Derek and Addison, sometime between the divorce and her leaving for LA; a scene I dearly wish Shonda had given us.
Time is a funny thing, a nasty little vengeful creature. The last time he made this journey, took these steps, he wished that it would slow down, that his feet would take twice as long to cover the distance because his mind was fast enough to know he didn't want to do this.
This time, as he wills it to move faster, to move his feet faster than his racing mind, of course it moves in trickles, dripping like the sweat down his back, in rivulets that drain him.
Seven floors up, twenty steps between each floor, just a hundred and forty tiny steps but he knows its too late.
He's known for a while, maybe for years, he's known. But he acknowledges it now, a tad sheepishly, in the aftermath of what he thought was going to be his entire life.
His parents, they saw each other across a crowded dance hall, and they just knew. His mother told that story often, fondly, her eyes decades away; he would stand in a dissection hall years later with his heart in his throat when it happened to him. He just knew, the first time he saw her.
Knew he would spend the rest of his life with the girl who captured his heart before she had opened her mouth, the girl who became the woman who watched him grow into a man who forgot about her as he tried to be the man he thought she wanted.
The man he thought he needed to be. The truth is, he is single-minded. The dream of success so captivated him that it drowned everything else out. As he struggled to build himself the life he thought he wanted, he forgot to live.
He still wants it, of course; he's always been competitive. So has she. It's in their nature, their blood, they wouldn't be as good as they are if they weren't cutthroat. But she used to spur him to be better. They were by each others sides from the beginning of what turned out to be an arduous, grueling, long path, and she made it better. Easier.
For her, it's easy. He knows now that no matter how brilliant a surgeon he is, it's because he has worked for it. To Addison, it comes naturally, instinctively, as if she were born to it. He's seen it time and again in young interns, the brightness in their exhausted eyes as they push and push and push. He gently shooes them off his service towards places where they will shine, because he knows the price of making up for instinct with sheer elbow grease is simply too high. He's paid it himself.
He paid for it in long, resentful silences and backs turned in bed, in snide comments and in missed occasions and cold shoulders, in tears and pleas and betrayal. He knows its too much.
But he did- he knows this as surely as his heart pounds in his body, as surely as he breathes - that he loved her. All-consumingly, breathtakingly, passionately and possessively and blindly, he loved her.
Until he took that passion and it curdled into resentment, growing every time she complained about his hours, how many things he missed out on, every single thing he did wrong. He thought she should understand; she did the same work, after all.
What he didn't understand was that she fit work around the rest of her life. She made time for him, for family, for everything else, while he obliterated all else in his relentless march for glory. What else could he have expected, than for her to turn to someone else?
She must have expected him, known that he would come. After all these years, she should have known, but she still looks surprised and instead of being hurt he's pleased that he can still catch her off guard when he tries. If only he hadn't stopped trying.
She lets him in wordlessly, not because there are no words left to be said - there are far too many, weighing in his chest, aching in his throat - but because she doesn't need to.
Their words hang in the air between glances and held breaths, they pass between understanding fingertips and knowing nods. They have been left unspoken for so long that there is no point saying them now.
"You're leaving." he says simply, instead, looking at the bare room that is just slightly barer than the last time he visited. This white, cold, impersonal room, this is the room that held her while he broke her, this is where she lived while their lives fell apart. This is the room where they first said, out loud, that their marriage was over.
It was so sad.
She offers a weak smile in return, turning over something small in her hands. "I am." It is a velvet box, the rounded corners white with wear. It is the box he pulled from his pocket almost thirteen years ago as he knelt in the snow with his blood rushing so loudly in his ears that he almost missed her yes. He slipped the ring on her finger, and she wound her arms around him he snapped the box closed, the sharp sound signaling the beginning of the rest of their lives.
It is empty now, her fingers bare, and the snap when she closes rings of finality.
Leaving. She will be gone in the morning, he will not see her hair swinging around corners, hear the inimitable click of her heels, her laugh, her voice, he will no longer watch her at her craft.
He has woken up to her for most of his adult life, he has lain down to sleep beside her. They shared every minute detail of their lives, they are so enmeshed that he doesn't know how they are meant to separate without tearing each other apart.
He loves her. He is not in love with her.
It has taken all four decades of life for him to realise this simple difference; that you can love someone completely, yet not be in love with them.
And the truth is undeniable; he will always love her. She was so many of his firsts, she is so much a part of the man he has become, that to erase her completely would be to lose a part of himself.
To him, she will always be the scent of citrus and musk, she will always be shades of autumn red and gold. She will come back to him on hazy twilit evenings in swirls of woodsmoke and grass, on golden mornings as he sips a cup of black coffee. He will remember her in glasses of red wine and on cold rocky beaches, he will think of her in silent college libraries and sometimes he will feel her watching him as he operates.
She will cross his mind in the snowy silent nights between Christmas Eve and morning, in a cup of hot chocolate and in the green boughs of a pine tree, he will hear her voice in carols, he will never taste peppermint without feeling her lips on his and he will never look at the sunlit ocean again without thinking of her eyes.
He will feel her hands on his every time he teaches an intern to throw a stitch, he will think of her when he laughs at a joke she would have liked. He will think of her when the past catches up to him, when he meets old friends and when he realises how little time is left and how much is already gone.
Her name will always catch a little in his throat and hearing it from another will always make his heart skip a beat. Thinking of her will make him melancholy, and forgetting her will make him tired.
But he is not in love with her.
And so it is only fair, so this is the only thing left to do. He owes her this, at least, in exchange for everything she has given him - warmth and love and safety and a home, laughter and life and the memories he will carry forever.
The memories will be enough, they will remind him that no matter how they ended, no matter who they became or where they end up now, that she was his. That she was his, once, and he was hers and they had so many beautiful years.
That no matter how badly it hurts to let go, no matter how hard it is to mask this ache, this is the right thing to do because she deserves so much better.
She deserves someone who will give her their time, that ultimate gift because we only have so much of it. Fiddly little bastard, always running away from him. She should be somewhere where her talents are put to use, where she can be as miraculous as he knows she is, she deserves to be the kind of happy that make you feel feather- light, shiny-bright.
He knows there is joy, not far from here, and that no matter where she goes, it will find her. And that makes it a little easier to let go.
"Goodbye, Addison."
This is long and vague and probably everyone will think I have lost what little mind I had, but the fact that Derek and Addison never really said goodbye was too much. Decades of being together, and they never got a proper ending.
I've had a miserable week, so writing this was soothing. It's kind of depressing, I know, so if you read the whole thing I love you.
Please review and let me know what you think.
Title from Snow Patrol, purveyors of tearjerking songs.