Post 3x05 - Oh, the Guilt - Post divorce Addek. Vulnerable, moving on Addison. A slight make-believe of Season 3 Derek where we'd all like to believe he wasn't always an ass. . . .

Delicious Ambiguity

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next." - Gilda Radner

x x x

Hot dark red runs down the palm of her hand, thin rivers coursing out of the shallow lines that's carved into her skin.

It's warm, she notes. Her blood is warm. Really really warm. She smiles because that just contradicts the whispers she's been hearing. That proves everyone, who says she's a plain, coldhearted bitch, wrong, right?

Right?

Those interns and her ex-husband included.

It is now proven that she's human. She's warm blooded. She has a beating heart - a rather big one, in fact. That she's not Satan.

They will all have to believe her now.

Evidence drips off the tips of her fingers and onto the sink, staining the porcelain pink. She dabs at the wound on her wrist with a damp paper towel, trying to staunch the flow. And it doesn't work. It ripples quick and blossoms the tissue scarily bright. Nothing is as simple as it should be, as it was. Just like her heart, it's unfixable.

Discarded gause litters the floor - here and there, the cotton weaves stains a filthy dark crimson. The fifth floor locker room is a slaughter house now and she's glad that she had stumbled upon it when it was empty.

The edges of the cut just won't stop seeping and trickling down her hand. It tickles her redden skin as it runs. But she's not too sure if she wants them to sprint away like it is. She knows she should do something, like apply pressure or go down to the pit and have someone stitch her back up, but, at the same time, she doesn't want to.

It's proof.

But for whom?

Because no one is here to witness the fact that she's not made out of stone.

So, she presses hard against the torn flesh for her own betterment, hissing through her teeth. But she doesn't stop, doesn't release the pressure, doesn't allow herself to pull her hand away. She needs it. Needs the stinging and burning reminder of just how bad of a person she've become.

She's bad. She's worse than bad. She's despicable.

It's all the explanation she needs because good people don't do the things she've done.

Ever.

Bizzy had taught her well as a child, it's just that she's forgotten all of her mother's training on how to be and act like a lady because it takes more than getting your period to embody one.

Good people has morals, ethics, respect and class, whereas, she - she has none of those.

Nonexistent.

The locker room door swings open and she jumps, water splashing up onto her white blouse. Her elbow slams into the edge of the sink as she quickly tries to submerge her arm from under the faucet. She curses. The last thing she needs right now is to have more rumors swirling about how unstable she is.

"Addison?"

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit!

This cannot be happening.

She knows that voice. Familiar. Her ears have heard that very tone over millions of times. Addison. He sounds almost bored, displeased that he's having to run a maze to look for her.

Yes, absolutely familiar.

"You in here? I need you for a -"

Derek rounds the corner and stumbles to a halt. The colour drains from his face and he races toward her with a trembling hand.

She turns around, doesn't let him touch her.

Stop. Don't. No. I'm fine. Let go. Stop. What.

But he's Derek - he doesn't listen and tugs at her arm anyway.

Would you just stop fidgeting for one second and let me look?

Finally, Addison lets him and settles herself to come to terms with the fact that Derek always always wins. She exhale and her eyelids slips shut when his warm, soft fingers close around her elbow. He's examining her with expert hands while proof of her existence drip-drops onto the floor and he lifts her arm with a touch far more gentle than she deserves and her throat swells with tears.

So, this is what it feels like to be touched by McDreamy.

"Addie."

The anguish in his tone makes her sway on the spot and his other hand wraps around her hip, holding her steady.

"Did you -" He trails off, adam's apple bobbing as he stares at the long, jagged cut down her forearm. She knows what he sees. She had seen it too. What he's thinking. And that's why she's here, trying to rub it all away.

"It's not what it looks like."

Derek's eyes float up to meet her own and the sheen she sees there makes her want to pull him close, wrap her damaged self around him and hold on until they're both whole again. Well, she - until she's whole again. Because he's as whole as ever. Wholier than he has ever been in their marriage. Like he's just found the missing piece of a puzzle - Meredith. He's perfect. He's not mourning their marriage like she still is. He's never been happier. He's beaming brighter than the sun.

She's jealous. But she won't say that out loud. Just loud in her head.

It's okay to be a little jealous, isn't it?

That's the whole point of a divorce.

She takes half a step closer to him, her free hand itching to reach up and caress his cheek.

A proof that this isn't just a fragment of her imagination. He cares. He cares about her. Again.

She doesn't move.

She cannot do that to herself anymore, she has to remind herself.

She's trying to gain back some self-respect, self-esteem and self-confidence. Besides, she's diminished all of her rights to touch him.

"I cut myself." she says and he makes a pained choking noise.

Or was that a chuckle?

"I can see that."

"It wasn't on purpose." she says, her gaze dropping from his. She stares at a tiny dark spot on his shirt, a souvenir from his morning coffee. "I didn't -"

She can't say wouldn't. Not after all that she's done. Not after his excursion to her hotel room and seeing his pained face when Mark walked out of the bathroom. It's all about timing - timing is always key and timing is never ever on her side. Not after the months of worthless trying to fix something that's bound to fail and shatter to pieces - their marriage.

