A/N - Did I make it under the 24-hour wire? I think so. The pace and organization of this story are starting to frustrate me a little bit, but I'm trying to stay honest and move forward instead of taking another five-year break. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing - knowing I'm not sending this story into a vacuum is wonderful, and I truly appreciate it. Read on for an actual conversation between two people who need it:


I have become an aerial view of a coastal town that you once knew.

Sometimes medicine is just a numbers game.

Twenty-four hours seizure-free. That's the goal.

Four hours and forty-three minutes seizure-free. That's where they are now.

Mark has taken Max somewhere, to feed him or get him some fresh air, and she's sitting alone with Annabel and all the numbers ruling their day when Meredith pushes open the door to her room, holding a large folder.

Addison pushes to her feet. "How do they –"

"They're interesting." They look together at the four-hour scans. "We do know more now - see right there, but it's also more complicated than we thought at first. Look at the access path – " and she points. "It's different from what he did the last time. He'd have to actually approach it in two directions – what he really needs is four hands. He wants to see the new scans."

"He does?"

Meredith nods. "I've been keeping him updated – he's already in the confi circle for this case."

"I thought you…" her voice trails off, not wanting to intrude. I thought you wouldn't let him come home.

"Medicine." Meredith smiles faintly. "Medicine and Thomas. The rest we'll figure out."

"Can I … bring them to him?" Addison asks hesitantly.

She presents the plan to Mark when he returns later, holding Max by the hand.

"Derek needs the new scans. So he can stay up to date, and be on standby, in case we figure out a way for him to operate."

And I need to talk to him.

But she can tell just by the set of Mark's shoulders that he doesn't think she should go.

She swallows, hard, remembers their last conversation.

You two deserve each other. You both ruin everything you touch.

It's dark outside by the time Addison climbs carefully into the passenger side of the jeep – she's grateful it's a rare day she's not wearing a skirt.

"Thank you for driving me," she says as Meredith steers them around a dark curve. "I'm not sure I could have made it out here."

"It's a little isolated. Probably hard to find if you're new to the area. And I'm heading there anyway – it's almost bedtime."

Addison smiles at this.

"And bath time. You know, I think I was more nervous before his first bath than I was before my first appy."

"Yeah?"

"Babies are more slippery. And less vestigial."

The roads are unlit and winding. There's no way she could have made it out here herself.

Addison cranes her neck. "It's so…dark."

"We like how quiet it is out here." Meredith pauses. "You know, I can't really picture Derek living in Manhattan."

"I don't think he ever really liked it. The city." She's thinking about it as she talks. "There's a – frenetic pace to everything, it's loud and crowded and some people thrive on that. And some people … We had a place in the Hamptons but he didn't like that either." He used to call it Manhattan East and try to avoid their trips out there. Mark liked it.

"I guess it wasn't country enough," Addison admits. "He used to talk about running away to the woods, living under the stars, in the middle of – what?" she asks.

Meredith is smiling broadly.

"Just … makes a lot of sense," she says, and she starts easing the car up a dirt path as raindrops splatter on the windshield. "Welcome to the woods."

They're approaching a small lit structure.

It's not a house.

A trailer, it's an actual trailer, and her heels sink into the moist dirt as she picks her way nervously toward the little staircase leading to the … trailer.

"Addison." Derek pulls open the screen door. "What are you doing here?"

He looks – worn out, a bit worse for the wear, in a flannel shirt and jeans.

She just holds up the large folder, safe from the ever-present rain in a clear plastic bag. "New scans. Um. Meredith drove me."

"You talked to Meredith? I told you not to talk to Meredith."

"Yeah, well, I don't have to do what you tell me anymore."

"When did you ever?" But his tone is defeated, not aggressive, and he steps back from the screen door to let her in.

The air is warm and still inside – no rain, which is good, and it smells mostly like coffee and some kind of woodsy aftershave scent she doesn't recognize. And faintly like fish – there's a rod propped in the corner. It's really a trailer, even if it's a nice one - and she knows this because of pictures Derek showed her years ago trying to get her to go camping with him.

She never went.

"Is this your…"

There's a tiny couch – everything is tiny – with an open laptop, piles of files, a stack of books. A blanket.

"Home office," he sounds tired. He holds his hands out for the scans.

"I've talked to Richard," she says quietly, "and I made some calls and reached out to…"

"There's nothing you can do. I have reciprocal privileges in dozens of places but they're all dependent on Seattle Grace. No one is going to let me operate without an active license."

