A/N: Thank you so much for your comments on the last chapter. This story is a departure for me in a lot of ways, but also really gets into some of the things I find so fascinating about Addison. And if any of you have read Accidental Babies (one of my first stories, and one of my favorites), you know that Addison's abortion and the circumstances surrounding it have always really interested me. Thank you for reading as fast as I can write and I will keep trying to write as fast as you can read.

..
shadows
..

You brought me back the rings.

For a moment after I say the words, we just look at each other.

Surprised.

Because I've broken our unspoken promise not to talk about it.

The one we used to have for a lot of things.

… I guess fidelity isn't the only broken vow.

In the meantime a cluster of residents passes us by, then two nurses pass, and then an attending I don't recognize giving orders to an intern, a few words of conversation wafting toward us each time.

Even though our silence is louder than the chatter around us, I'm reminded that we're still standing in the hallway in open view.

It should be strange, having this private conversation in public.

But in a lot of ways … we've lived out our whole relationship in public.

The first time Derek asked me out was in a crowded anatomy lab, shoulder to shoulder with other medical students.

He proposed to me while we were skating in Central Park – don't judge him too hard, we were so young and I thought it was romantic. Deeply, un-ironically romantic. Everyone clapped when I said yes and a bunch of tourists snapped pictures and I felt like a pink-cheeked princess instead of a shivering intern on her first day off in three weeks. I can still hear the sound of that applause – weirdly muffled by gloves and mittens, like it was coming from underwater, while Derek and I grinned at each other like idiots who'd just agreed to do something we had no freaking clue how to do.

But we did it. We got married and by then were busy residents who didn't have time for a real honeymoon, so we swapped shifts until we could find a three-day weekend to spend at Bizzy's country house – and then Archer crashed the second day with not one but two blondes.

And then, of course, there's Mark. He was with us from the beginning, whistling that first morning after in lab, basically being the semi-acknowledged third piece of AddisonAndDerek.

I guess, come to think of it, Mark was the and between Derek and me.

Last but not least, of course, the public Shepherds, Seattle-style: our last voluble marital fight standing on the catwalk in front of half the hospital, and Derek's final, spectacular arrow in the heart of our marriage at that ridiculous prom.

So … yeah.

Privacy is relative when you're a Shepherd.

(Which I'm not anymore, legally speaking. But you understand.)

Now Derek opens his mouth and I swear I think if he says I was worried about you one more time I'm going to slap him again and let Richard suspend me once and for all.

He doesn't.

"You looked upset," he says finally.

He doesn't have to say when I took the rings off you or when I dismissed you in front of Meredith so I could go back to flirting and forget you ever existed.

I would normally make some crack back at him, to prove how not-upset I was, but that's a little harder when I ended that night making it humiliatingly obvious that upset was an understatement.

"Maybe I looked upset," I concede, "but it wasn't because of the rings."

There you go. A half-truth for Derek the Optimist, and a half-lie for Addison the Pessimist. Marriage is compromise, isn't it? It's a give and take.

Even after it ends, I guess.

Now I have to force myself not to let my hands touch, not to toy with the empty space on my fourth finger like Pavlov's freaking dog.

"Addison." He waits for me to look at him again. There are shadows under his eyes and I remember that he was the one drinking too much before I was. That he was the one we were worried about, the night before. "I can appreciate that … this has been difficult," he says.

It's so Derek of him, about three layers removed from personal. Insulated from responsibility. And what's this, anyway? My day? My week? My divorce?

My answer's the same either way, I suppose.

"For me, you mean." I look at him. "Difficult for me. It was easy for you."

"That's not what I said."

"It's not what you said … but it's what you meant."

"Addison." He shakes his head. "Why don't you let me decide what I mean?"

Um, because that would require him to know what he means?

I don't say it out loud, of course.

"You have what you wanted," I remind him.

Because it's true: I may have the rings, but he has the divorce.

He's looking at me. The set of his jaw tells me he's tired. I remember that I'm not the only one who had a long day yesterday.

