A/N: Me and my friends have made it a tradition to go out eat Chinese food every time I get 100 reviews. So, I just want to thank you all so much for giving me an opportunity to eat Chinese food, but especially for having read this fic for so long! Without you, I wouldn't be writing. Seriously. Xxxxxx

I Don't Hate You

Chapter 21: Babies During Wartime

One night when Addison was just about to drift off Meredith said "Baby-names."

"Hm?" Addison mumbled, waking up a bit.

"I can't stop thinking of baby-names. What do you think of Ashley, or Molly? Addie? Hey," she shook her shoulder.

Addison made herself wake up and sat herself up so she wouldn't fall asleep again.

"Why are you talking about baby-names?" she asked, her voice drenched in sleep.

"Because I'm... I think I'm growing fond of this... I mean, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to have children, even though there are two of them."

"Seriously?" Addison said, suddenly feeling perfectly clear.

"I can't make this decision without you. I can't do this without you."

Addison took her hands in hers. "There are single mothers out there, having lots of children. They can do it, so why wouldn't we be capable of having two babies? We can do it. I know we can."

"Only if you'll be as much of a mother as I will. Equal. If we split up-"

"We won't split up."

"But if we do, you'll have half the custody, okay? It has to be equal."

"Yes, we'll be equally mothers."

"Okay," Meredith said, and then took a big breath, heaving her chest as if she had to get some extra air in her lungs to pronounce the words she wanted to say.

"We," she started, making a pause, "are... going to have babies?"

Addison laughed at her frightened expression. Meredith smacked her lightly on her shoulder and grimaced at her.

Addison smothered her laughter and nodded encouragingly at her girlfriend.

"We're going to be parents," Meredith said. "We're going to have babies," she said and her face broke up in a smile.

Addison smiled bigger.

"We're having twins!" she said happily.

Meredith jumped up and took a hold of Addison's shoulders and exclaimed "We're having twins!"

"Yes!"

She crashed her lips onto hers, and Addison pushed her down on her back. They kissed, they made love and they laughed and cried. It felt so good, having made a decision, permitting them to let out all the tension they had built up these past few days.

This whole new life was daring to take a permanent hold in their minds. They were starting a family.

~GA~

The next following weeks Derek only talked to Addison when he had to. He was handling his job as Chief of Surgery pretty well, as anyone could when they were new at a job, even though she suspected he was taking a lot of advice from Burke.

Meredith had been working a lot with Addison, since Derek refused taking her as his intern when he worked as the neuro specialist. They hadn't hired a replacement for head of neurology yet.

Addison was pretty okay with this. It was selfish, because being around Meredith all the time made it possible for her to help her more with the pregnancy. But for Meredith it wasn't the best thing. Neonatal wasn't her thing, and seeing babies all the time seemed to scare her, and helping out with difficult births totally freaked her out. She didn't let the patients see it, but Addison, knowing her so well, could see her emotions leaking out regardless what she did to hide it. Then she always had to calm her down afterward and tell her that she most likely will have a really smooth delivery without complications, and even if she did, she would make sure everything would be okay.

When Meredith was almost 3 months pregnant she'd started showing, and showing quickly. She hadn't been having hardly any symptoms but then, suddenly, she threw up, at any time of the day, but mostly during the afternoons.

"How should we tell him?" Meredith asked Addison, a morning before work, after she'd rinsed out her mouth after an attack of morning sickness.

"Tell him?"

"Derek. Mark is always checking up on me. I think... Maybe he even wants to become a father. But he wants to tell Derek, or, he wants me to tell Derek. I don't know if I'm ready. I mean, he already hates me."

"He couldn't hate you," Addison tried, moving up from behind Meredith and pulling her arms around her waist.

They looked at each other in the mirror. Meredith was only wearing underwear and her belly had a small roundness. Her breasts had grown and they looked like they were trying to escape her bra.

"It's starting to show," Meredith pointed out, leading Addison's hands to her rounded stomach.

Addison slightly smiled.

"You're beautiful," she said and kissed her on her neck.

