This one, all be it very late, is for Corazon90 and fills in the gaps we were cruelly left with in the finale.
Chapter One: Running.
She was running. Whatever way she put it, whatever reasons she gave; she was running. Addison felt the world move around her as she stood on the gleaming tiles of the airport's departure building. The noise of life had faded into faint buzz orbiting around her stationary world. Boarding a plane and pretending the last four years had never happened would have been so easy, it was the change she was looking for, the change she was making. Except she wasn't making a change, Naomi was making a change – starting a life with the man she loved but she wasn't, she was running away, she was pretending, fooling herself that going to Fiji for two weeks with a stranger was never anything other than running away. She clenched her cheeks as she tried to stop the tears that were threatening to fall from her eyes. She couldn't just turn her back on the Practice, on her friends; her life. The changes she needed to make were right in front of her in LA. Pulling her case behind her she headed straight for the front of the building and the bustling taxi rank the tears now scarring her cheeks.
"Addison?" Sam's voice echoed the confusion he felt as he spoke from the window of his car. "What are you doing here?"
"Nothing" Addison lied as she quickly dried her tears.
"Addison get in the car" Sam said gently as the traffic began to build behind him.
"Sam I'm fine. I just need to get a cab" Addison said as she unsuccessfully tried to hail yet another cab.
Seeing that she was going to take a little more persuasion, Sam pulled his car over in to a parking space and jumped out of the car, raising his hand to the line of annoyed motorists behind him.
"Addison, what are you doing? Let me give you a lift" Sam said as he jostled the crowd to get to her. His voice was filled with concern, he didn't know why Addison was at the airport laden with luggage and looking like she'd just stepped out of the 'summer essentials' section of a clothing catalogue but he was sure that there was more to the story than just a missed flight.
"I was going away Sam," Addison said in a dreamlike state as people pushed her out of the way to hail a cab "I was leaving LA."
"Let me take you home," Sam offered "we can talk about it at home."
"Home," Addison repeated as she considered the word. "Ok"
Sam took Addison's case from her hand and, using it to push his way through the mounting crowd, lead Addison towards his waiting car. After putting the case into the boot of the car he slipped into the driver's seat of the car beside Addison.
"What were you doing at the airport?" Addison asked suddenly as she realised Sam's car was not what had bought her to the airport.
"I was dropping Naomi off" Sam said simply, although his voice unsuccessfully hid a deeper feeling. "she made a last minute decision to go with Fife and seeing as I was the one who told her to go with him I couldn't refuse when she asked me for a lift."
Addison only nodded in reply before turning her attention to the passenger window and the lives being lived outside it. A thin piece of glass separating her and other people's lives, people she'd never met, people she never would, all living their lives around her. Sometimes she thought it would be interesting to live someone else's life, just for a day, for an hour, maybe then she'd find out where she kept going wrong. She often wondered what marked the route of people's lives, she liked to think it was fate, predetermined yarns spun intricately together but the more people she operated on, the more lives she saw change under her finger tips, the less fate seemed plausible.
"I'll just get your bag," Sam's voice broke into her thoughts, bringing her back to the present and the now motionless car. She reached out and curled her fingers around the door handle and pulled it towards herself, allowing the outside to penetrate the cocoon she'd built around herself in the car. Everything seemed alien, all the familiar things, the things she'd done a million times, like they were happening outside of her, as if she was a spectator watching her own life. She walked towards her front door her head filled with smog. Back in the airport she had had a moment of clarity but now the haze was thicker than ever. She leant against the hallway wall as Sam lifted her case into the house.
"Come on, I'll make us some coffee" Sam said sprightly as he disappeared into the kitchen, knowing that Addison needed to talk but all too aware that she needed to do it in her own time.