A/N: Hi Addek fans! I must say, despite publishing the occasional one-shot, I have really missed you all. So, here is a new story for you. Honestly, I am a little nervous in publishing it, but my Addek brain has been on overdrive these days, and this fandom has been nothing but kind and welcoming to new writers like me, and thus I am taking the plunge.

This story begins in a flashback, but will be set during mid-season 5 of Grey's, and mid-season 2 of Private Practice. "Crescent Moon" by KT Tunstall is one of my all time favorite songs (hence the title)...I would highly recommend listening when you can. Anyway, I hope you enjoy chapter one!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.


"So feel me

Pulling all your oceans up around my body

And if it should ever let me leave this place too soon

You'll always know that I'm a crescent moon"

Addison
March 2007

This was how Addison Montgomery—formerly known as Shepherd—pictured it:

Three o'clock that cold and sunny Seattle afternoon, she was behind the wheel, hands in the two-and-ten position because that was the way her father, who spent hours teaching her to drive when she first got her permit, liked her to drive, and she didn't want anything to happen to the car her father had owned for almost half her life. The jeep was eight years old and smelled like a subtle mixture of coffee and fishing gear, and if she looked in the rearview mirror, she could see where her parents used to strap in her booster seat.

Doc, the terrier mix that once belonged to Meredith Grey but was now in the care of Addison and her husband, Derek, rode with Addison because he was still rambunctious and liked to nuzzle the driver's ear from the back seat, and Addison had worried that he might distract Carrie. Doc and Addison were two miles behind, with one last stop to make after the vet's office before heading home.

Her daughter: Carrie Madeline Shepherd. Dark, yet auburn-tinged straight hair and ocean eyes; the perfect combination of her parents. She was wearing the red and grey hoodless MIT sweatshirt—endearingly large—that had been given to her for last Christmas from Jason. It was so Carrie to be wearing it, just two days after their break-up that had also included a box in the mail from Boston full of things she had given him, like her miniature telescope and dog-eared copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.

The March day was unusually cold but bright, and although the temperatures had dropped below freezing the night before, the roads were clear of ice. Carrie was thinking of spring break.

Every year since she was in kindergarten they would spend the week up at the cabin in Maine, just north of her father's alma mater Bowdoin College. Some years it would still be snowing so they would go snowshoeing or sledding; whereas others it would be unusually warm, calling for day-long hikes that left Addison questioning why she ever left the city to begin with.

Carrie was sixteen in January, her license was fairly new, and she brought her sense of responsibility to driving the way she did everything else. Straight A's last semester despite starting at a new school mid-term, a talented choral singer, making the varsity swim team last month and coaching lessons for preschool-aged children, such good-heartedness, and pure, steadfast determination to go to Columbia University like her parents, and Addison wondered if that was Carrie's way of trying to hold her and Derek together, to remind them of what they had gotten through together—because of one another—and—unbeknownst to Carrie—where they had conceived their daughter.

To Carrie, Columbia was a reminder of how happy her parents had been, and could be again.

Addison knew her daughter felt bad for leaving the trailer angry that morning, calling Addison a hypocrite for telling everyone that her marriage was fine, when really she and Derek were in the beginning stages of divorce.

So there she was, driving home from school on 103rd Ave., past the rows of towering evergreen trees and frozen creeks, pure white in the sunlight, talking to her father on speaker phone, listening to him tell her how well she swam the 100-meter butterfly that morning with her strong arm extensions and quick breaths.

Derek and Carrie adored each other and had since her birth. In fact, it was because of Derek that their daughter had even been named Carrie. As soon as they found out they were expecting a girl, he had wanted to name her after his mother, Carolyn. But Addison had protested; as much as she loved her mother-in-law, she wanted her daughter to be her own person with her own identity.

Thus, they had compromised with Carrie.

At night, as an infant, when she'd wake up crying and refuse to sleep, she'd quiet only when he would cradle and walk her, singing her made-up songs—as he did for Addison when they were married—as he carried her back and forth across the room overlooking Central Park.

And even those years when Carrie was ten and eleven, and Addison took on more genetics research, Derek would come home from the hospital and he and Carrie would take the Scrabble board into the family room, each playing the funniest words they could think of. Addison could remember the laughter that echoed through the house warming her heart as she sat at her desk, buried in paperwork.

Carrie drove toward the trailer—home—and the towering trees, the road straight and clear. There was no traffic in either direction; on Vashon Island there rarely was. The pavement was sanded and clear of ice, tree branches interlocking overhead and throwing afternoon shadows. 103rd Ave. took a sharp right before turning into Vashon Hwy and then Cedarhurst Road, where their trailer and the meadow surrounding it came into view.

The road was clear, she knew the way; she was such a good driver, and Washington had such strict hands-free laws, but even still Addison knew she would never risk driving with the phone up to her ear, legal or not. Derek had taught Carrie how to drive himself, he could attest to that. She would never hurt him, never hurt herself; she loved her family, she loved her life, so there was no explanation.

Ten minutes later Addison continued along, finished with her errands. She still had a few hours until dark, so she was eager for time with Carrie; it had been a while since they'd really talked, and she knew there was a lot her daughter wanted to say, not just about the divorce, but about her own break-up as well. All Addison wanted to do was hold her daughter close, just be with her because she was smart enough to know that words don't help with break-ups, there was no explaining that everything would get better, that she would heal, that time would pass and the day would come when it didn't hurt so much.

First of all, Addison wasn't even sure she believed that herself.

Vashon Island, while average in size, was a small community; so small that when Addison heard sirens her stomach dropped because she was pretty sure whatever it was would affect someone she knew. It wasn't like being a doctor at the hospital where sirens came with the territory, and could mean anything from a heart attack to a broken wrist.

Driving along Vashon Hwy, Addison slowed down to let the fire truck pass. Doc, in the back seat, paced back and forth. She told him to calm down, everything was okay, they would be home in a minute. She flipped on the signal light, veering off the main road, and saw the burst of flashing lights near her own property.

Some thoughts were too unbearable to allow. She saw a Seattle PD officer gesture for traffic to turn around, go back the other way, and she rolled down the window to tell him she lived there, and still, she wouldn't allow herself to think that the accident belonged to them. But Doc was barking, and he knew, and when the officer recognized Addison and approached the car with that look in his eyes that no human being wanted to see, her heart stopped because her heart knew.

Addison opened the car door. The officer tried to block her but nothing in this world could have held her back. She was right behind Doc running to the front of the long line of police cars, fire engines, and ambulances. She heard someone say:

She couldn't have even hit the brakes; she must have be going fifty.

And someone else saying:

Shut up, that's her mother.

The sun glistened off the frozen creek in the distance, but it didn't blind her. Addison saw everything, and her mind took a picture of all that was there and all that wasn't.

The memory would stay with her always, even when, in the future, she moved over a thousand miles away. Distance was no match for this: the car crumpled against the thick tree, billows of black smoke nearly concealing the small silver trailer, rescue workers with no one to rescue parting to let her through, thin streams of blood on the face of her daughter as she lay on the freezing ground, branches blowing against the blue sky that already exposed the small crescent moon; the crescent moon that must have been the last thing Carrie saw on earth.


Thank you all for reading and please review!