"Thank you. Will you still love me when I'm all fat and then all floppy?"

"Floppy?" Addison chuckled.

"With stretch marks, and the skin just hanging down to my knees."

"It won't hang down to your knees," Addison rolled her eyes.

Meredith sighed and squeezed her breasts. "My boobs are sore," she complained and Addison pulled her closer, as if it would make it help.

"So...," Addison started. "Derek."

"Yes. Derek," Meredith nodded tightly. "I have to tell him before he'll find out this way," she said and slightly patted her belly.

"We'll tell him together," Addison mumbled.

"When?"

"Today?"

Meredith contemplated this idea.

"We've been avoiding this so long," she finally said, her voice low.

"Too long."

"Yeah," Meredith nodded quietly.

"That's why we should do it today. It'll just be even more painful if we don't do it now. We've been waiting just because we didn't want to take the pain. I think, I mean, it is unrealistic of us to think that we'll get out of this painless."

~GA~

Arriving to the hospital the couple stopped by the surgical board and searched for Derek's name. They were having a mumbled conversation, their heads close together, to try to find out when they should talk to him.

"I want Cristina with us. You know, we shouldn't be alone with Derek when he finds out. He will probably become very angry," Meredith said.

"But since he's the Chief, he'll try to be civilized about it, he doesn't want to bring a bad name upon the hospital and maybe he'd get fired if he got too cavemanish... probably."

Addison suddenly felt an urge to bail. Which Meredith noticed.

"We are doing this," she hissed. "It was your idea. And you were right, and you know you were right so just get it together."

Addison sighed and tried to gather every bit of courage she had in her. She wouldn't bail, but it sure wouldn't be a pleasant thing to do.

"We'll leave Mark out of it. They've fought before and that is probably what would happen if we brought him there. We'll let them take care of it themselves," Meredith continued planning.

Addison just nodded and Meredith glared at her again.

"We'll just get it over with, 'kay?" Addison said, wanting to let her know that she wouldn't bail. "We'll go now?"

"Yes," Meredith agreed and slithered her hands around Addison's back, pulled her closer and kissed her casually on the lips.

They heard a strange noise and a shout of surprise, which made them loosen their embrace and looked around.

"Ow."

Apparently O'Malley had been on his way passed them, and saw them kissing just when he rounded the corner and walked right into a male nurse that hadn't been watching where he was going either and they tumbled to the floor.

"Seriously. Get over yourselves," Meredith said, rolling her eyes. "I mean, seriously."

Addison smirked seeing how annoyed Meredith got. She grabbed her hand and they walked together up the stairs, where they met Cristina and she followed them. They passed the over-walk to go to the Chief's office and stopped in front of the door. Still holding hands. They looked at each other.

"This is it," Meredith said, nodding as if to convince herself to do this. "Who's saying what? I mean, maybe we should have made a script. We're not prepared enough, maybe we should just come back later and-"

The door opened and they both jumped.

"What are you doing here?" Derek asked, looking at Addison's and Meredith's conjoined hands and then at Cristina. "I could hear you talk."

"We need to speak to you," Addison said, pronouncing her words carefully so her voice wouldn't tremble.

Derek crossed his arms and gave them all a scrutinizing gaze.

"Fine," he eventually said suspiciously. "Come on in."

He stepped aside and let them in and walked back to his desk where he sat down on his comfortable chair. Cristina closed the door behind them and they sat down side by side in front of him.

Addison suddenly thought about herself sitting beside Derek in the very same chairs in front of the Chief. The roles had changed.

"So, what's up?" he asked, his face a stone.

"We have something to tell you," Addison said slowly when Meredith seemed to have her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth.

Addison looked at her. Meredith's eyes flickered between her knees and Addison's gaze. Derek was quiet, waiting, perplexed and probably fearing the worst.

Cristina gave Meredith a slight push. It alerted her and she stood up. Derek looked at her with puzzled eyes, and then she turned around and showed him her profile and tugged on her scrubs, making the fabric stretch over her rounded belly.

