Suspense is good, but only up to a point , in the words of awesome reader, reviewer and writer Mary Rose, who is totally right. So here you are. Little vague, mostly wrapping up things in Seattle before we move on to other things. Which will come in due time, so...patience!
There is, as always, a scrum of people at Richard's door, and of course, like always, they stare.
It's not overt, of course not, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel the eyes slide over his back, darting away the minute he turns to them.
Word gets around. He was out of control, floundering, making a spectacle. They watched in stunned silence that surely turned into a barrage of words after he left.
He's losing it.
Heard they can't talk him into coming back.
What's she doing here?
The newer interns and residents are unaware of the connection between them, but they stare because the others do. They know.
Everyone knows. Didn't she stalk him down these very corridors, didn't he kiss her cheek in passing so many times? Dr. Shepherd and Dr. Shepherd, different people but the same name.
She walks beside him, the proverbial redheaded stepchild, her reputation here written in stone before she could say a word. He made sure of that, didn't he?
Satan, he called her.
They cut a swathe through the crowd, her heels clicking purposefully ahead of him. She's an arm's length ahead of him, too far to touch, close enough that he can feel the tension radiating from her.
I'm lonely she said once, her eyes lost. She was lonely here, isolated, preceded by her reputation. She made few friends, but they still ask about her. She has this way, of getting people to take to her, that never fails to amaze - or irritate - him.
Bailey never talks to him that way, he wonders. Callie tends to look at him like she found him on the bottom of her shoe.
Anyway, she hates it here. Hate- hates it. And yet, she came. She stayed, when he asked her to.
When she called, that night, her voice terrified, pleading, he half expected her to beg him to fly out. She didn't. He realises that she's stopped expecting him to help, to years ago.
What does it matter now, he asks himself, annoyed, as Richard beckons them in. It was all so long ago.
"Addie." he says warmly, sweeping her into a hug. "Here for your job?"
"You wish." she laughs. "LA suits me."
"I have to say it does." he smiles, pulling out a chair for her. Why is he even noticing?
He realises they're both looking at him, expecting him to speak.
"I -" he clears his throat; Richard silently pours him a glass from the carafe behind the desk. "I'll be back whenever you want me to be."
"Are you - " Richard stops short, clearly thinking better of it, redirecting his question to Addison. "Is he okay?"
"He will be." she says, and he feels her hand brush his, withdraw. He might have imagined it. "It just takes a while, doesn't it - I mean, sometimes we all just need some.."
She trails off, waving her hand in a gesture they're supposed to assume means something.
"Space?" Richard suggests, and she nods, the hand falling back to her lap.
What do you need space from?
"I think you should take a break." Richard is saying. His tone is firm, although his eyes are kind.
"I need to cut, I can cut, I'm fine." he replies. They exchange a look. It cuts through him like a knife; they have no right. It's not their place to be concerned.
"Richard," he says, leaning forward, hands on his polished desk. "You can't bench me. Every day I'm out of that OR were losing patients, losing money -"
"Funny you didn't think of that before you took off to drink yourself to death." he snaps, his eyes flashing; he's reminded of the dressings-down he's received at various points early on his career from him. "We managed just fine without you then, well manage now. Take a week, go somewhere. Clear your head, Shep, come back fresh."
"Derek, I think-"
"Shut up."
The words leap off his tongue, and he sees it register on her face, a brief glimpse of pain. He shouldn't have.
But she has no say. Why can't she just stop talking?
Right. He brought her here.
No. Richard made her come. She didn't have to.
But she did.
Damn it. He really shouldn't have said that.
"Fine." she says coolly. "I'm going to go find Callie, so I guess this is goodbye, Richard."
He hugs her again, patting her back with gruff pride, offering her her old job again, she declines, they back-and-forth about LA, he says he'll come visit. He won't. She knows, but she still smiles.
And then she's gone.
"Derek Whatever the hell it is Shepherd." Richard says severely, sitting down aacross him. The desk stretches between them like a gulf, yawning wide. "She didn't have to come, you know."
"I saved her brother." he points out. In his book, saving Archer's life is worth a thousand free potshots at Addison. The man hated him before he met him.
She's a thoroughbred he said once, his voice an icy sneer. Who are you?
He's the man Archer's sister married, that's all he ever was. Addison could have stabbed him in cold blood and Archer would help her hide the body and then swear up hill and down dale that she was innocent. He didn't just pick sides in their marriage - he tried to make them pick sides.
It rarely worked, which he supposes was some sort of good sign. They ended up divorced, though, anyway. Maybe Archer was right. Maybe he never was good enough.
And yet he dropped everything - he remembers, with a pang, the rose petals hastily swept away, candles extinguished, the ring safely hidden away - and tried a risky surgery that could have killed the man and ruined his reputation.
That happened anyway, so whatever.
"No more than your duty." Richard glares. "You could be a little grateful."
"I would have come back anyway." he reminds him. "Even if she hadn't shown up to nag me."
"Nagging is what a wife does."
"She's not my wife."
"She used to be."
"Well, she isn't anymore."
"And yet," he leans back in his chair, and is that...is Richard Weber smirking ? "She's the only one who could haul your butt out of those woods."
