Author's note: So, this was intended to be Addisex, and will get there, I promise. Please read this story and review!


Addison's heart broke as the words of disinterest left Alex's mouth. She wasn't sure if she really wanted to be with him or if it was just hormones, but she had built herself up to believe that he was the perfect man for her, and as he clearly voiced his disinterest for a second time, she couldn't help but believe him, even after the most passionate and overall great sex that she had had in a long time.

The first time that Alex had told her that he didn't want her, she had been heartbroken and moped for weeks, on the inside at least, but she had moved on. She had made plans with Mark-- well, if you could call the sixty days plans, she never really expected him to follow through on it, she just needed the assurance that someone loved her enough to make that sort of sacrifice for her-- well, actually, in retrospect those plans had probably grown directly out of the uncertainty that Alex's rejection had caused within her.

If Mark had known that Alex had hurt her in that way, he would have beat him to a pulp. Addison had to admit that even though Mark was a selfish jackass most of the time, he was overprotective of her, even when she wasn't actually with him. She knew that all he really wanted was for her to be happy. The first time that he had cheated on her, he was just testing the waters, she knew, and probably protecting himself. mark was vulnerable, despite his intimidating and whorish exterior, and really, he just wanted to be loved. That being said, he was still too much of a man-whore to ever really change. He was like a retarded Alex Karev in that he had just stopped maturing at around twenty-seven or so.

Honestly, Addison had probably played a large role in Mark's stunted behavioral growth. She wasn't stupid-- she knew that he wanted her, but at that point Derek wanted her, and that was all that she thought she had needed.

Addison didn't know why she had agreed to the pact with Mark. She didn't want to hurt him after all that he had done for her. He deserved to be given a real chance at having a relationship with her-- after all, he had already more than played the role of husband while her actual husband was ignoring her needs. At the same time, however, she couldn't see herself with Mark for the long haul. Surprisingly, she could have seen herself with Alex. She wanted more than anything to have children with Alex Karev (not that she was about to admit that to him).

This feeling was new-- Addison hadn't ever really wanted to have children with Derek, not because of Derek. She had wanted to have children, and Derek was her husband, and Derek would have made a good father. She wanted children with Derek for all of the logical reasons, not because her heart was telling her that it was right. Which was why she didn't have children with Derek Shepherd...especially when after a certain point she wasn't so sure he would make a good father, and she realized several years before her divorce that a child would have bound him to her. He would have felt obligated and wanted to be the good guy, so he would have stayed with her. And the both would have been absolutely miserable.

It was wrong, Addison knew, to want a man ten years her junior to create children with her. It wasn't fair to the man who was still in his days of playing the field. He wasn't ready to have a long lasting and meaningful relationship, as far as Addison could tell, and being the age that she was, she probably wouldn't be able to hold out long enough for him to be prepared-- she had to have a child now if she was ever going to. And she needed to.

It was ridiculous, Addison knew, to expect anything more than sex from Alex. If he had really wanted her, he wouldn't have said the things that he said the first time, and he certainly wouldn't have brushed her off as coolly as he just had. Today had, without a doubt, quickly gone from one of the best to one of the worst of her life. And so she found herself at a crossroads.

Addison Montgomery rarely cried, but as she left Seattle Grace that night, she couldn't prevent the tears from falling. The one reason that she had stayed in Seattle after her divorce, she now admitted, had been Alex Karev. It was stupid, she knew, to be in love with a man so many years her junior, without ever really having been with him or spoken to him outside of their place of work. She had never dated him.

What she had done was seen him at his most vulnerable, working to save the lives of tiny new-born babies. She had seen him grow close to Jane Doe...or Ava...or whatever her name was. She had seen an open heart that was more affectionate and caring than she had seen in a long time-- a warmer side to him that was infinitely more attractive than Mark's, even though the two men had so much in common.

She had also seen that Alex had been hurt deeply in his life, which was why he protected his heart so carefully. He was afraid to let anyone in, and seemed like he didn't even want to let Addison in. He felt a repulsive desire to mask the beautifully sensitive man that she loved with a rough and uncaring exterior, which didn't suit him at all. She wanted to know why he did that, she wanted to know everything that had gone so wrong in his life to make him feel that he needed to hide who he was. She wanted to help him to get past that, and love him like he had never been loved before, because what she felt for him was so much deeper than anything she had ever felt before.

Addison could sense that Alex had been broken-- maybe that came from having been broken so many times herself, having allowed herself to be broken and remain broken despite her how easy it may have been to extract herself from many of the situations in which she found herself. She, like Alex, had learned to wear a mask to fool people into thinking that she was okay, to keep them from prying into painful personal matters that she didn't want to share with anyone, things that were too sensitive, too unspeakable to share with anyone. Her own personal shame.

Addison thought that she knew what Alex had been through-- she had seen too many people like him, most specifically Mark, not to suspect anything. It was a shame, Alex and Mark would have made really good friends if they weren't such cocky assholes. Though she didn't want to admit it, Mark might have done Alex some good. Addison believed that she, herself could have done him some good, until he pushed her away again, that is.

The first time she could forgive. She could understand that he was pushing her away to protect himself, but twice was more than she could handle. She chided herself for believing that he had been flirting with her, that he had been thinking the same thing that as she had been regarding their relationship...she was a middle-aged woman (well, sort of...she was almost forty), for crying out loud, and he was in his prime! He had wanted to fuck her, and now he had, end of story, she was just a conquest. He had made that perfectly clear by viciously shooting her down, and it hurt her more than Derek's years of indifference, more than the look on Derek's face when he had caught her with Mark. It had hurt her more than Mark's admission to having broken the pact on the same day that she had, or the first time he had cheated on her. It had hurt more than when she found out about Derek and Meredith.

In fact, Addison was certain that she had never experienced anything as painful as this before in her life. Perhaps she had never really fallen in love at all, if he husband hadn't been able to hurt her this deeply with all that he did, and this young man, this boy, really, whom she hardly knew, had been able to break her more than she had ever been broken, and she wasn't altogether sure that she could be fully put back together, or even that she wanted to be.

At Addison's age, what was the point of trying anymore? She wasn't going to be able to fall in love with a man who was prepared to give her all of the things that she wanted. By this point it was uncertain if she would even be able to conceive, even though she had seen many successful pregnancies in women older than herself, she had also seen everything that could go wrong. She knew it would be a gamble. Perhaps it was about time to give up on all of her dreams. If she wanted a child, she would have to be proactive about it. And who said she needed a man in her life in order to have a baby? Granted, it would be nice to have someone with whom she could raise a child, but it wasn't absolutely necessary-- she certainly had the means and the determination to do it all on her own.

All of that being so, Addison formulated a plan. The very next morning, she would call Richard and tell him that she was leaving. She was going to California to see one of her best friends and ex-colleagues (who also, and most importantly, did not go by the name of Shepherd) about getting pregnant-- how plausible it would be for her to have a child, and to formally go over the options as a patient, not as a doctor. Generally speaking, she would have skipped that step, but she needed someone to talk it over with, and she could rule out any of her current friends because she didn't want anyone she knew to know about this. She wasn't even sure that she would ever return to her old life.