The color drained from Derek's face. He looked quickly away from Meredith as the information penetrated his head and he grasped his face in desperation. Then he turned into more of a stone than ever. He smashed his laptop shut and then got to his feet and walked quickly out of there.

Addison was quick to follow him. She looked to the right and to the left and saw that he was storming off over the over-walk.

"Derek," she called after him.

He walked faster.

"Derek," she called again and started running.

She advanced on him and grabbed a hold of his wrist to make him stop, but he just snapped his hand out of her grip and said loudly "Leave me alone, Addison."

"Derek, we need to talk about this, we need to talk. Just let us explain and then you can walk away. Don't do this. Don't walk away from this."

He suddenly turned around, almost making her bump right into him.

"What do you want from me, Addison?" he asked coldly.

"Don't tell me you don't care. You have to care!" she said with disbelief. How could he be so cold about this?

He took a tight grip on the rail to support himself. Why he'd need to support himself she couldn't pinpoint.

"Do you seriously believe I do not care after you take away the love of my life and then keep my baby a secret from me?" he said just as coldly as before. "What do you expect me to do? Just accept this and let you raise my child? I do have rights, and you can't keep treating me like I'm worth nothing," he said still without raising his voice. She was surprised to see that he didn't just rush off, like he used to, but seemed to wait for her to respond.

"You're not worth nothing," she tried. "We waited with telling you because we thought you would react so bad."

"Is my reaction really that strange to you... Don't you think I would have reacted better if she'd told me earlier? And what have you got to do with this? It's not like it's your child she's carrying!"

"I am going to be a mother, no matter what you say about it," she said careful not to mention that they were having twins. Derek needed to calm down until he got anymore news.

"Give me a break, Addison," Derek said . "What are you going to do? Just cut the baby's father out of its life?" he said with a hint of sarcasm.

"No, of course not. But we'd understand if-" she interrupted herself so she wouldn't say something she'd regret. "You should come back and talk with Meredith and I. There's things you need to know," she said quickly with a pleading in her voice. "We have to talk to you, and we've waited because this isn't all there is to know. I'm sorry for hurting you Derek."

"You're not sorry," he said spitefully. "I want to talk to Meredith about this. And Meredith alone. I've had enough of you."

"Fine," she said and raised her hands in defeat. "Go back and talk to her."

He did just that. Addison followed him.

Cristina and Meredith were standing outside of Derek's office, watching them at a distance.

Derek just walked into his office, with only a nod directed toward Meredith. Meredith looked at Addison with confused eyes.

"I agreed to let him talk to you alone," she mumbled as an answer to her silent question.

Meredith bit her lip, but she nodded. Addison smiled sadly, she didn't like seeing Meredith looking so worried.

"It will be okay," Meredith said.

"You sure?"

"Yes, it's fine. It's Derek. He would never hurt me, so stop worrying," she said and kissed her quickly on the mouth before going inside the office and closing the door behind her.

After momentarily staring at the door she turned around to face Cristina.

"Should we watch?" Cristina asked and Addison smiled.

They went out to the over-walk and looked at Meredith and Derek through the glass walls of the office. They watched them talk calmly, until Meredith seemed to have a monologue and Derek grew stiff.

His back was turned to them and they watched carefully Meredith's face when it looked like he talked.

They saw how Meredith seemed to protest as Derek suddenly had enough and left the room. He passed them on the over-walk, totally ignoring them. His face was pale with contained rage.

Addison met Meredith half-way back to the office. She grabbed her by the arms.

"He's going after Mark," Meredith exclaimed.

Addison shrugged. "Let him."

Meredith looked horrified.

"Meredith, think about it. If he beats up Mark, he's going to lose his job," she beamed.

"We have to watch this," Cristina suddenly said. Addison had almost forgotten about her presence.

Cristina was on fire, she wanted to see a fight or just the internal fight Derek would be having trying not to ruin his career by getting into an actual fight.

"Come on!" she urged them.

"We owe it to Mark. We can't just leave Derek with him. Didn't you see his face? He's crazy," Meredith said. "Addison!"