He spreads the scans out to review them, stares for a few moments, and she can see him thinking. "Look at that," he says quietly, and she follows his gaze.

"Meredith said the mass –"

"She's slowed some of the directional growth. But the positioning – look," and he indicates. "I'd have to come at it from two directions at once. It's twice as difficult as the last time we tried this."

"But you could-"

He's quiet for a moment. "I don't know if I could get it. But if there were a way for me to operate, of course I would."

"No one else will," she says it very softly, willing herself not to cry.

"I don't know if anyone else could do it," his tone is gentle. "I'm the only one who's tried this technique on a similar mass and it wasn't this complicated – and it was very complicated. But I did it."

Addison nods. "But if someone else could – you'd stay involved?"

"I'll do whatever I can."

"Meredith said she made calls..."

"We both did. No one wants to take it on. No one else thinks it's operable." His tone is direct, but not unkind.

"I heard Ginsberg hung up on her."

"Well, Ginsberg's brilliant but she's not exactly Miss Congeniality."

"Derek," and she just remembers something he said earlier, "you said she slowed some of the directional growth, with the med change?"

"Right. It was Meredith's call."

"She didn't mention that."

He shrugs. "She's not one to take credit."

"But you don't think she could…" her voice trails off.

"She's an extraordinary surgeon. But she's scaled back this year, she considers herself out of practice, and other than assisting me as a resident she's never done a procedure like this one. Almost no one has, not with this method. And I'd been operating five or six years longer, already specializing, when I tried it. She just doesn't have the experience."

She swallows.

"I've been going over the tapes, to see if there's anything I can-"

"You have the tapes? From the first surgery? Can I…"

"Of course. I'll copy them for you."

She's not sure what she's going to do with them but it feels important to have them.

"About what happened," he begins, stiffly, and she interrupts.

"You're not supposed to talk to me about it. Richard said. Not without lawyers."

"When have lawyers ever helped with anything?" But he just slides the scans neatly back into the folder.

"Thank you, for these. I'll email you the file from the first surgery. Was there anything else?"

She swallows hard. "Derek…"

"What is it?"

"Um…I think I have to drink to have this conversation."

"Fair enough."

There's a bottle of Lagavulin on the counter – no surprise there – and he pours a shot for himself, then takes a glass out of a cupboard, examines it briefly, and pours one for her too.

They sit on opposite sides of the small couch and he looks at her, waiting.

She rests a trembling hand on the black and blue cover of "Understanding Pathophysiology." She can tell this copy is Derek's without opening it; hers has rainbow highlighter leaking out of the spine (his will have cramped little notes in blue pen in the margins). Their medical school books have been nestled together in boxes in the basement of the brownstone for at least six years; in storage before then. Now they are one more thing she needs to separate, one more part of her that was linked to him. But, as Mark sits a respectful distance away, supporting her quietly, she thinks that at least her links to Derek will be easier to mourn.

Addison's intimacy with Derek has always been more public, more obvious: they share a surname, they wear wedding bands, they took vows in front of a crowd, they closed conversations in person with quick kisses and on the phone with the time-honored love you, bye. Her process now has a name: divorce. Legal, recognized, requiring a signature and a court filing. There's no word for what Mark and Derek have to do now, no lawyers to help them navigate it either.

As she takes on the slow, painful work of disassembling eleven years of marriage, fifteen years of a shared life, she is reminded over and over again that their marriage was stumbling to an end either way. She boxes up photos of smiling, youthful faces she can hardly recognize. She cries when she sees that her wedding dress, preserved in archival wrapping, survived Derek's purge of her closet that rainy night. She'll donate it to someone else's wedding, someone else's life. She sorts through her jewelry, separating the few pieces Derek's mother reluctantly handed down. She'll put them with the boxes she's making for Nancy, who she knows is coming by next week to pick up the few things Derek wanted. It's chilly fall and red and gold leaves crunch under her feet when she drags sacks of garbage to the street. Inside, bare branches whip against the leaded brownstone windows. She hasn't been sleeping here; it's not a home anymore. It's a museum, maybe. Or a morgue, where she visits for this … marital autopsy, this unfortunate excavation of the remains of AddisonAndDerek.

She swallows her drink before she starts talking, and it burns the back of her throat. "I just want you to know that we'll fight this with you, Derek. The investigation – we'll testify, whatever we need to do to help. You don't deserve this."

