A/N: This story has been giving me a lot of trouble, and I am so grateful for those of you who are still reading, reviewing, and interested in my continuing it. You inspire me to keep going and push through the block. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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stability
..

911 for Hannah Fowler.

I run into Nurse Taylor on my breathless jog through the halls and stop short.

"What happened to Hannah?"

"Fowler? Nothing. She's stable."

"I was paged."

"Not by me. I was in there ten minutes ago and she was fine."

Odd.

And then I see Hannah propped up in bed when I get there. Karev's in with her; they're talking quietly. I can't hear what they're saying from the doorway, but she seems fine.

"Karev!" I order him out of the room with a quick gesture and wait to speak until he's outside. "Why did I get a 911 page if the patient is stable?"

"Physically stable," he says.

That's all I need to stride back into the room; he follows on my heels.

"Hannah ... how are you feeling?"

Her eyes are wide when she looks up at me. She looks exhausted, but she recognizes me and I'm not worried about her mental faculties.

What's left when it comes to stability, if she's mentally and physically fine?

Oh, right. ... emotional.

"Hi." I smile at her when she says my name. "I wanted to check on you. How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay. I don't know. I feel ... funny," she says quietly, gesturing in the vague area of her midsection.

"Can I take a look?"

She starts crying as soon as I touch her, but they don't sound like tears of pain – and she denies any pain. Sadness, maybe.

"Hannah, everything's going to be okay," I tell her soothingly, doing my best to palpate her when she's starting to move with restless anxiety on the sheets. I signal the nurse, who leans in close to try to calm her and restrain her at the same time.

"I felt him moving," she whimpers. "Dr. Montgomery, he's … he's still alive."

Karev and I exchange a glance over the bed. Fetal demise occurred hours ago. Whatever your interpretation is of when life begins, his has already ended. It's just a matter now of bringing him into the world so his parents can say goodbye.

His parents.

I notice Tad isn't in the room.

"Hannah," I tell her gently. "It's not uncommon to feel sensations, or…"

"It wasn't a sensation, it was him, I've felt him moving a hundred times."

She's crying again.

"Hannah. It's okay." I pass her a box of tissues from the rolling table next to her bed, and when she ignores them I take one out and hand it to her.

"Where's Tad?" I ask the question gently but she tenses up, confirming my suspicions.

"I don't know," she mumbles. She rustles with the sheets. "I … need to find him."

"You need to rest," I tell her quickly, "Tad will be back soon, I'm sure."

"I'm just going to go look for him."

"Hannah. You need to stay here. You can take a walk, if you'd like, one of the nurses will go with you, but –"

"No, I … I can leave if I want to, I mean, I don't have to stay here, I didn't do anything wrong."

"Of course you didn't do anything wrong," I assure her, speaking slightly over her nervous chatter.

She's starting to swing her legs out of the bed and her movements are sloppy, frightened. Don't do it. Don't leave. I'm prepared to stop her; well, physically prepared if not emotionally, because I can't let her leave ...

but then she stops moving.

Karev's leaning over her, his gloves are off, he's holding one of her hands between his two large ones and talking to her in a surprisingly soothing voice.

You want to be here when he comes. He's coming soon. This is where you've chosen to be when he comes.

I can't tell if he's talking about Tad or the baby they'll have to bury and maybe she can't either, but she's responding to him.

And then he's talking about nonsense, pointless and meandering but somehow grounding at once. Whether it's his rough and tumble exterior – he might not be quite as tatted up as Tad, but a little ink on his back wouldn't surprise me – or something else, he seems to be calming her down.

…

"Looks like you could have handled that on your own," I tell him.

Karev's expression is grim when he leaves the sleeping Hannah to join me outside her room. "She was threatening to leave. She was scared. You don't want to know if your patient's about to do a runner?"

Unwelcome images fill my mind. Brenda's frightened face. Can you help me? Am I going to die? Please … please can I see the baby?

"Of course I want to know," I snap at him. "that was actually a compliment, Karev, you might want to improve your response to them. Of course I understand if you're not used to praise."

Karev's jaw looks tight.

I realize he wasn't being overly cautious. He wasn't trying to suck up, or to ruin my night, or to show off the bedside manner that surprised me.

He has his own demons.

We all do, I can grudgingly admit. Even snarky interns. Even arrogant neurosurgeons, come to that.

"Who was it?" I ask him quietly.

"Oh, just some farmer's daughter from Idaho," he says without looking at me.

I wince a little. "I … maybe shouldn't have said that."

He shrugs. "Sticks and stones, right?" He glances into the room. "If you have this under control, my shift ended forty-five minutes ago."

"Don't let me keep you, then."

