Hello. I love this story, and writing it is fun. What's not fun is the troll who seems to take pleasure in reading the whole fic and then commenting, chapter after chapter, how awful it is.
So, troll, thanks for reading. I'm sure you'll find something to say about this as well. I look forward to seeing how far your primitive little mind can go.
It feels like remembering. It feels safe. It feels like hundreds of shared memories and thousands of I love yous and a lifetime together, to kiss him.
It's so wrong.
He was going to propose, Addison remembers vaguely, as he drags her closer, desperately, like he's trying to make up for something. He loves Meredith.
Meredith loves him.
But his hands on her are so familiar, and she's longed for this for years; a little piece of before. For him to kiss her like he used to, hungry and longing. For him to look at her like he used to. For them to share every banal detail of their lives.
She lets him. She kisses back. She wraps her arms around the curve of his shoulders - she remembers it like her own - and she sighs as he fits a palm to her cheek, tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear.
"Sorry." he says, looking away. Ashamed. They've done this countless times, giggling in library stacks, sneakily in dorm corridors, in passing in the hospital, long and deep in their own home, a million times, most of them for no reason at all. And he still feels the need to apologise.
She doesn't say anything, just draws the back of her hand across her mouth, her face inscrutable.
He shouldn't have. He thinks guiltily of Meredith at home, worried about him. He should call her, go back to Seattle, give her the ring and let himself be swept up in the life he thinks he wants.
But it felt so right. He remembers the first time he did it. It was late and he insisted on walking her to her dirm after their first date because his father said to him once that that's what you're supposed to do. He opened doors and pulled chairs and sometimes offered to carry books and bags before Mark reminded him that women had the vote now and probably didn't appreciate what he called sucking up.
He walked her three of the ten steps to the door of the building. She stopped. Turned around - not all the way, on the step above him, exactly his height in her heels. She was backlit by the light above the door, her eyes bright pools in the darkness, her hair deep red. He smiled. He said good night.And then - they've argued endlessly about this, and it remains unsolved - one of them kissed the other, and they've been doing it ever since. They fit together perfectly, her height matching his. His hands mold to her, she curves into him. They haven't forgotten.
He lets her go.
I put you in a tiny little box she said. He wants to stay in that box. He can't hurt her anymore than he already has. He sees that now.
He always thought Julia's death hit him the hardest. It was, of course, ridiculous, but he did. Call it grief, call it anger, call it anything you like - he reacted by lashing out. Addison...she shut everyone and everything out. She retreated into herself as he plunged headfirst into his rage.
He looked at her silent, frozen face and thought - you don't care.It's true that Julia was unplanned. But she was never unloved. When Addison found out she was pregnant, she cried. Sobbed. It was earlier than she had planned, she worked hellish hours. He cried too, but because he was happy. Deliriously happy.
When he realised they were crying for different reasons, they went to bed in stony silence. He woke up to Addison contemplating two bottles of vitamins in the kitchen, asking him if he thought she needed more magnesium. She was never unloved.
In the last hospital, the last time, when she stood over him, her shadow cast long over his slouched body, and asked him to sign away their daughter's life, she didn't cry.
He did. He cried, screamed, yelled.
Put it down, Addison he said to her as her pen hovered over the papers that said they would allow their child to die. He wanted the safety net of medications and defibrillators and ventilators. He wanted to feel like he was doing something instead of sitting idle watching his baby die of a disease their genes gave her.
She wanted to let go, let a God who obviously didn't exist do whatever he wanted. She signed. She left him with the choice to sign or not sign.
She's miserable Addison said, her voice perfectly calm. She's not getting better.
Jules said I want to go home, Daddy. She begged for ice cream and swimming and finger paint and swings. She said she wanted her own bed.
All he heard was Addison wanted to take their daughter home to die.
And they did.
Two weeks was how long they had, two long, heavenly, agonising weeks with their child before she was gone. He wanted to place his hands on her tiny chest, shove life back into her body. Years of training was hard to suppress as he watched the life drain out of the person he loved the most.
He was caught between letting go of Jules' hand and saving her, the latter winning out, Addison's arms around him, stopping him - she's gone, you can't do anything, Derek stop - and then the feel of her limp and empty in his arms, her eyes not smiling like they used to even behind a respirator after days in the hospital.
She didn't let him save her. But now, he realises that there was nothing he could have done, anyway.
"I'm going to bed." she says quietly, setting down the music box. It gives a last, faint tinkle, and she runs her hand over the faded velvet.
"I'm sorry." he says again, heavily.
"Me too." she sighs, sagging against the wall. She should walk away, away from his shimmering eyes, away from this room with its quagmire of memories. Sje steps out into the hallway, closes the door on him, stops as if something is pulling her back.