"It's an ethical violation." He says it without emotion. "What I did."

She takes a deep breath. "I know you wouldn't hurt Annabel. And you didn't hurt her, not on purpose. But … you hurt Meredith, Derek. You hurt her when you did that."

He raises his eyebrows over the rim of his glass. "We're going to talk about Meredith?"

She indicates their drinks and he sighs.

"Look, Derek, you have a life here, a family. You're happier now, in the – woods. Or you were before we got here. We interrupted that and maybe that wasn't fair. I was desperate," and her voice breaks slightly. "And maybe I should have said something to you about Annabel, warned you, I don't know. It wasn't fair to you."

"You talked to Meredith," he says slowly, apparently still focusing on that part. "About me?"

"About you. And me. And our..."

"Our marriage? What did you tell her?"

"That we grew apart. Stopped making time for each other."

"'We,'" he muses. "That's your story now? You used to tell me I was ignoring you."

"I used to think it was your fault. I used to think … a lot of things. And I know we're all better off now, it's just - I'm just sorry it happened the way it did and I never really had a chance to say that, but … I'm sorry. But the thing is, with the timing - Derek, you never counted, you didn't have to. I did all the counting and I knew there was just no way. That night…" and she doesn't have to finish the sentence, doesn't have to tell him it's the night they conceived Annabel.

"So that was really the first time?" He asks. She wonders if it's something that's bothered him over the years.

"It was, um." She looks down at her left hand resting on the couch, at the white gold band on her fourth finger. "It was the first time we slept together." She stares at the fabric of the couch. "We had been ... getting closer, for a few months. We did cross the line before that but we didn't sleep together until the night you…" her voice trails off.

She takes a deep breath. "I know it was wrong. I should have told you, when you and I started drifting apart, when Mark and I started getting closer, I should have been honest, I should have been … a lot of things. I know that. I was afraid to lose you-"

He makes a soft snorting sound at that, takes a swallow of scotch.

"I was. And I was afraid to lose him too and I didn't know what to do. Neither of us wanted to lose you, but he wanted to be honest. I didn't. I was scared. I should have been braver, I should have come clean."

"Come clean. You mean tell me that the two people I was closest to in the world were sneaking around behind my back?"

It's her turn to take a swallow of scotch. For a few moments they just sit in silence, listening to the rain outside pattering on the trailer. It's getting louder.

"Derek," she says finally. "Can I say .. one more thing?"

"You don't have to do what I want anymore, remember?" he paraphrases her own words back to her.

Mark comes with her a few times to the brownstone to dig through the annals of their history – of the two of them, and also of the three of them. He gives her space when she asks for it or he holds her, promises things will get easier, Derek will forgive them someday and even if he doesn't the others will move on, stop treating them like some combination of scandalous gossip and infectious disease… and when all else fails, he reminds her of what they have. He'll rest his hand on the growing bump, talk to it, talk to her. She drinks in his attention, clings sometimes like he's all that's keeping her afloat. Sometimes, like when Lizzie returns Christine's birthday card unopened – Christine who she delivered, whose middle name is Adrienne for her Aunt Addie – and she cries so hard she's sick, she thinks he really is all that's keeping her afloat.

In the end, it's the picture of the three of them that gets her the most. Mark's lost everything, too. His best friend, his surrogate family. But the unavoidable times she looks in the mirror – looks at haunted eyes, sunken cheeks, swollen nose – the face of someone spending hours crying off and on – she thinks that what she has done to Derek is the worst thing of all. Because she has Mark, and Derek doesn't. And she thinks, even though it hurts to think it, that losing her really wasn't the part that upset Derek the most – it was losing his best friend.

"Okay," she starts hesitantly, "Well, I think it was worse for you that it was Mark than that it was me. You and I, we'd been drifting apart for so long, you weren't happy either. Derek, you barely touched me, we never saw each other, I spent more time with my residents than with you. But Mark was… still your best friend. No matter how busy you were. So I'm just ... I'm sorry about that too."

He doesn't interrupt, but doesn't respond either.

"I was afraid to be honest. But you shouldn't have had to find out like that."

"No. I shouldn't have. Well," He takes a swallow of scotch. "I probably could have handled it better."

