now, on the beach outside her apartment in LA, in Mark's arms, with Henry and a little girl, the newest addition to their makeshift family, Cara, adopted three months before, her parents blown to smithereens in a gas explosion in her house whilst she'd been at school during the day.

They'd gotten married, in a small, private ceremony, only months after he'd turned up on her doorstep, and then he'd started his own practice just a few blocks away from Seaside Wellness, and they'd settled down.

He'd taken joint custody of Henry, and they'd put their names down on further adoption lists together, and they'd never looked back.

And that's how she's here, now. Henry's chasing Cara through the sand, between intricate three and four year old sandcastles, and her head's on her husband's shoulder, because he had always been there, it had just taken both of them everything that had happened to realise it.

And everything's perfect.

"Merry Christmas, Red."

She tilts her face up, and brushes her lips against his.

And she doesn't cry at Christmas anymore.

That's a wrap! I hope you enjoyed all the Christmas fluff! Some feedback, even if it's only a few words, would be very much appreciated. I need you to restore my faith in the Maddison fandom still being alive! Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed.