A/N: I won't be updating for a while, she says. I'm gonna be off the grid, she says. Yeah, yeah, we've heard it before. Here's another chapter for you beautiful people to tide you over. I so appreciate every one of you for reading and responding to this experimental little piece.

..
negotiations
..

Mark … is a phone call away. He always has been.

(It's just a question of whether that's a good thing.)

Derek is slumped semi-turned away, back to ignoring me – that's his specialty, occasionally mumbling something about being a screw-up. I can't tell if he means himself or me and maybe there's no difference.

It's true either way, right?

Pretty sure we just finished signing an agreement attesting to our equal liability for screwing everything right the hell up.

That was a fun day. When Derek put on the record that he didn't want anything from our shared past.

Thirteen years of living together, amassed collections of god knows what, music and books and art and photographs, every stupid tangible reminiscence, from the hundred-dollar bottle of olive oil that made him roll his eyes until he realized how it tasted to the fishing rod I bought him once from a store that smelled like dead things where I needed help just to figure out what a rod was. He loved it, that's what he said, I love it.

But he didn't want any of it. I got custody of everything he loved and everything he hated.

(Divorce is great. You should try it sometime, if you're bored and have a strong desire to get your heart ripped out and stomped on to the tune of seven hundred dollars an hour.)

And the pictures. Ah, the pictures. Thanks, honey, for sticking me with every single picture of our failed marriage.

I just sat there with my best debutante smile, except it was half pissed-off smirk, and laughed it about it. Like it was funny that he was washing his hands of our entire shared history with a chuckle and a glance at the lawyer. What did he want, a pat on the back? More points for being such a good guy?

I sat there and crossed my legs twice to keep them from shaking and decided that as soon as I could finagle a week off, I'd fly back to New York, get smashed with Savvy and light our wedding album on fire.

Or the whole fucking brownstone.

See, Derek wasn't actually being generous, giving me everything. Saying he wanted nothing. He was cutting me out of his life with a surgeon's precision and giving me nothing to say in return.

And, let's be clear, that was before he said he never wanted to see me again.

Because that's the danger with Derek. He'll offer you the world while he lines up the knife and it doesn't matter in the end whether he thinks he's being generous or not …

You bleed out either way.

..

Mark shows up.

Of course he does. Derek's the only one of us who knows how to let go, right?

But then again all three of us are here … so maybe the problem goes deeper than just Mark and me.

Mark raises his eyebrows questioningly when I meet him at the door.

"Derek is drunk and I need you to take him home so he can sleep it off."

There's the odd feeling of rounding on a patient. Mark is smirking.

"I'm sorry, did I make a wrong turn out of the hospital and end up in 1993?"

"Very funny." I drag him with my eyes over to the bar.

Mark chuckles a little at the state of Derek but gets it under control quickly.

"What did you do to him this time?"

"Mark. Just … are you going to help him or not?"

There's no or not.

There's never an or not.

Derek finally looks up, bleary-eyed, when he sees Mark. He's half asleep, drained of most of his malice. There's not going to be any dramatic reunion, I suppose.

"What are you doing here?"

"Taking your sorry ass home," Mark says casually in response to Derek's question. "What are friends for?"

"You're not my friend," Derek scowls.

"And Derek's ass isn't sorry," I point out. "None of him is. He's Derek, he's never sorry for anything."

It strikes me that it might be a little unnecessary to pick on him in this state, but Mark doesn't question it and Derek doesn't seem to notice.

… since it's the three of us we're talking about, that kind of makes sense.

"Thank you for doing this, Mark."

"You can make it up to me later," he smirks, and I'm hoping Derek didn't hear that.

Maneuvering Derek out of the bar reminds me of the time the three of us moved my surprisingly heavy futon up three flights of stairs to my … second student apartment. Or maybe it was the third.

"Can you get him to my car?"

I nod and Mark just grabs one of Derek's arms and pulls it around his own neck, hoisting him to his feet.

I stop trying to help and just watch them.