That last shout-out did it. Addison nodded and they immediately began running the same direction Derek had gone. She tried to call him, she paged him, but no answer.

Eventually they lost him.

"What do we do now?" Meredith asked.

"Uhm," Addison just said, thinking.

"The surgical board!" Cristina exclaimed and without any other word they hurried toward that direction.

They didn't care about the odd looks they got from the people they passed, and they skidded to a halt in front of the board. Addison wiped the sweat off her forehead and quickly ogled through Derek's writing. She was the one most used reading it and therefore found what they looked for first.

"He's in surgery. OR 2," she panted and they hurried off again, taking the stairs instead of the elevator.

They caught Derek in the OR corridor.

"Derek!" Addison called out to him.

He turned abruptly around. He looked furious.

"Leave me alone. I need to speak to Mark."

"Derek, don't do anything you'll regret," she panted, clutching her side in pain.

Cristina was resting her hands on her knees, breathing heavily and her face was writhed in pain. Meredith joined Addison's side.

"Everything is wrong about this," Derek said. "I want you two out of my hospital," he continued. "But right now, I need to speak to Mark."

"Don't do anything stupid," Addison said, walking closer to him.

"Stop meddling," he said. "Go home."

He turned to the door and opened it, she grabbed his arm, to make him stay, even with force, but he tried to shrug her off. She pulled his arm, and told him to leave Mark alone.

"Fuck you Addison. Get the hell off!" he roared and took a firm grip by her wrist and twisted it off. He twisted it a bit further than absolutely needed.

She clutched her wrist in pain and the momentarily shock let him slip inside the door.

"Maybe we should have just stayed out of it," she said.

Meredith stroke her back.

A short moment later Derek came back out along with Mark.

"Come," Derek muttered and they followed him to an empty OR.

Mark was about to protest, he was to be in surgery after all, but after taking a look at their faces, he just shut his mouth.

While inside, Derek grabbed a hold of Meredith's arm and dragged her in front of Mark.

"What the hell Mark?" he said, showing Meredith as if she was evidence on a crime scene.

She pulled her arm out of his grip, looking like an angry kitten.

Mark removed his scrub cap and twisted it in his hands.

"So you know?" he asked.

Derek glared at him.

Mark tried to laugh it off. "You know me, Derek."

Meredith rubbed her forehead with her fingertips and sighed.

"You knew?" Derek asked him, frowning through his anger. "You knew she's pregnant?"

Mark nodded and Derek's fist hit his precious cheek bone. Mark closed his eyes, just taking the blow without trying to get back to him, like he usually would.

Meredith jumped away from them. Addison wondered if she felt some kind of maternal instinct of protecting herself. She wrapped her arms around her and glared at Derek and Mark.

Mark was bleeding from his face, but he didn't seem to care. He had probably been expecting this.

"I've known for a while," he said and ducked when Derek's fist flew through the air again. He held out his hands and backed off. "Stop it Derek. Nothing good will come out of this. What's passed is passed," he tried to reason, but Derek hit him again. Getting to his nose this time.

Now all the diplomacy Mark had in him just ran out. They began fighting pretty violently. Derek got pushed into the OR table and surgical instruments rattled to the floor.

The women just pushed themselves up against the wall, trying to look as small and insignificant as possible.

"The nurses won't like this," Cristina mumbled.

They didn't even try to scream to stop them. It got really violent, until Mark was on the ground and he grasped at the floor and found a scalpel which he aimed against Derek.

Derek jerked back, and Mark got to his feet, still with the scalpel pointed toward his ex-best friend.

"Stop this Derek," Mark said hoarsely, supporting himself with one hand against his knee.

"Are you going to cut me?" Derek asked.

"I don't want to," he said truthfully. "But this isn't leading to anything good."

"I know," Derek surprised them by saying. He backed off and sat down on the anesthesiologist's chair.

Mark put down the scalpel.

Meredith looked between the two. Derek was covering his face in his hands and Mark tried to feel his face, to get some idea of the extent of his wounds. Addison gasped when Meredith chose to approach Mark to tend to his injuries.