The memories are all she has left. The snippet of a giggle, the snatch of a smile. She copied every single tape - first steps, birthdays, random Sundays - and sent them to him. She knew he'd want them. She wonders where he hides them.
Amd it's been such a long day. It feels like its been a lifetime since she came here. So she sinks onto the floor, head on her knees, back against the door.
He's still inside, she can hear him breathe. She hears the rustle of fabric as he slides down the other side of the door.
They sat like this the night before she left to start her fellowship. He was angry, she was numb, his words sliding like snow off her chilled skin.
You're running away he yelled. You're probably glad. You never wanted her anyway.
He remembers sitting like this the night before Addison left for the first six months of her fellowship, still breathing hard from venting his rage at her. He asked not to go. He told her not to go. He said it was too late, that it made no difference now.
She just stared blankly, like any desire to fight back had left her the instant their daughter had. She said it did make a difference; just not to them.
Other people's babies, other people's lives; she wanted to save them, when she wouldn't let him save theirs. That's all he could think of as he begged and asked and pleaded and finally warned.
She left anyway. She left, and he was alone in a house that was still full of their dead daughter. Toys on the floor that no one had picked up, small clothes still in the laundry. Colorful cups and cutlery in the kitchen, crayons underfoot, drawings on the fridge, stepstools in front of sinks, it was all gone by the time she came back. She never asked why, he never told her, and neither of them ever spoke of the duct taped boxes in the basement.
He wonders what she did with them, when she sold the brownstone. She'll have kept them; Addison has never thrown away so much as a baby sock. Mementoes of her own childhood were never treasured, and she seemed to compensate by archiving every aspect of their daughter's.
He hears her shift against the door, settling in. She slept in Julia's room, after. He'd come homhome from work - he was always working - and she'd be curled on the floor in the little bare room. He could never bring himself to wake her, so he sat there too, and when she left the phase behind in a few weeks, he sometimes still went in there at night. To get away from her.
Because by then she had descended into the impenetrable fog that seemed to drown her, her eyes open and unseeing, barely responding, as lost to him as if she were the one who died. He'd find her like that in her office, stunned silent, staring into nothing. He went as far as to speak to Kathleen about it.
Grief.
It was everywhere, seeping cold and gray into their lives, numbing them and then suddenly, at the sight of something - a little girl skipping down the sidewalk, a baby on the swings, children holding their parents hands - it set their nerves on fire, white-hot, stealing the air from their lungs. It felt like there was no air anymore, like they were slowly, slowly suffocating.
The silence at home was so deafening, so profound, that he thought he'd gone mute as well as deaf. He opened his mouth, but everything that came out either made her scream or withdraw. He stopped trying. He started blaming.
Blaming her for signing their child out of the hopsital. Blaming her for taking Julia home. Blaming her for everything.
She let him, and that was when he knew they were done, because she didn't care enough to fight. And it felt so good to have someone to blame, to be able to solidly pin the death of his daughter on someone - you did this. It gave him something to do, somewhere to channel his despair.
But he never once thought of what Addison did with it. Now, well, he realises that she keot it to herself, and it broke her. Because the quiet, docile woman she's become os not the woman he loved, the one he married. He knows this, and he knows that he is responsible.
That's his cross to bear, the way hers is that she truly believes she killed her daughter.
It was why Vivian - the woman who was more a mother to Addison than anyone else - suggested the fellowship.
They want you she said. She told Addison she was destined to be a great surgeon, that this was another opportunity for her to save yet more lives. She'd be helping other families like theirs.
If you go, he said to Addison, tears threatening his vision, blurring her pale face, if you go now, we don't have a chance.
They needed to be together, to heal the fault lines caused by the massive shift in their lives. Apart, they'd rip open at the seams.
I need to Addison said, calm as anything. I can help other people. They don't have to go through this.
But what about us? he asked. Exceot he said it in his head, because he could see in her eyes that she was going. Away from him, away from the memories lurking around every corner.
So she left, and he let her go, and he thinks that's when they fell apart for good.
To LS, fellow med student/sufferer, you were right about the CF.
It just seemed fitting to me, considering Addison's vast expertise in the disease along with her OB specialisation. And the whole fetal surgery thing. I mean, she either graduated at ...twenty-two or something, because all those qualifications for a thirty something with a well established reputed practice is fairytale-level unreal.
Anyway, LS was right. If I were my professor, I'd give you a chocolate and tell you to read about it and then ask you a million questions in front of as many people as possible.
I can't, so I'll just say you're freaking awesome and I can't wait for the day we get to call you Dr. !
And here's the bit where I shamelessly beg for reviews. You know what to do.