She looks down at her hands on the scratchy upholstery of the trailer's couch, remembering. It wasn't the angriest she'd seen him, that night, but it was the most determined, the least he'd seemed like himself. He was, in her experience, a yeller, and he could be painfully condescending – and she would strike below the belt, offensive on the defense; they'd had some terrible fights when they still bothered to fight. But he'd never touched her in anger before that night, hadn't touched her much at all, really, in the months before he found them together.

It all seems far away now, like it happened to someone else. When she tries to recall that part of the night, it's as if she's watching another person's memory: she feels vaguely sorry for that distant long-ago woman, for what it must have felt like to hang on to the banister with all your strength while the person who vowed to love you for the rest of your life ripped you off the staircase, dragged you through the foyer while you struggled to free yourself and shoved you, stumbling, out your front door. It's someone else's memory, someone else's stinging palms pressed against fogged glass, begging. Derek, please. Please.

She hasn't thought about it in so long.

"I'm not proud of that," Derek says finally, looking up at her for a moment and from the bleakness in his eyes she can see he's remembering too. It's never occurred to her that he even remembered it. Or that he thought he had been anything but justified.

"You were … understandably angry." She puts her hand on top of his, surprising herself, and he looks down at both their hands. She's not sure what compelled her to do it, other than needing some sense memory to replace the last time they touched each other. They hadn't shared so much as a handshake since that night.

"I'm sorry," he says suddenly, surprising her this time. He looks very serious when he raises his eyes to hers.

His apologies have always cut her to the quick. "It's okay. It was a long time ago." She untangles her hand from his, gently. "It was all a long time ago."

He pours her another scotch instead of responding and she downs it gratefully. If ever a conversation could benefit from alcohol…

"I would have told you," she says quietly, needing to say it yet one more time, as she watches him pour her another scotch. "If there had been any chance that she was yours, I would have told you seven years ago."

"Yeah," he hands her the tumbler. "Yeah, I guess you would have. It's too late now."

"No." She sounds more certain than she is, but she is going to fix this, because she has to.

Because there is no other way.

"Addison. I'll be lucky to get privileges anywhere after this is done but that's not … I've never gone this long without seeing him – " and she knows him means Thomas "-and Meredith's worried about the final caseworker approval, I'm sleeping here… and there's no way Richard is letting me back in the hospital in time. Addison, I'm sorry. I am so sorry," and she sees there are tears in his eyes and they are dark with pain.

And she knows he is a father and she hears that he is saying that she could lose her daughter.

"Derek…"

"I don't want to lose my son. I regret it, I shouldn't have done it, they can fine me, they can even take my license, I don't care, but I can't lose my son. I can't lose either of them."

She puts her hand back on his, and they fold their fingers together, wedding rings - from the right people this time - clinking against each other, and she stops trying to hold back her tears.

She pushes open the hotel room door later that night as quietly as she can. Mark looks up from the binder he's holding when she enters.

"You've been crying."

But when he gets closer his expression changes. "And you're …drunk. You're drunk?"

"Shush." She puts her hand over his mouth. "Don't wake Max."

"You smell like a brewery, Addie." He brushes her hand away from his face and eases the damp trench coat off her shoulders.

"I'm not drunk. I had a few drinks. I'm not drunk, Mark."

"Scotch," he says when she breathes on him. "You were knocking back scotch with Derek?"

"No. Well, yeah, but it wasn't like that. It was ... in the woods," She pronounces the words carefully, fairly sure she's not slurring.

"In the woods."

"In the woods, Mark, it's where he lives. In a … trailer. Meredith brought me there – what?" she asks, confused by the way he's looking at her.

"I don't know what."

"You still don't think I should have gone."

"I didn't say that."

"You don't trust me though?" Her voice inches higher. "Okay, first of all," and she ticks the answers off on her fingers, gestures a little looser than usual, a little broader from the scotch, "Derek hates me. Second of all, he barely touched me when he didn't hate me, as you know perfectly well."

"I didn't suggest you were sleeping with him, Addison!"

Heat rises in her cheeks at his sharp tone, even more than his words, and she responds on the defensive, voice sliding higher. "Are we going to talk about – sleeping with people, Mark? Are we going to talk about that now? Because I don't think we'll get interrupted here if you really want to- "

"Mommy?"

Max is standing in the doorway in green-striped pajamas, hair tousled with sleep, holding his stuffed dinosaur by the tail.

"Max," and Mark moves in to pick him up before Addison can respond. "How long have you been standing there, bud? It's late."

Max rests his chin on Mark's shoulder, sleepy eyes on Addison. "Are you mad at Mommy?"