Or a long night.

I know I should let it go. This should be goodbye. The consult is done, we've now had two awkward run-ins about last night – fine.

We're not fighting, he doesn't sound angry or resentful, we've managed to make a conversation about two rings more complicated than the one we had about fetal cerebral vein malformations.

But god, it's hard. I mean, come on, if anything is clear it's that I can't seem to cut the cord.

I was going to cut the cord.

I was! I planned to, really. You remember that.

After the supply closet, after the things he said, after Richard's office and that crazy standoff in the scrub room – I really was.

I said it, too: You know what, Derek? Here's a little incentive for both of us. Once the procedure is done, I'll get out of your life just like you asked me to … and then you can stay the hell out of mine.

But then the hotel happened. And he apologized. And he listened to me, just me, like he used to. He heard me.

And it's not fair, it's really not. I know I keep saying it, but that's because it's true.

What do you want from me, Addison?

I used to get that a lot. It was my job to tell him, in the last couple years of our marriage, and somehow he never noticed the problem: that in the years before that … he never had to ask.

And I know I'm part of the problem too.

Because the answer to what does Addison want from Derek is, pretty much universally, somewhere between I don't know and everything.

And I also know what I'm supposed to do now.

Drop the issue.

Punt, change the subject, spar a little or default to medicine or do anything but try to get him to answer me about what he did.

But …

"The rings, Derek. You left the rings," I say instead.

It's unprecedented; something flickers in his eyes, like he's finally remembering.

"They're yours," he says simply.

It's true, I suppose.

In addition to writing off everything else about our life together, Derek mentioned that morning with the divorce lawyers that I could keep all my jewelry.

I smirked at the time, even though it took work, after listening to him write me off one more time: Good idea, I'm not sure if you could really pull off diamonds.

So legally, yes, the rings are mine.

"But I gave them back to you," I remind him.

"And I gave them back to you," he says, "after that."

Okay, I don't know why I thought this post-divorce version of Hot Potato would be more effective than letting the subject drop.

"You left them on a towel," I say instead, switching it up a little – I'm half expecting him to respond, you left them on a towel.

He just looks at me for a long moment.

"A washcloth," he says finally.

"Huh?"

"It was a washcloth. Smaller than a towel."

I blink. Actually … he's right.

"Okay, a washcloth. Why did you leave them on a washcloth?"

"Because otherwise they'd end up camouflaged on the counter," he says, and his mouth does that twitching thing where if you spend enough time looking at his face you know he's about to smile.

Camouflaged on the counter. That's my line; he used to tease me about it.

"You actually believe that?" I ask him.

"I do," he says.

His word choice is just a tad uncomfortable in the moment. Do you, Derek Christopher Shepherd, take this woman …

Etcetera, etcetera.

Neither of us speaks for a few breaths.

It reminds me of that quick second in Eleanor's room where we were both hiding laughter. I don't think I want to smile, or laugh, or remember. Because it hurts.

And then Derek glances down at my bare left hand again. He doesn't say anything; I answer him anyway.

"It was muscle memory," I say quickly. "I was tired, yesterday morning, when I put them on, and it was automatic. I wasn't trying to – start anything."

Derek's expression makes me think he knows, just like I do, that something has started just the same.

But not when I put the rings on.

Before that.

When I walked out of Hannah Fowler's room and he followed me into the supply closet and what was left of civil-and-mature-divorced-adults shattered loud enough to wound.

"Muscle memory," Derek repeats, apparently focused on the first part of what I said. "Like last night, you mean?"

It's his turn to just say it, I suppose. With those words, I have a quick awful flashback to pushing myself on him, not once but twice, and I was drunk and it was dark and the snatches of recollection taste like gin. His hands are around my arms, warmer than my skin, his body is hard and familiar under mine, and he's talking to me, you don't want to do this. He's pushing me off him again and I finally give up but he holds onto me. You don't have to get up just because we're not going to have sex. And I didn't get up, and neither did he.