She clutched his nose and pulled it right. It snapped and Mark made a grunt of pain.

Derek looked up. His eyes were red. He met Addison's gaze and he looked away.

She knew him. He was fragile now. She hadn't seen him this sad in a long time. That Mark and Meredith were there didn't matter, because they all knew him so well, but Cristina's presence might make the situation too tense.

She turned to Cristina, who was still standing against the wall.

"Cristina, you can go," Addison mumbled, so the other ones wouldn't hear.

She didn't protest and walked out of there after casting a last glance on the four of them.

Meredith had started suturing Mark's face, closely following his directions. It was his face, after all.

Addison carefully approached Derek, and squatted at his side. He had covered his face in his hands again.

"Derek," she said and put her hands on his knees. "Look at me."

She pried his hands off.

He looked at her and sniffled.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I know you're only apologizing for crying," she said and smiled slightly.

Derek nodded.

"I want you to do a paternity test on the babies," he said.

She flinched. "That's an unnecessary risk, Derek. You know that. I won't agree to anything like that. I can't see any problem with waiting until the babies are born."

"You're not the one who will have to wait over half a year to know whether you're a father or not. It's not fair. Who are you to decide these things?"

She sat down on the floor with a sigh.

"We're not taking any risks like that and that's final."

Derek glared at her and she glared just as angrily back at him.

He turned away his gaze and looked sad.

"Would you even let anyone of us be the father?"

"Yes, of course. But if you don't want anything to do with it, I'll adopt them."

He nodded tiredly.

"But I will be just as much of a mother to them as Meredith will. And this is something you'll have to except," she continued.

Derek hesitated for a moment, but then he nodded once with a very tiny movement. It was so tiny that she wasn't even sure it had happened.

"I don't know what kind of part I want in this," he whispered.

"I know," she whispered, trying to take his hand, but he pulled it away from her.

"I can't work with you anymore."

She looked down and nodded.

"Can you please go? Just for now. We should have some time apart. This is just... too much. I don't want to kick you out, you know, and I understand that you don't want to leave because of me."

"Yeah," she whispered. "It won't be because of you. I can kick you off of your post if I'd want to, but I'm not going to create anymore drama than we've already had. Meredith needs calm and I'm just fed up with all this crap. I mean, what the hell is this? I'm not going to watch you and Mark beat each other up all the time!" she said, fighting off the urge to pull her hair and say that Derek was immature, which he was, but it felt stupid to anger him again.

Derek was silent for a moment, contemplating the things she'd said.

"It would be a shame to lose the best neonatal surgeon this country can offer," he said thoughtfully and he you could even see the hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah. Maybe the best neonatal surgeon of this country will come back for some cases in the future," in her head she added 'When you've grown up'.

He nodded. This time his hand twitched as if he wanted to take her hand in his, but he changed his mind and kept them for himself, not touching her.

"I do understand that this is real," he said, obviously referring to her and Meredith's relationship. "But you're demanding too much of me, if I have to be around the women of my life, who do not love me anymore, but love each other... It's too much."

"I get it," she whispered. "Give us some time here first, and be civilized about it. I won't let Meredith fly during the first trimester and her internship is almost finished, so let her just finish it here, without trying to mess it up for her. It would be stupid to make her finish it elsewhere when she's so close to the end."

"Of course I wouldn't try to mess it up," he said, but then he sighed. "If you need anything..."

"Yeah."

Addison stood up.

"Meredith?" she said.

Meredith was done suturing Mark and he was actually having a conversion with her belly. Derek looked at the two with tired eyes.

"Meredith, can we go?" Addison asked quietly.

"Yeah," she nodded and pulled down her scrub shirt again.

They all left the OR. A nervous-looking nurse was waiting for Mark in the corridor and told him that he was replaced for the moment and asked him if he wanted to scrub in again. He did and followed the nurse into the other OR.

Derek nodded at Meredith and Addison before he walked away.

Addison wrapped her arm around Meredith and they went home.