"No. We were just talking. Let's get you back in bed."

"I want you to tuck me in." Max stretches out a hand to Addison.

"I will." She moves closer, brushes Max's hair back from his forehead, stepping back again at Mark's expression, since he apparently thinks she's going to get Max drunk from proximity alone. "Just give me a minute… "

She changes into pajamas and brushes her teeth – twice – before she walks through the connecting living room to Max's room. His stuffed animals are lined neatly up on the second bed – Annabel's bed, she can't think of it any other way. It's waiting for her.

She sits down on the side of Max's bed. He's waiting for her with the sweet expectant expression he usually wears for their good night routine. She's gotten into the habit of skyping him from the hospital when she has to work late, with the nanny's or Mark's help, so she won't miss that face.

"It's way past your bedtime, sweetheart."

"But you weren't here."

"Well." She draws the covers up around him, smooths them in on the side, straightens the dinosaur tucked in next to him. "I'm here now."

"Are you mad at Daddy?" he asks now, apparently crossing all his t's and dotting his i's. How very like both his parents, actually.

"Not at all." She takes his little hand in hers, wondering how much he heard. "Why do you ask that?"

"You were loud," he says and she's relieved that's all.

"I'm sorry we were loud." She brushes his bangs back from his forehead. "We were being silly. We didn't mean to wake you up."

She smiles down at him. "Did Daddy read you a story already?"

"Three." He holds up four fingers, then pushes one of the fingers down with his other hand, and she has to swallow a laugh. She's biased, she's a mother, but he's so cute sometimes she can hardly believe he's real. Can hardly believe he's hers.

"Then I think you're ready for sleep." She leans over and kisses his forehead, then turns and kisses Dino on the snout. "Good night. Sleep tight, see you in the morning light." Max says it along with her, and when she gives him one more kiss he wraps his little arms around her neck.

"I love you," she whispers into his sweet smelling hair. She holds him extra tightly because she can't hold Annabel too and when she sets him back on his pillow he's already half asleep and the tears in her eyes have dried.

Mark is pouring himself a scotch from the locked liquor cabinet when she walks into the living room.

"Catching up?" she asks lightly.

"Just the one for me."

She stands in the doorway with a rueful expression; she's not trying to manipulate him, not really, but she catches the moment he notices her eyes and sees she's been crying again. He could always tell. Now he sets down the scotch he was pouring and holds out his arms.

She steps into his embrace. "Don't be mad at me." It's an entreaty, not an order, though she wishes her voice didn't need to quaver quite so much.

His hand cradles the back of her head. "I'm not."

"I needed to talk to him, Mark. He's - well, he's out there alone and he's still working on her case, as much as he can do. Even though he can't practice. And I know you said it's not our fault, but it sort of is. My fault, I mean."

"I hear you," he says, which is different from I understand and they both know it.

"You know you don't have to be … worried about anything."

"And you know I trust you."

"He never did anything. We're the ones who…"

"Don't say it." He moves her away from him by the shoulders, gently, to look at her. "Addison, it's been so many years. We're married. He's married. I thought you got past calling yourself a cheater every five minutes."

"Maybe I need more therapy." She's only half joking. She leans against him again, drawing strength, and they breathe together.

She's sleeping restlessly when the buzzing phone jars her awake.

"Mark? What's wrong?" Dawn is creeping into the windows but it's not quite light out, and her heart speeds up.

Mark took the overnight shift at the hospital with Annabel, Addison stayed with Max, who's curled up next to her with his cheek resting on one of his stuffed dinosaurs, apparently having joined her at some point during the night.

"It's okay - she's stable, no change. It's not Annabel," and his tone is reassuring.

"What is it, then?"

Max stirs against her and she shushes him, smoothing his hair.

"Someone's just arrived, and – Addison," he sounds surprised, like he can't believe what he's saying, "you're going to want to get here as soon as you can."


TBC ... but who is this someone?! Review to help keep me on the straight and narrow of an update a day. If you've already figured out what's coming, then you're too smart. Your reward is ... I'm not sure yet, but I'll think of something. And the conversation? I think Addison and Derek needed to have that conversation - so she can resolve some of her guilt, so they can both move on, so maybe Derek and Mark can move forward into some kind of healing - and to make sure everyone knows Derek is still on board for whatever renegade medicine they're going to need to make this happen.

Title lyric from Fionn Regan's"Be Good or Be Gone."