Ok, been a while since I updated this! I'm not ready to talk about what happened in Grey's 9x01 yet, I cried like a baby! This was for a comment ficathon on lj, hope you enjoy.
Major 9x01 spoilers.
Addison introspective, in the future.
She doesn't think about her very often these days, Henry's sixteen next Tuesday and Mark's been dead fifteen years... it took a long time, at first she just didn't know how she was going to ever stop thinking about losing him, but she doesn't even think about him that much any more. She's happy, she's married, she's a mother, and she's still as busy as ever... Occasionally before she goes to sleep his face comes into her mind, and she stops for a few moments to think about what might have been. Strangely, what bothers her the most is that Mark doesn't age, he's exactly the same as he was the last time she saw him... hell, he's exactly the same as he was the first time his lips landed on hers in the brownstone in New York when her husband was absent... that hurts more than anything, because it means Mark's suspended in time. It means Mark's not getting older with her, having a few wrinkles round his eyes now the mirror hers, more grey in his hair than brown. She swallows, and grits her teeth when she thinks like that, because it's been fifteen years and she still wakes up some mornings thinking she can change what happened between them, thinking there's still a chance to make things right.
Because she thinks of Ella in those moments, and that's her biggest regret - and she's got many, with her and Mark. When she was younger, and she first moved to New York, she always imagined raising a child there, playing in Central Park with them, that room in the top of their brownstone turned into a nursery... at first it was hers and Derek's child running through the Park with her, and then, however briefly, it was Ella, until she made the worst decision she thinks she will ever make.
There are dreams, sometimes, still. There's her and Mark and a little red-headed, blue-eyed girl on a picnic blanket in the grass, and there's nothing but smiles and laughter and sunshine.
She sighs, grits her teeth and rolls over. She supposes some part of her will always wish she and Mark raised Ella in New York and none of what happened afterwards really ever did.