We held onto each other.

I have to squeeze my eyes shut for a moment.

The memory is humiliating and I'm filled with loathing at how needy I was, how pathetic, but when I open my eyes his expression is – well, it's kind of intense, but it's not mocking.

What am I supposed to say to him?

Last night was the worst kind of muscle memory. The kind that remembers something I'll never have again.

I look at him looking at me and I'm distracted by his shoulder. His right shoulder, to be exact, because I have a really embarrassing urge to just take a couple of steps forward – well, one and a half would do it, we're standing pretty close and I have a long stride – and rest my head on it.

Muscle memory is dangerous. Wanting things is dangerous, needing them, because it just makes you want more. Need more.

I have to distract myself so I don't think about how I know exactly how the fabric of his lab coat would feel if I rested my cheek against it right now.

I just take the coward's way out and say nothing at all, and Derek does a sort of a half-nod, although I'm not sure what he's agreeing with, and starts to walk away.

"Derek – "

He turns around.

"Did you mean it?" I ask, feeling daring all of a sudden.

I don't clarify what it refers to. I don't ask specifics: if he meant the terrible things he said to me in the supply closet, or the much less terrible things he said last night, or the things he did last night. I don't even clarify whether I'm talking about words or actions or … something else entirely.

Did you mean it? That's the whole question.

He doesn't ask for more information.

And I don't offer it.

I'm not sure I could clarify, if he asked. Did he mean … what? I don't know.

Maybe last night. Maybe the days that led up to it.

Maybe Seattle, maybe New York.

Maybe the last terrible half a year.

Maybe the eleven years before that.

My question hangs in the air a little while longer before he answers.

Did you mean it?

"Yes," he says, finally.

Just one word: yes.

I guess I should have predicted that.

Because Derek always means it.

I open my mouth to say something. I don't know what – half of me wants to tell him it hurts too much to talk to him and the other half wants to beg him to stay. I figure there's at least an outside chance if I just crossed that space between us he'd put his arms around me again. Except to make that happen, I'd have to acknowledge that I wanted it.

It's not fair.

But before I can decide what to say, we're interrupted by a voice behind us.

"Dr. Shepherd?"

We turn in tandem, saying that same word in unison this time: "Yes?"

(We are really going to have to stop doing that at some point, but at least Derek looks as uncomfortable as I feel.)

The resident turns to me. "Eleanor Rivers is asking for you, Dr. Shepherd."

..

I leave the other Dr. Shepherd – the only one, really, at this hospital, but I can't seem to shake the name – in the hall that's apparently become our new ex-marital-counseling spot, and go back to Eleanor's room.

Eleanor, naturally, is very grateful that I'm willing to drop everything to come talk to her. Appreciative.

"Took you long enough," she snaps when I walk in. "I hope I didn't interrupt your coffee break."

… or not. Anyway, I let her hostility blow past me because it's painfully obvious she's just worried about the fetal MRI, and then I take some time to explain every step to her. She gets different laymen's terms than Hannah did – the kind that I know Eleanor would want, the magna-from-USC kind.

Not that it makes her like me anymore, but the fact is, I have four patients in that room: Eleanor Rivers, who is certainly not my biggest fan, Baby C with her unspecified CNS defect, and Babies A & B, curled into each other and waiting to see what happens.

And only one of those four patients hates me. 25% hatred level? That's way, way better than the general population of Seattle Grace as far as I can tell, so I'll take it.

"Do you have any questions about what I've told you so far?" I ask her.

"No. But Colton will want to know more details," Eleanor says.

She's staring just over my shoulder now in what seems like a deliberate attempt to avoid my gaze, unless she really wants to get a closer look at that reprint of a reprint of a generic Matisse hanging about two centimeters off center on the wall.

"Of course," I tell her. "We'll explain everything again when he's here, or we can set up a call if he's not able to – "

"He can come," she says. "He will. He comes a lot, you know. Here. When you're not here. It's not like you're here all the time."

