Author's Note: Last updated over a month ago… I do hope I still have a few readers out there! Apologies for the hiatus, it has been entirely unintentional, but life is simply insane at the moment. Work has taken over my life and amidst all that, I've decided now is an excellent time to buy my first house, so I am barely keeping my head above water at the moment, so please bear with me on the update front. I have managed to cobble this together though, so hopefully you will enjoy.

Disclaimer: As before

Addison leaned forward to pick her glass of wine from the table carefully, and took a long sip, draining the glass. The alcohol – it wasn't her first glass – was by now knocking off the sharper edges of the horror of the day and she was tempted by opening another bottle (she knew from old that Mark always kept an excellent selection of wine in the house) but in order to do so she would have to get up and she didn't want to disturb him.

She looked down at him. He was asleep, fitfully, and as she absently stroked his hair, it struck her how childlike he looked, which was something she had never seen in him before. Even with his eyes closed, there was an incredibly sad expression on his face, and earlier, she had noticed there was a tear on his cheek.

Addison had to confess to herself, she was surprised, stunned even, at Mark's grief. This wasn't a man who had lost a colleague or a friend or even the mother of his child; he was as shocked and stricken as any bereaved husband she had ever seen. His face was the same blanched white as the walls of his apartment and his eyes were… Well, the look in his eyes made her want to cry herself.

She hadn't realised that he and Callie felt that way about each other. She didn't suppose there was any reason why either of them should have told her, but in a way she felt she should have noticed that two of her best friends were so in love. She tried to think back to the christening, and how they had been with each other then, and she couldn't remember either of them giving any sort of indication that there was this between them. They had seemed close, with a deep understanding between them, but in love?

She had spoken to Callie periodically, and she had often asked what her relationship with Mark was like, as neither of them had ever seemed to be with anyone else, and she remembered the last conversation they had had, a good couple of months ago now.

Callie had just been quizzing her about her lack of sex life, and in order to deflect a little attention, Addison had turned the question around.

'What about you? You're the person who works in most sexually charged hospital in the world; you must have something to tell.'

'Well…' Callie had hesitated before she answered, and Addison knew her well enough to jump on it.

'Ooh, you do have something to tell. Is it anyone I know?'

'Well, Mark and I always said that now we have Sophia we were going to grow up and stop this whole sleeping with each other because we can thing, and we've stuck to that, but… I don't know, things have been a bit different lately.'

'Different how?'

'Just… Not about sex. I mean, a couple of days ago, I had a rotten day at work, lost two patients and one of them was a little boy about the same age as Sophia and it was just horrible. Little Miss was at Mark's so I had to go round there and pick her up before I went home, and he was just so… lovely.'

'Mark, lovely?' Addison had asked sceptically. The Mark Sloan she knew, friend though he was, was only lovely for one reason, and one reason only.

Callie had clearly known what she was getting at. 'No, really, he was. He had Sophia all bathed and in bed by the time I got there, and cooked me dinner, and made me feel better about the patients, said all the right things. He insisted I stayed over, but he didn't try it on or anything, he was just… lovely,' she finished.

'So, is it leading anywhere?' Addison had quizzed her.

'I don't know.'

'Do you want it to?'

There had been a silence while Callie had considered the answer. 'I… I haven't really thought about it. I mean, because we have Sophia, Mark's a part of my life and always will be, and… I guess I always want him to be. I can't imagine him not being there, I don't want to imagine it.' There had been a pause while the cogs ticked over in her mind and Addison had waited.

'Oh, I don't know,' she'd said in the end. 'My head spins these days if I think about anything other than work or Sophia. Mark makes it spin less.'

The conversation had ended shortly after that and Addison had practically forgotten about it until now. It niggled though. Something wasn't entirely right; Callie's indecision and lack of thought about her relationship with Mark didn't tally with the earth shattering grief before her now. Perhaps Mark had felt more than she did. Or, and now Addison thought of it, this struck her as far and away the most likely, perhaps Mark simply hadn't realised what he had, what he and Callie had together, until he lost it. Until he lost her.

There was nothing like losing someone to make you realise how you really felt about them, and God, did she know that was true.

Gently she stroked Mark's hair, then ran her long, cool fingers over his cheek. He looked beautiful, and tragic and exactly the same as she remembered and completely different at the same time. He looked uncomfortable, lying there, his legs all awkward and his neck cricked into her lap, and it was getting late so she shook his shoulder and whispered softly.

'Mark.'

There was no reaction.

'Mark, come on, wake up.'

After a while, he screwed his eyes up and sat up, his hand on the side of his neck where the muscle was strained. 'Why did you wake me?' His voice was dull, flat.

'Because you can't sleep on the sofa all night. You wouldn't be able to move in the morning.' She briefly contemplated trying out a teasing little joke, something feeble along the lines of not being as young as he used to be, but anyone could see that his emotions were too raw to appreciate any attempt at jollity.

'What if I don't want to?'

There was no real answer to that, not any that he wanted to hear anyway. 'Because you have to,' she replied. 'You have to move every morning, every day, until one day you suddenly realise that hey, that wasn't quite as hard as it was yesterday, then a whole week will have gone past. Then a month. Then –'

'Don't patronise me Addison.' Even that response was lifeless; she'd hoped for his sake she would get more of a reaction.

'I'm not. I'm saying what Callie would say to you.'

To her surprise, and horror, Mark's face crumpled and his shoulders began to shake and suddenly he burst into tears. His sobs were noisy, and there was a desperate note to them that pierced Addison's heart. She held her arms out and drew him towards her. Immediately, she felt his hot tears on her shoulder.

'I love her,' he sobbed. 'I love her so much Addison. I love her, and she's gone,' he repeated, over and over. 'Why couldn't I tell her?'

There was nothing she could say, so silently she just held him.