IF

'If' is a wonderful word. A number of relatively independent pieces regarding the major 'if's in the history of Maddison. Some smutty, some fluffy, some angsty.

Limited spoilers for their entire story.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

I need to counter the angst/tragedy of the last chapter with something slightly more cheerful! (with a touch of angst, I can't help myself)

I'm using where Mark was in the 'as it was' at the end this time, so hope that sits alright, let me know! I'm trying to keep these oneshots two sided (where appropriate, comatose Mark is not particularly involved), but I seem to lean to the side of Addison by instinct!

If she'd gone home with him

"Your marriage is over, Addison. All you have to do is admit it. Then you can come back home with me. I'm going to the bar across the street. Meet me there."

Those words lingered long after he'd left the elevator. She couldn't think, she couldn't even swallow. Everything was coming to a head and suddenly she had a decision to make that would change the entire rest of her life.

She'd made herself forget his eyes. There was something powerful about them, something that meant when he was talking to her, when he was looking right at her, she wasn't able to breathe.

They'd really had something, for a time. They'd really been something. But then Mark had slipped – and she knew, if she really thought about it, that that had been the fear, in the end – and she hadn't even given them a chance to come crashing down. She'd run back to Derek, who maybe hadn't been unfaithful, but she didn't think had loved her for quite a long time. They'd been coexisting, in the same house (rarely) and the same marriage bed (even more rarely) for the last couple of years.

Her and Mark – it had been new, different and something had suddenly felt exciting again. And she was involved, or more so than she'd been with Derek for a long time.

Despite everything, despite stumbling on him and Charlene in the on-call room, despite the cold detachment she'd felt in the abortion clinic waiting room, despite coming out to Seattle and not answering any of his calls, he still made her heart thump audibly. The brush of his fingers on her cheek still had her breathing heavily, still had her mouth suddenly feeling dry with anticipation. Maybe that all meant something.

She thought about the lost, longing looks her husband and that intern thought she wasn't catching across corridors and ORs in the hospital. Her marriage wasn't ever going to be again what she had walked down the aisle to, and though she could do nothing but put a large proportion of the blame on herself, she wondered if something had been culminating under the surface. Something had been fraying, and without Mark, without heat and infidelity and all her lies, it still would have fallen apart eventually.

Maybe it was time to step away. Maybe it was kinder to both of them.

"I'm going home." She breathed, and her husband didn't even look up from the paper he was reading. After a short time, he raised an eyebrow, and his head, ever so slightly.

"With Mark, I suppose?"

And she should have felt guilty, then, and it should have at least hurt her a little bit that it didn't seem to be bothering Derek in the slightest, but ever since his lips had first melded against hers, Mark Sloan had had some sort of hold on her she couldn't quite quantify.

"With Mark."

"Vodka and tonic, Joe." She smiled with her order, sitting, somewhat apprehensively, on one of the bar stools, as many seats as possible away from Meredith Grey. She felt like a teenager wishing for a date to prom or something, she couldn't help the niggling doubt in her mind that he wouldn't be there. Hell, he'd let her down before.

But then, she'd let him down too, they were both as bad as one another, and maybe this was their second chance.

She nursed the drink as Meredith's cell phone rang and she picked it up, a smile crossing her features, and turned and left the bar, not even finishing her drink.

Addison couldn't help the slight eye roll, which had Joe raising an eyebrow. No prizes for guessing who that was on the phone.

It was in that moment everything changed.

Mark hadn't been expecting, really, for as little as one moment, to see long red hair he knew too well sat at the bar. He hadn't expected to notice the small suitcase on the floor by her feet, he hadn't anticipated the slightly childlike look of apprehension on her face when she turned to look at him.

"Red." He breathed, as if reassuring himself that he wasn't dreaming. She gave him a tiny hint of a smile, but then her eyes started to fill.

"I should never have come out here, I was never going to win him back, Mark, I… I… you cheated, and I panicked, and I had the abortion and I came home from the clinic and packed my bags without even thinking… I…" she took a deep breath, having seemingly run out of words.

He took a few steps closer to her, unable to form any words. She slid off the stool, stepping towards him, slightly shaky on her feet. He reached out his left arm without thinking, brushing his fingers on her cheek, an echo of his hand in the elevator. Her eyes closed.

"Give me another shot?" he half-pleaded, suddenly finding himself only inches away. "Let me do it right this time. Come home with me."

She leant her face into his hand, smiling slightly. "We're a recipe for disaster, really, Mark, we've already screwed this up once… but I've got nowhere I'd rather be, right now…"

He pressed his lips lightly against hers, making her open and widen her eyes, a thousand and one emotions flitting through them in seconds. "We could try again. Just come home, and we'll give us another chance. Derek won't be on your mind anymore, I'll have learnt from my mistakes, I promise, and we could… we could be something."

"You think we could? You think we could build something again?"

He gave her a smile and an almost vicious nod. "Red…you don't belong here… and you haven't belonged with Derek for a long time…"

She seemed to consider for a few moments, in silence, and then she gave him a wide smile. Tentatively, she leant in and kissed him, slinging her arms around his neck, pulling her body close to his.

"I'd like to come home. Home's been with you, not with Derek, for longer than I realised, I think…"

They were back in Manhattan by the morning, her brief stint in Seattle nothing but an unpleasant memory.

As it was, he sat beside Meredith Grey in the Emerald City that night.

"What are you still doing here?"

"I'm hoping Addison shows up."

"You're still in love with her?"

"You're still in love with him?"

"She won't show, you know."

"No?" He couldn't help hoping, more than anything, that Meredith Grey, this girl he'd only just met, had never been more wrong.

"He's not the kind of guy you leave if you can help it."

"What if you were wrong? What if just this once, life comes down on the side of the dirty mistresses?" He could hear how ridiculous he sounded. But he couldn't help hoping, not until Joe closed up and he had to leave.

He went back to New York.

He was back in Seattle within the year, trying again.

Hope you enjoyed! Would love to hear what you think, as usual, hopefully this has cheered you up considerably more than the last chapter!