She's tired. She's so tired that she would. But bleeding out isn't her forte. She perfers the less messier way, like a row of little white executioners ready and waiting, all laid out on the nightstand.

She can't say wouldn't.

But she didn't.

She really didn't.

"Addison."

He doesn't sound like he believes her.

Shaking her head, "I didn't." she insists, voice stronger this time. "I didn't." She gives in, lets her left hand raise to rest on his chest. She can feel the thundering of his heart and some baser part of her brain wakes, sending shivers of want skittering down her spine. "I broke a glass, Derek. That's all."

His hand slides down her arm, thumb sweeping around the uneven edges of the cut. "You broke a glass."

The disbelief in his tone slices like a knife in between her ribs. He doesn't trust her to tell the truth. Of course he doesn't.

He shouldn't.

Goddammit.

She needs him to trust her again, to believe this truth at the very least.

"Derek." she breathes, her fingertips curling around the crisp edge of his shirt pocket. His eyes dart up to hers, the blue so deep that she has trouble remembering what she wanted to say. Her heart flutters somewhere near her oesophagus. And she breathes like she's forgotten how to. "I broke a glass. I was just -"

She swallows. There's nothing left to do but say it. Give him what little truth she can.

"I was thinking." The hand at her hip tightens. "About us. About what ... really happened with us." She stares into his eyes, fighting hard against her instincts to run as fast and far as she can. "Where it all went so terribly wrong?"

He's wanting to say something, she can clearly see the blaze in his eyes. She knows what he's going to say and she's waiting for him to spit venom far more potent than any viper and when he doesn't, she reads it from his own eyes and swallows.

"It's okay. I'm okay. Really." she shrugs out of his grasp and tries a laugh but that's still not believable because he's not laughing along.

She doesn't want to hear him say it, truth be told.

He nods. Just like her, he doesn't want to argue anymore because pinpointing a specific time and place when their marriage fell off the rail isn't healthy for either one of them, isn't going to fix a thing, isn't going to make them civil and all he wants now is for them to be civil.

Civil. Friendlier. Nicer. Smilier. Kinder. Gentler.

Derek drops his gaze to her arm again, his thumb still rubbing soft circles around the bony protrusion of her wrist. "You broke a glass."

She nods.

"You need stitches."

She needs stitches - yes, she've known that for years now. Her wrist isn't the only one that needs to be stitched back together.

Addison breathes in through her nose, counting to ten before she begins her exhale. She watches his chest, sees it start to expand and contract in time with her own. They stand in silence. Breathing. Together.

Like before.

The opening of the locker room door breaks the spell. Derek eases her injured arm back down to her side and the hand on her hips falls away.

"Want me to page your boyfriend?" he says in a half-laugh and spite within it all. Your boyfriend! And she steps back like he's just slapped her. He might as well have, actually. It would've made all the more sense with the look she's giving him.

"He's not my boyfriend, Derek." she says - no, pleas - since she's sounding like she's begging on her knees for him to believe her and listen for once. Just this once - he's not her boyfriend.

Please. Please. Please. Why don't you believe me anymore? Why don't you just listen?

He used to cling to her every word.

"Could've fooled me."

"Can't you stop being petty and let it go already? And let me remind you that you are no innocent victim here." Her heart pounds, anger rising in her voice while her mind swarms with images of her waiting and waiting and waiting at the dance floor for her damn husband to come back from wherever he had run off to like the idiot that she is. Her stomach churns painfully like her heart that's needing stitches and she presses a hand to it. "It makes no sense that you harbour all this hate towards me when you did the same thing to me, Derek."

"But you cheated first."

"Two wrongs don't make a right, Derek."

He looks back at her and she can see it all right there in his eyes. Everything he wants to say but can't because he knows she's so very correct and he's Derek - he doesn't ever lose in an argument.

"Come on," he says defeated, turning toward the door. "I'm taking you down to the ER."

"I am capable of taking myself downstairs. Thanks."

...but no thanks because you've just made things worse by showing up.

She steps a step further away from him, injured arm curled around her middle.

"Addison."

She doesn't listen and walks out with head held high. Faking dignity when she has none left is all she has got. She has to fake it till she makes it.

She can't love him. Not anymore, not the way she wants anyway. She can't hold him or kiss him or let him be there for her when she's hurt or on the nights when she's drunk off her ass and crawling through broken glass.

She needs to find a way to love herself more than she loves him.

I've continued with last chapter's OneShot - ADDISON, DON'T - it's a separate, independent and new story called Find Your Voice. Please go check it out. Chapter 2 is already up.

Tsk, tsk, tsk! Addison and Derek! Season 3 was brutal where all hopes for reconciliation were pretty much nonexistent.

I'm sighing sadly right now. :(

Thanks for reading. Your thoughts and reviews are always always appreciated. REVIEW!