They look like they probably did in high school when they were just finding their drinking feet. Except older and sadder because … yeah. At some point I want to figure out when all three of us got so old. And so sad. Because there was a time when we were so young and so happy that it seemed like nothing could come between us.

Derek's shooting me a dark look and it reminds me that I'm what came between him and his best friend. And I think maybe it was worse than the fact that I cheated on my husband.

Mark is muttering something about trying to get Derek inside the car and now I'm really reminded of the futon because it definitely didn't fit in the door. Not the first time, anyway, and we were laughing and sweating and cursing … we were so young.

"Can you help?"

But the car is so small.

"It would be easier if you had a normal car and not a … compensation-mobile."

Of course he's not offended by this. He's Mark. "You and I both know I'm not compensating for anything, Addison. But if you've forgotten … you know you have an open invitation to stop by and … refresh your memory."

Ugh. My nose is wrinkling. Does this actually work on me?

(Yes. We know this. You don't have to rub it in.)

The thing is, I'm sober, and I'm focused, and that's not when Mark happens. It's when I'm drunk.

Or distracted. Or vulnerable.

Finally we get him into the car.

"Will you let me know when you drop him off?"

Mark looks confused. "You're not coming with us?"

"I have a patient."

"Maybe I have a patient too," Mark counters.

I resist any urge to joke about emergency boob jobs and just school my face into its most serious lines. "Right now Derek is your patient. Okay? So please … look out for him."

"Fine, Mom," Mark winks at me but the only Mom he ever refers to is my former mother-in-law. I called her Mom too, even though she never really warmed to me. No idea what I'd call her now, but I have a pretty good idea what she'd call me.

(At least when her many grandchildren are out of the room.)

"Are you going to be okay with him?"

"Sure," Mark gives me what I think is intended to be a reassuring smile, but it's as wolfish as all his other smiles. "I'll give him a bubble bath, sing him some lullabies. Tell me, is he on formula yet, or am I supposed to breastfeed him?"

He grins at his own wit and I just shake my head.

"Be nice to him."

Mark shakes his head. "Between you and me, Addie … not sure I'm the one who needs that warning."

Okay, maybe I deserve that. "Thank you," I say finally … sincerely.

Really.

He pauses and for a moment I'm expecting him to say he's doing it for Derek, not for me, but he doesn't say anything at all.

And I get that too.

Sometimes it's hard to know which two of us the other one is means, or is trying to help … or is trying to hurt. We got too tangled up in each other, we three, and it was all right when we were functioning, when our threads were knitted together into something good, but when our marriage hit a snag and Derek and I started unraveling, it was Mark and I who formed the biggest snarl.

(There are probably some mixed metaphors in there, but you get the gist. It's simple, really. Me Addison, they Derek and Mark, all of us fucked up. Etc.)

"Good luck with your patient," Mark says.

"Thanks." I glance at Derek. "Good luck with yours."

He rolls his eyes.

..

Grey is sitting with Hannah just like she said she would, a text open on her lap. She's studying while Hannah sleeps. There's no sign of Tad and Grey shakes her head a little when she sees me, indicating he hasn't come back yet.

"Thank you, Dr. Grey. You should go home and get some rest."

"I'm on call tonight."

"Then you should go to an on call room and get some rest."

She nods. "Do you think Hannah will be ready in the morning?"

"It depends. Everyone responds differently to the laminaria. I'll check her cervix again in a few hours – or you can, if you're not sleeping or with another patient.

"What time should I come back?"

"I'd like to time it with a vitals check so she's already awake."

Meredith nods. "Will you page me?"

I study her for a moment. She's such a little waif of a girl, physically at least, but there's a toughness about her that's hard to miss. Don't mess with me, that's what it says. I've seen some stuff.

Scrappy, that's what people call women like her, with their deceptively delicate exteriors. When women like me, who are taller than half the men in the hospital, get tough?

They call us bitchy.

"I'll page you. Get some sleep while you can, Grey."

..

When Hannah wakes up, she wants to talk.