…

I leave Hannah just once, in the competent hands of her overnight nurse to grab a much-needed cup of coffee. My hands are shaking a little.

"If it isn't the featherweight champ."

Of course Mark has to be in the lounge at this exact moment. Sometimes I think he has a sixth sense that lets him know when I'm feeling weak. I take a few welcome swallows of bitter coffee and ignore him; that's never dissuaded him before.

"I heard you and Derek had a little old west showdown in the scrub room today," he continues, sounding amused. When I look up he's twirling an imaginary pistol. "I have to say I'm sorry I missed it."

"I'm not."

He roots in the fridge for a cold bottle of water and I prop my hips against the counter to swallow some more coffee.

"Who told you, anyway?"

Mark shrugs. "Who didn't? People tell me things. It's a curse," he deadpans.

"You mean they think they can trust you and they're wrong."

He frowns. "Did I do something to offend you?"

Did he – oh, where would I even start with that?

The answer is nowhere.

I'll start nowhere and go nowhere.

I offend me when I'm around him. I offend myself. Don't judge too hard until you've had to see your biggest mistake and your former champion all rolled up into one annoyingly attractive package … every single day.

Derek may have moved across the country to avoid me – and I may have stayed for reasons that sometimes don't seem worth it – but Mark's presence here might be the strangest of all.

Even if it makes perfect sense.

He just looks me up and down for a moment in that way that makes me feel like I've taken off all my clothes – and sometimes leads to my actually doing just that.

"I'm heading out," he says finally. "You should stop by tonight."

"I'm sleeping here to keep an eye on my patient," I inform him.

"So that distance thing is really working out for you, huh?"

"Shut up, Mark."

He just smiles at me, that slow predatory smile, and then takes a few steps closer.

I take one step back, automatically; it's not worth playing chicken with Mark because he doesn't understand the rules, he never has. He's not trying to intimidate so much as he's trying to … dominate? Interfere, take over, I don't know, just – be and I can't have that now and I don't want it so I reach behind me for the door.

"Thanks for your concern," I tell him before I duck out.

...

Hannah sleeps. Thankfully, she sleeps. It's the most merciful thing her body can do for her now as we wait for the next step.

"Hungry?"

I look over to the doorway to see Karev's bulky shadow holding a paper bag. His voice is low and Hannah doesn't stir.

"What happened to my shift ended forty-five minutes ago, two hours ago?"

"I left. I came back." He shrugs and ambles into the room like he owns the place, holding out the paper bag. "It's a sandwich."

"You want brownie points, Karev? Because I don't give those out. I'm training surgeons, not suckups."

"Excuse me for trying to be thoughtful."

"You're not excused," I tell him but I do take the bag. I'm actually hungry. Very hungry. A bite or two and I'll be fine. I take three, though, and then stuff the sandwich back in teh back.

"Thanks."

He's still in the room for some reason. "That's not going to last you very long."

"Spare me the speech about taking care of myself, Karev. I'm not a damsel in distress."

"You're no damsel, anyway," he mutters, and I know I should be offended, but I'm not. He's such a child – a smug, arrogant one, a decently smart one, and one who has hidden depths in dealing with patients, even, but a child nonetheless.

He's standing in the doorway again. Three hundred thousand dollars of education to be a doorstop. "Karev – make yourself and go check on her labs."

"I'm off duty."

"And yet … you're here."

"Fine." He smirks, grabs the chart from the table and disappears. I sit back, cross my legs, and watch Hannah sleep.

Her body rises up and down softly with her breath, the highest point of her midsection the swelling where I ensured, with a needle, that the pregnancy was terminated. It could be twelve hours until she's fully softened and dilated. It could be thirty-six.

I can tell you one thing … she won't be running. Her body is a ticking clock now and I won't lose her. So I settle in for the long haul.

Distance? What's that?

…

I'm still watching her sleep, chin propped in my hand, when his shadow darkens the doorway yet again.

"Karev, are you moving in?"

He glances at Hannah, then back to me. "Shepherd's still at Joe's," he says abruptly.

Of course he is. I fight down niggling worry to glare at the messenger.

"How is this my concern?"

"I thought you would want to know. Since-"

I cut him off before he can tell me it's my fault; I don't necessarily disagree but he hasn't earned the right to pass that judgment. "Don't involve yourself in things you don't understand," I tell him icily.

"You involved me," he says. "And Meredith too."

"No, I didn't – and that's beside the point. Dr. Shepherd has nothing to do with this."

"You really think I don't get it?"

"I know you don't."

"Because Shepherd is so complicated. Right." His sarcastic tone is irking me. "He doesn't seem so complicated to me. He just screws up every woman he touches … simple."

"Tread carefully," I warn him.

I don't say that's not true or try to defend Derek or myself and that doesn't seem to escape Karev's attention.

