Without You

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"Derek, it's me. Call me. Please. Seriously, we… just call me."

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"Derek? Please, just call me and—please. I love you. I do. Call me."

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"It's me again. Where are you, anyway? I guess I'll see you in a few hours. Derek? Just pick up, please! Call me. Seriously."

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"I'm not going to work in the morning. So you can go if you want to, and you want to. Avoid me. But call me. Please."

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"Derek, call me. Where are you? Chief said you cancelled all your surgeries. Why? Where are you? CALL ME."

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"Okay, this is getting ridiculous. WHERE ARE YOU? I get that you don't want to talk to me, trust me, but where are you? I'm worried. Just call me and tell me you're safe. Derek, please…call me."

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"Listen, I just need to know you're okay. All I need to hear. Just call me, Derek, please, just tell me you're safe, I swear that's all I want right now… I love you, I do, Derek, please just call me, just call me and tell me you're okay…"

"Hi, you've reached Derek Shepherd, please leave a message after the tone."

"Derek, I swear to god if I don't hear from you within the next twenty minutes, I'm calling the police."

Eight. Eight messages she's left on his voicemail in the past seven hours, and that's if you don't count the ones full of yelling and sobbing and crying, which she deleted right after leaving them (of course, she knows the code). Eight messages, and he hasn't called her back once. She sits huddled on the windowsill of her study, looking at rainy Central Park and tries to swallow, tries to breathe, despite the huge lump in her throat. Derek. Where is he? He was upset, it was raining, he was driving… he could by lying in a gutter somewhere. He could be hurt, he could be… what if she never sees him again? What if he's hurt, dead, and it's completely her fault? What if… she stares at her phone frantically, willing it to ring.

Seven. Seven missed calls in the past two hours. It's Mark, she's been letting the phone ring whenever she calls. She's not up for this. She can't deal with this, with the harsh reality of this morning that she has ruined her marriage, that she's has ruined two friendships (for things between her and Mark will certainly never be the same again), that her life has taken such a cruel turn. That she has turned it that way. If Derek… she doesn't know what she'll do. And even if he's safe… what's going to happen? How does this go on? How did she get here?

Confused memories from the night before. Mark's touch like burning cigarette stubs on her skin, his whispered kindness, his hands, exactly where she needed them to be after a day of arguing with a man she barely recognized as a husband, his mouth, exactly where she need to feel it through her haze of tears and bitterness and spite and alcohol. Knowing that it was wrong, and stupid, and allowing herself to free-fall despite this, and knowing how much this will hurt Derek is becoming a reason to do this, until thought fades away under Mark's knowing fingers, his well-placed kisses…

Derek's face when he walks in, the rage, the hurt, so much more than she could possibly bare. The way he looks like he's been ripped open twice, the way he doesn't yell, the way he just looks at her with complete disgust, disappointment, his eyes piercing her like shards of glass. Mark fades away and she's crying and yelling and holding onto him with all her might because she has realized in a burst of naked panic that if she looses Derek, she looses everything. Rain and cries and sinking into a heap on the stairs.

Alone. Alone in the house they bought together, alone in the house she was convinced was going to become their home, a proper home. They bought it and started properly nesting, buying furniture that looked like it could survive a million years together, generations of Shepherds climbing around on it. She remembers, the night they moved in, looking at their reflection in the dark window, and she nestled close, looking at the two people in the window, taking her hand in his, and thinking- this is it.

In retrospect, it's the house that started it. Those first few nights were maybe the last happy ones they had, before they became like strangers, before they stopped fighting and really caring about more than the daily skirmishes, the tiny ways they could find to hurt each other the way only those that know each other can. They stopped making love, and when they did still have sex, it was a battle. Passionate, certainly. Desperate, dangerous. But then, not even that. Nothing. They became like strangers that happen to share a bed, and even that sometimes only on weekends.

And now she's alone, and she can't bear the thought of it.

Her phone rings. And she knows, without looking at caller ID, that it's Derek. That he's spent the past 19-and-a-half minutes wondering whether he should call her back or not. Wondering which way would be a better way to hurt her, maybe. Wondering what happens now. Wondering which road to take, which person to become. She flicks her phone open. "Derek."

"I'm going to Seattle. I'll be working with Richard, I'm safe. And I never want to see you again."

And he hangs up.

Suddenly, comically, she realized she would have preferred him face-down in a gutter.

She wanders through the house like a ghost. Stares, with frantic disbelief and panic at pictures of the two of them, tacked to the fridge. The take-out menus, with rounds and rounds of tic-tac-toe played on the edges. She buries her head in a sweatshirt she finds lying around in the bathroom. Tries to burn his smell into her mind forever. Finally she sinks down in his study, in his giant desk-chair, and she cries tears she never thought she still had inside her.

She cries for twenty minutes. Then she takes a shower. Changes the linens in the bedroom and makes an appointment with her hairdresser. Desperate times, after all, call for desperate measures. She tries to put together an outfit that doesn't remind her of Derek, which doesn't work, but she takes a grim pleasure from wearing a black dress he never really liked. He'd tell her, when he didn't like her clothes, and she never minded. Furiously, she blinks away the tears.

She walks into the kitchen. Stuffs everything tacked to the fridge –including the magnets, because buying the most ridiculous of these, tacky miniature burgers and glow-in-the-dark vegetables and phones that can ring, was always a competition between - into a fresh garbage bag, along with his grubby sneakers from the hallway closet. She stops herself at the photographs: while she raids the house for every last picture of the two of them together, of him, she doesn't throw them away. She piles them neatly on his desk, along with most of his clothes and assorted possessions she can move on her own. She pulls the door of his study shut behind her, locks it, and throws the key into the garbage bag.

Her phone rings. It's Mark. She answers in the first ring.

And she feels absolutely nothing.