She holds one hand on her belly and talks about Tad, at first. Her fears for him. His cousin got into a fight in a bar three nights ago, and maybe he's gone with him to get revenge, or whatever she called it.

Whether it's a bar in the sketchy part of town or a brownstone on the upper east side, the story is the same: Men walking away. Men letting you down.

It's not about me, and I know that, except Hannah's story is so familiar and so sad it could be about anyone.

And we talk about the baby. They hadn't chosen a name, not yet, but she said she wanted to think about it, yesterday. When Karev stops in – apparently not expecting to see me – I ignore the surprise on his face and tell him I need to speak with him.

Outside the door, he looks stubborn, like he thinks I'll tell him he shouldn't be there. I don't. "Hannah wants a name your baby book," I tell Karev.

"The woman whose baby we're aborting want a name your baby book?"

I'll deal with him on terminology later.

"Our patient wants a name your baby book, Karev, so if you're on voluntary call, go find her one." He's still standing there. "Now!"

I guess my tone is sharp enough to let him know I'm serious because he takes off without even his usual smirk in farewell. So he's not on call, but he's here … and there's not much difference, really.

Maybe the latter means more. I don't know.

I just know that he can't only want to help in the ways he wants to help because that's the way to madness. So he leaves to find a book of baby names for a baby whose heart we've already stopped and I walk back into the soft semi-darkness of Hannah's hospital room that smells sterile and also like the cloyingly sweet little bottle of lotion she brought with her, a garish pink. It's sitting on the nightstand.

She's awake when I return.

"Dr. Montgomery," she asks, her voice soft and tired, "can I ask you something?"

"Of course you can, Hannah."

"Do you think I could've been a good mother?"

What Would Vivian Do?

"I think you already are," I tell her.

..

"Tad will come back," she says the next time she wakes up. Her catnaps are short and I've stopped matching them with my own.

"I hope so." I smile at her. "You're going to be okay, even if he doesn't come back right away, Hannah." I ask her again if there's anyone else we can call and she sidesteps the question.

There's a social worker I want to talk to her but the last thing she needs now is more pressure, anything to scare her.

"He has to come back," she says. "He wants to hold the baby. He'd never forgive me if he didn't get that chance."

I talk to her quietly, calmly, reminding her that we don't know yet when it will be time for the procedure, we're monitoring her.

And I think it's working.

But then everything works until it doesn't.

"No," Hannah says nervously. "I mean, I get the medical stuff or whatever, but you can't take him out until Tad gets back. The baby."

"Hannah…"

"I won't let you," she says.

"Hannah," I say gently, trying to get her to match my tone, my false calm, "we talked about this when we signed your consent.

"I'll rip it up. I'll take it back."

And she's wild eyed, scared, and in the dim light her blonde hair turns dark and her pale face olive and she's Brenda

… and I do everything you shouldn't with a patient, promise her I'll do whatever it takes not to bring her baby into the world until his father returns from wherever the hell he went.

I'm lying. I'm fudging, what you say because chocolate is nicer than not telling the truth. I'm going to do what I have to do to keep Hannah alive, healthy, and preserve her ability to have future children. In that order.

But that's not what I told her. I promised her we'd wait.

Good thing there are no interns here to witness this. My life has been one downward spiral for the past year and change … but this is one moment I don't want memorialized.

It works, though. Hannah drifts off to sleep, apparently soothed by the promises she extracted from me. I stare at the blank rectangle of the doorway, wondering if I can concentrate hard enough to make him appear.

Come back, Tad. Be the first guy in as long as I can remember to exceed my expectations.

To be continued ... maybe not as quickly as I used to, but hey, I think I've shown I'm not going anywhere so please stick around and keep reading. This is a bit of a builder of a chapter; so hang on, because the next one is, well ... not. And I hope you'll let me know what you think!

Note: The always insightful Emk8 inspired the first part of the chapter. I am amazed that ten years later we can still look at old interactions and scenes differently. Which is why I adore all of you.