"Look at you." Callie sings, enveloping her in a bear hug that almost lifts her clear off her feet. "Finally decided to come back?"
"No, thought I'd meet you guys before I flew out." she laughs.
"You again?" Bailey exclaims, grinning. "Please tell me you didn't bring your brother back."
"No, he's fine." she says, realising she's made a colossal mistake.
No one knows she came back. They weren't supposed to know. It won't make sense to them, to anyone except Richard, because he knows them. He knows how they work.
"She's back!" Callie is cheering.
"I'm not back." she says hastily. "Just...visiting. Some family."
"You don't have family." Callie says suspiciously. "You're like me. Your family only magically appears in times of distress, or actual joy, to cause the opposite emotion. Spill."
"I do have family." she says with dignity, which is surprisingly difficult when she's lying through her teeth. "A cousin."
"Really." Bailey snorts.
"You like your letter of recommendation?" she asks sweetly; she blanches and walks away quickly.
"What letter?" asks the blonde standing at Callie's elbow.
"Nothing." Callie says quickly. "Uh, Addison, Arizona, Arizona, Addison."
"Hi!" the blonde chirps. She has a monkey sewn onto her lab coat. "I've heard a lot about you."
Butterfly scrub cap? she mouths at Callie as she whizzes away on ... wheelie sneakers. Wow.
Callie blushes furiously, nodding as she starts gathering her things. "I have a surgery right now, but we could maybe grab a drink-"
She winces, shaking her head. "I leave in the afternoon, sorry, so ...bye, I guess."
She exchanges her second round of hugs today, promising to call more often.
She runs into Mark outside her old office, and he breaks into a wide grin.
"Couldn't stay away, could you." he smirks lasciviously. She's actually missed his antics, she realises as he drags her outside for coffee, making her laugh, asking her if she's really back.
"No, I -" she realises the story she fed Bailey and Callie won't fly with him. If there's anyone who knows her the way her ex-husband does, it's Mark Sloan. You can't spend the better part of two decades together without knowing someone like the back of your hand.
"He called you, didn't he." he accuses, his eyes sparkling with mirth. "To drag Derek's sorry ass back here."
"He did." she laughs with him. She's heard the story from Callie, how she and Dr. Hunt together weren't enough to convince Derek to come back. Apparently all three of them got extremely drunk and had a heart-to-heart, the details of which she staunchly refuses to provide.
"Thanks." Mark says suddenly, his hand covering hers.
"Why?"
"Lexie and I - " he says, stops, rephrases. "I'm happy, really happy. I came clean with Derek, like you said, and -"
"He punched the crap put of you?" she snorts. She couldn't believe it, the two of them, hitting each other. Willfully causing harm.
You did that she thought at the time. She started it, she drive the wedge between them, and nothing was ever the same.
What if she hadn't slept with Mark?
She used to imagine it all the time, back when she was the only one in her marriage and had a lot of free time. They'd still be in New York. Maybe they would have that practice they'd talked about, all three of them sharing offices. It would have been, in Mark's words, ideal. Maybe they would have had a baby. Two. Maybe they would have been divorced after all; maybe it was preordained. For the best.
"It works out." he's telling her. "You fall in love and you fight and you lose but it works out, you know, in the end."
"I'm happy for you." she tells him, sincerely, because she is. She's had his heart, and she gave it back. She has no cause to be jealous, and after all they were friends long, long before they were ever lovers. She wants him to be happy.
He leaves her with a rib-crushing hug and a promise to come see her in LA.
They've all changed, she reflects. They've moved on. She's moved on.
It really is over.
There's nothing left for her here. She's free to leave, but there's one more place she needs to go before she can go home.
"You've both been through a lot." he's saying softly, pointedly not looking at him. "Things like that...it changes you. Connects you in ways that don't break. Adele and I, even after everything weve been through-" he pauses, faraway. "I don't think anyone will ever get me the way that woman does."
"It was a long time ago. We're both okay." he says briskly. "I'll take a break, whatever you want."
"Don't just take a break - what happened to you in there wasn't just that one case, Derek, it's years of this stress, building up until you can't take it anymore, not just work...everything."
"I've gotten through that."
"Have you?" he's studying him closely over his steepled fingers. "I know you, Derek. You don't freeze. I've watched you from the beginning, and I've never seen you lose it like that."
Like that meaning to the point where his judgement was so clouded that he almost killed not one but two people in there.
If Addison hadn't stood her ground, if she hadn't stepped in to deliver the baby when she did...
He knows that now. What did he say to her?
"You save babies, don't you Addie? Just not
Ours. Just not ours.
He always thought he got through those dark days alone. Now, he's not so sure. He couldn't handle the death of a woman he barely knew, he almost collapsed under the knowledge that he was, in some way, responsible for her death. He couldn't stop it, couldn't save her. He did his best but in the end it didn't matter.
There's no way he managed to get through their child's death alone.
If nothing else, he owes her that much.
"Yeah." he says. "I guess you're right."
"Thank you." Richard sighs, looking relieved.
"Derek?"
"Yeah?" he turns around, already one hand on the doorknob.
"You need to lay things to rest, son." he says, his eyes soft, sad. "Do what you need to do."
And just like that, he knows where he's going.
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