"No," I tell her, "I do have other patients, but you can always ask for me and someone will page me. If it's possible, I'll do my best to be here."

Her eyes look shiny.

"I know it's scary right now, but – "

"I'm not scared," she says immediately, but her eyes are threatening to spill over, and if you've never seen anyone cry at a downward tilt … it's not particularly comfortable.

"Eleanor," I say gently. "The fetal MRI is going to give us more information. This is a good thing."

"What's good about it?"

"More information is good." Her hand is kind of rooting blindly around the side of the bed now and I decide to risk getting scratched by her nails and reach for it.

What's the worst she can do, draw a little blood? I signed on for that.

She doesn't, though.

She hangs onto my hand, with a pretty strong grip for someone who's been on bed rest for far longer than she'd like to be.

And I keep talking. "With more information, we may have more options to help your babies. Better options."

She doesn't say anything, but she's not letting go either.

I know what it's like to need a lifeline.

I'm also not going to let her know I know, so instead of making it obvious that I'm trying to support her – hostility, knocking the chart out of my hand, basically telling me I was useless in front of Derek, all of that aside – I just busy myself checking her fluid outputs with my free hand and pretending to be very interested in her answers to my inane and relatively benign doctor-patient questions.

I'm busy. That's an understatement. I could get paged. There could be an emergency.

Barring that … I'm going to hold on a little longer.

It's quiet in her room, just the hum of the maligned HVAC and the sporadic monitor beeps. It smells like lemon cleanser and Betadine and that particular cloying odor the meal trays get. And it's not particularly comfortable to let her death-grip my hand and still manage to pretend I'm examining her – my shoulder is already protesting.

I stay anyway, until the resident comes back to take her for the fetal MRI and she snatches her hand away from mine like she's been burned.

I let her have her moment: I walk past the nonexistent shadow of her missing husband and try not to think too much about the shadow of my own husband – ex-husband; whatever he is, he's present.

He's present enough that I need a drink, but I'm not so far gone that I'm ready to start drinking at work.

Plus, I may not be actively hungover anymore, but I don't feel a hundred percent either.

..

Coffee it is, and I'm only halfway to the carafe when I hear the door to the thankfully empty lounge bang open behind me and then a shadow is darkening the linoleum under my feet.

"Dr. Montgomery!"

(Like that, with an exclamation point.)

When I turn around, I see Alex Karev, and it looks like my fabulous blouse hasn't escaped his attention – he's only human, and barely post-pubescent, so I can't really judge. He manages to refocus pretty quickly.

"You're not supposed to be in here," I remind him.

"I saw you go in," he says. "I heard one of the Rivers triplets might have a VGM." He's a little breathless like he's just run from somewhere.

"Are you stalking my patients, Karev? Or just stalking me?"

"You wish," he says, but somehow he manages to keep it just this side of disrespectful, almost – admiring, and I let it slide. "I just thought you might need an intern."

"No one needs interns," I remind him. "Interns are like embryos: an undeveloped stage on the way to an actually useful phase of life."

"But you do need embryos," he says, and has the nerve to grin at me, "or no fetuses, and no people. So I guess that means interns are pretty useful too."

I let him have the point. He looks so happy about it, and frankly, it's nice to see someone happy, even if it's just for a minute, and even if they got there by trying to best me.

"The Rivers triplets," he repeats, apparently moving on. "If the girl one – "

I wince at his not so scientific terminology. "Baby C," I correct him.

"If Baby C needs surgery, can I assist?"

I study his face. He looks altogether too eager.

"Karev, it's one thing to want to learn, but surely you're aware that the better outcome is for Baby C not to need surgery?"

"But if she does need it, and the surgery helps her, that's not exactly terrible," he counters.

"Look." I find myself softening a little. "We won't know more until the fetal MRI comes back. We'll review the results with Neuro and see where we are."

"We," he says, "so that means I can assist?" His eyes brighten visibly.

"Glad to see you're paying attention."