See, an observant intern is great in the OR but less so when he's prying into your unnecessarily complicated personal life.

"Well," he says, still in that smug tone that makes me want to slap him, "I know I'm not supposed to involve myself in things I don't understand, but you also might want to know that Meredith is stuck there."

"And…"

"And you let us think we were putting our career on the line so you could get one over on Shepherd, and now Meredith is cleaning up your mess, so, I don't know, maybe you could do her a solid?"

His vocabulary is as crude as he is. "That's not why," I tell him coolly.

And it's not my mess.

Except … maybe it is. Kind of.

But I'm still not going to go.

"I'll stay with Hannah." He looks at me for a second and I don't care for his expression. "Assuming you're planning to go, that is," he says with exaggerated respect.

Ass.

…

I do go. Of course I go.

Why? I don't know. I don't think I know. But maybe for the same inarticulable reason Derek followed me out of Hannah Fowler's room two days ago and started this whole thing.

Because something has started, even though I don't necessarily want to think about what it is. Just like you can't see the end when you're too close … it's hard to see the beginning of something when you're trying to walk away.

Karev wasn't kidding that he's a mess.

I mean, it's fairly subtle as messes go – Derek doesn't do totally-losing-it, not in public anyway. But he's drunk. He's very drunk, slumped on the same barstool where I left him a few hours earlier, his head in one hand. I can't see his face, but I can see Meredith sitting next to him looking like she'd like to be anywhere else.

You wanted him, a mean part of me feels like saying, but he's not such a hotshot brain surgeon now, is he?

It's not fair and I know it's not fair. Other than screwing him at the prom, she hasn't done anything more than get fleeced by those damn blue eyes, the same ones that did me in. And the prom-screwing … I can judge Derek for it. I do judge him for it, but Meredith … ? Well. You know what they say. People who fuck their husband's best friends in marital beds shouldn't throw stones.

(Do they say it? They probably should say.)

"Dr. Montgomery," she says, sounding surprised, not a little relieved, and awfully formal considering we're not standing over a patient on an operating table, we're standing over the very intoxicated man who is both my ex-husband and her ex … whatever he is.

"How did you – oh." She stops talking. "Alex. I told him not to ..."

"Well, he did."

I glance at Derek.

"I considered calling you," she admits before I can ask anything or talk to the drunk in question. "I even looked … on his phone, he said he deleted your number, and I couldn't find you. Under S or M. Or A."

She didn't look under W for wife, which he used to think was amusing and I thought was adorable, once. I know how it sounds. But cell phones were new to us at one time, they were toys.

Or maybe she should have looked under E, come to think of it, because maybe he's switched my contact profile to ex-wife.

But he hasn't deleted me. I know that.

And not just because I haven't deleted him either. Derek doesn't delete things. He leaves them behind, he walks away, he moves across an entire country but he doesn't file papers. He walks away.

"Dr. Montgomery ... I'm glad you're here because I really do need to go. My shift starts at seven tomorrow."

"Right." I glance at Derek. "How, um, how's he doing?"

She makes a fairly descriptive face.

"Great," I mutter.

Derek chooses this moment to lift his head, blearily. "Addison," he says in a whiskey-smoked voice that's not quite a slur, but not quite right either, "What are you doing here?"

It's not lost on me that it's exactly how he greeted me the night I showed up in Seattle.

"I'm telling you to go home, that's what I'm doing." I keep my tone matter-of-fact.

He looks vaguely irritated by my presence – like a mild mosquito annoyance – no cold hatred, at least, but he doesn't respond. He's nursing a beer and glaring. I'm assuming Joe stopped serving him scotch because Derek usually drinks beer only under certain circumstances. He's very particular.

He's also very drunk, and a lot heavier than he looks, so I don't know what I'm supposed to do in this situation. And I don't want to figure it out myself. I want an intern, and Meredith realizes what I'm thinking the moment I look at her, unfortunately.

"I should go," she says again.

My gaze falls on Derek and then hers does too.

"I've moved on," she tells me.

I shove a piece of hair out of my eyes. "I get that and I'm happy for you, really, but I'm the one who divorced him, Meredith. So if anyone's going to play the moved on card here…"

"I get that," she repeats my phrasing. "But you're choosing to get involved. I don't have to make that choice. I can choose something better."

"I … chose wrong," Derek lifts his head tells the air in melancholy fashion.

"Screw you," I tell him pleasantly. He probably won't remember it anyway. Plus he's too busy drinking himself into stupidity because the girl he chose didn't choose him. Well, that and because the girl he did choose but wishes he didn't left a tiny detail out of one procedure that was really none of his business.

Plus that one slap, but that doesn't count. It didn't even leave a mark.