"If it is a VGM," he says thoughtfully, "will you go ex utero or can it wait until parity?"

I guess he's been doing his homework. In spite of myself … I'm a little impressed.

"That depends. The triplets are at twenty-nine weeks' gestation tomorrow," I tell him.

Twenty-nine weeks.

The air in the room shifts when I say the number, and we both pause and sort of … take it in.

Eleanor's triplets are practically at twenty-nine weeks already.

Karev looks a little pensive, less eager, now.

I'm pretty sure he's thinking that that's only six weeks further in gestation than his tiny tragic namesake. Alexander Tad, defender of men, who never had to learn how lousy life outside the womb can be. He's getting a little lost in what we did, even if it was what we had to do. Even if it was the right decision at the time.

But I'm not.

And it's not because of how seriously I take my role as an abortion provider. It's not because I've had to face down all kinds of protesters: the ones who scream in your face and the ones who just look at you with judgment in their eyes.

It's because twenty-nine weeks is where I would be right now, if I had kept the baby.

A wave of nausea that has nothing to do with the hangover sweeps over me and I have one last flash of self-preservation – come on, Addie, don't embarrass yourself again, not after last night – that doesn't quite work.

Addison, how are you feeling? Are you ready to get started?

That day … it was like I'd switched parts accidentally, woken up in the wrong body.

You're going to feel a little pressure.

I wasn't supposed to be the one flat on my back in the stirrups, staring up at the ceiling.

But I was.

I'm going to use the cannula to gently remove the tissue from the uterus.

I'd said those same words myself, so many times.

I was someone else, because that's the only way to explain the fear that made the back of my throat go numb. My lips were tingling from the local and it made it feel like I was drunk, thick-tongued and tipsy.

I remember that it was louder than I expected.

Even though it's minor.

It's a minor procedure.

A few minutes of suction, a speculum, a little dilation and anesthesia and gently remove the tissue and that's it. You're fine. You can take your shaking legs out of the stirrups and, depending on who you are, you can either sit in recovery drinking a carton of apple juice and trying not to make eye contact with the other women while an overworked nurse monitors all of you at once, or – if you're more like me – you get a bubble of privacy and crisply laundered sheets and staff paid enough never to tell your secrets.

But whoever they are, we tell all our patients what to expect.

Irregular bleeding … cramps … emotional reactions.

Just minor things.

It's normal. Whatever you feel is normal.

I don't feel normal right now. I feel the ghost of something inside me. A twenty-nine-week-old ghost.

A shadow of someone missing, like Eleanor's infamous husband.

Like my own.

"Dr. Montgomery?"

Karev looks – concerned, and that is so very much not okay.

I'm done embarrassing myself and I'm tired of being tired so I raise my eyebrows at him and make sure to adopt the posture that earned me the just-a-touch-sexist Dr. Icicle nickname when I was Chief Resident.

"Dr. Karev." I pause to make sure my tone is registering. "Though I understand you're eager to perform an incredibly risky procedure, as the sign suggests, this is the attendings' lounge." I gesture for emphasis. "It's where the grownups go to get away from the interns, not to give them remedial lessons in fetal malformations."

"I was just asking about – "

"Well, don't ask," I snap. "Find something useful to do, or go tell Dr. Bailey your workload is too light and you'd like to be assigned a few bowel impactions. Either way, move on and find another doctor to bother."

There's a flash in his dark eyes that's almost like hurt, but he turns around and leaves, and I'm alone again.

You know, I stopped spotting ten days after the termination.

But sometimes … I think I'm still bleeding.

To be continued. There's a lot going on for Addison, as you know. A lot of it is internal, some of it is external, and we knew we hadn't seen the last of her own abortion. I know one of the things that fascinated me when the abortion reveal happened on the show was realizing that Addison's entire time at SGH up to that point would have been the duration of her pregnancy. As for Addison and Derek? They make me crazy. But I have faith in them.

Thank you for reading - please review and keep me on track to update asap!