"I have a patient, Derek. I can't baby-sit you."

He ignores me. Meredith's already shrugged into her coat, which doesn't bode well for helping me, but I try anyway.

"I'm leaving," she says.

"Meredith."

"Addison," she replies; she doesn't sound unsympathetic and her use of my first name doesn't escape me. "I'm sorry I can't help you, but I need to leave." She pauses. "I can sit with Hannah while you deal with this."

I'm this close to saying no, you stay with Derek and I'll sit with Hannah but I get the distinct sense she's past negotiating. I'm envious she can move on like this – I suppose she's known him less than a year and I've known him for more years than I haven't known him. But that disparity didn't stop him from choosing her over me, did it?

"Check on her and then go get some sleep before your shift," I instruct her irritably, well aware she's off the clock. "Karev's on call; he can stay until I get back. Just make sure –"

"That she's not alone. I will."

I nod. "And I'd like updates."

"Every half hour," she assures me. "More frequently if that's what you'd prefer."

"Every half hour is fine. I won't be much longer than that." God, I hope I won't. "And – Grey," I add, signaling our transition back to working and she accepts it smoothly, "make sure you monitor her at all times."

"I will. Good night, Dr. Montgomery." She glances at Derek, seems to think better of saying goodbye to him, and then the jangle of those irritating bells on the door signal her exit.

…

Thirty minutes passes way too quickly because I get my first update – stable, no change – before Derek has answered any of my reasonable requests to try to get him home.

(I could have left him there – maybe I should have left him there – but I didn't.)

Time for another one: "Go home, Derek. Sleep it off."

He ignores me.

"Look, I'm – I know you're angry with me-"

"Not everything is about you."

I prop my head in my hand. "Not everything is about me, no. But this – you know, unless it's a wild coincidence, does seems to be."

"Of course you think that. You don't care what you do to anyone else as long as you get what you want."

"Stop." I shake my head. "You've had your say. You've already told me all about what a terrible person I am. That's finished."

"Then why are you here?"

I have no fucking clue.

"Because you're drunk, and … "

I stop there. And I don't want you to make a fool of yourself? Well, that's not strictly true. A mean little part of me would love to see him taken down a peg.

I don't want you to get hurt. That's true, because another part of me, that clinging desperate part I absolutely hate sometimes, wants to make sure he's okay.

(I can usually shut that part off when necessary. When I can't – that's when I make the worst decisions of all.)

" … because you're drunk."

I glance up at Joe for help but he's serving some other patrons half a bar-length away.

"I'll call you a cab," I suggest.

He glares at me for a moment, and then a smile actually threatens one corner of his mouth. "Okay, I'm a cab."

I just shake my head, because I don't want to smile back, because the whole problem with living in this depressing city with the depressing reminders of my not-that-depressing-for-the-most-part former life is that it's full of memories.

And I don't want to remember them.

I don't want to be in my twenties with unlimited energy, young smooth bodies so drunk on sleep deprivation, so high on surgeries, that we're cracking old Abbott & Costello jokes outside the hospital while one yellow blur after another passes us by.

"Derek." I put out my hand to shake his arm a little bit and then think better of it.

Divorce is strange. It really is. You take two people who've seen each other in and through just about the most undignified and frankly sometimes disgusting situations, who've screamed and moaned and fought and cried ... and you put their clothes back on and prop them up in chairs like Raggedy Anne dolls and expect them to interact like regular people.

One thing I think I can say for sure: we're not regular people.

And Meredith's giving up on him doesn't make me feel great. Maybe it should, but it doesn't. First of all, give her some time. No one really gives up on Derek for long: witness me, the ex-wife, the one he humiliated after putting through paces, sitting here on a bar stool fiddling with a plastic stirrer and somehow unable to leave.

But the thing is … he's not great when he's drunk. He can do stupid things when he's drunk. And I get it: he's not my responsibility. Not now. Anymore than I'm his. We walked away from each other, didn't we? But I walked out of the exam room and he walked into the supply closet and even if he walked all the way across the country to get away from me we're still sort of … stuck.

I can think of only one person who's still stuck to Derek like I seem to be, who'll understand why he's still our responsibility even though he swore up and down all he wanted to do was get rid of us, even though he hates us both and I want to hate him back but some part of me I also hate won't freaking let me.

And so I find myself in the unenviable position of I've been avoiding, and I pick up the phone.

"Mark?"

To be continued (without such a long gap, because I am pushing through, gosh darn it). I know this story is heavy and maybe unpleasant right now but I promise it's heading toward a reconciliation, in baby steps that go forward and back and are angsty and sometimes miserable just like Addek love to do.

Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate every one of you and if you are still reading, still enjoying, still wanting more, please review and let me know.