A/N: Second verse, same as the first: it's been way too long since I've updated, so here's a nice long(ish) chapter to get you back (I hope) in the mood for the island. I mercifully split it into two chapters, but that means the next one is coming very soon. So. I'm very attached to this story and so appreciative for those of you who've been reading and reviewing. I hope you enjoy this chapter. I know it's been a while, so if you recall the last chapter ended with Derek and Addison about to talk about what prompted her last trip to the island, two years ago...so here goes:
.-.-.
Some Bright Morning
20. and our spirits shall sorrow no more
.-.-.
"Dr. Shepherd? I have the labs."
"Good." Addison frowns as she reads. "One-point-three?" She closes the chart. "It shouldn't be going up."
"Does that mean we can't operate today?" The intern – who looks about twelve – is brightly eager, shifting from foot to foot. He gets paged before Addison can respond and she watches him lope off, practically skipping, remembering her own eager intern year and feeling rather old.
Addison shakes her head, gesturing for the resident left behind to follow her. "Lopez did a good job," she says as they round the corner. "If he's on call tonight, we can check and – "
She freezes.
The recognition is so sudden, so unexpected – so utterly out of place – that at first she's certain she imagined it.
She sees him, he doesn't see her. But it's enough for her head to spin.
She hasn't imagined it though. Not for a long time – years. She used to, sometimes. That cologne he used to wear – Jaguar, he was loyal to it.
Sandalwood and patchouli – she never liked those scents after that, and picking up their notes would sometimes bring her back with a flash.
Especially at the beginning.
There was the first time Derek playfully pinned her arms over her head. Years ago. Decades, even. He seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, so thoroughly that she didn't believe until Savvy swore on her mother's life that her brother hadn't killed him.
She retraces the corner to press against the wall, gathering breath, ordering herself to get it together.
It's been twenty years.
This is my hospital, my territory, she recites. I'm respected here. I'm a professional.
She draws another breath, attempting to count to five.
Derek would understand, if she told him, and for a moment she conjures him in front of her, letting his presence reassure her.
Except that one flash of smirking face is enough to make the comforting visual melt away.
"Dr. Shepherd?"
"Dr. Cross." She forces a smile.
"Is everything all right?" Her resident looks nervous.
"Everything's fine." Addison closes the chart. "Follow my dosing instructions and page Dr. Khalid if you have any questions."
"Oh … okay." The resident looks confused, tilting her head so her ponytail falls diagonally.
Addison keeps her gaze straight ahead as she walks out of the hospital.
.-.-.
"I should have told you," she says quietly, not meeting his eyes.
"You're telling me now," he offers, then pauses. The swing creaks gently as it moves back and forth. "Was I – that night, when you saw him, I mean …?"
She recognizes what he wants to know: was I there?
.-.-.
She dials his number again while she folds the little cocktail napkin into a precise damp square.
"Sorry, Addison." Derek's receptionist is sympathetic. "He hasn't put one toe outside his office since his last patient. I can interrupt him if you need – "
"No, it's fine, Cheryl. Thank you. You can just – tell him I called."
The next message she leaves directly. "If you're wondering why I'm not at the hospital … I wasn't feeling great, so I left."
She feels pathetic the moment she finishes the message. Manipulative, like Derek has described her in the past. Passive-aggressive.
At least it's early enough that the spaces around her are empty.
Maybe she can erase the message. That's a thing, right? If the technology doesn't exist … it should.
This is what she's thinking as she drains her second glass.
And her third.
She stops counting at four.
"Addie – did you save any for us?" Savvy slides in next to her on the barstool. She flashes a grin, she smells fresh and cold like the outdoors, but Addison sees her exchange a look with her husband.
Weiss flanks her other side. "Let's get something to eat, huh, Addie?"
"I'm not hungry." She smiles at her friends, or at least she thinks she does. Her lips haven't quite been working right, not today.
She turns to Savvy. "Do you know how to delete a voicemail?"
"Delete a voicemail?" Savvy looks confused. "What do you mean?"
"You know … a voicemail." She gestures vaguely toward her phone.
"You hiding evidence?" Weiss teases her gently, but he also looks confused.
"It's just … something a patient said," she lies.
Savvy and Weiss exchange another look across her. She knows what they're doing. She's married, and they can speak without words too. Or at least they used to.
"Addie," Savvy says tentatively, though she seems sort of far away, "what's wrong? Did something happen?"
She gives a vague excuse about a patient – convenient, when you work so close to tragedy; there's always a believable excuse. When Savvy and Weiss nod sympathetically she just feels worse.
Lying to Savvy – she's never done that before.
But when her lips purse with the possibility of telling them what she saw, she can't do it. That's a chapter of their history that's closed, forever.
Weiss moves the drink ever so slightly away from her. "Burgers," he says. "I need a burger. And I'm pretty sure dinner was the plan here. Sav?"
"Definitely." Savvy's tone is hearty, and she wraps an arm around Addison's shoulder. "Let's go uptown, Ad. Derek can meet us."
His name is a surprise. Was he supposed to meet them that night? Now she can't remember.
"I'll call him," Weiss offers, as Addison lets herself be led numbly toward the door.
She could tell Derek. She could tell him.
If she tells him, if he understands …
But what if she tells him, and he doesn't?
.-.-.
"I wasn't there," he says.
"You didn't come home that night," Addison says quietly. Her voice is matter-of-fact with no undertone of guilt. "Your patient crashed. Weiss and Savvy, they, uh, brought me home and stayed for a while and after they left …"
Her voice trails off.
"I called out the next day."
"You never call out," he says automatically.
"Yeah." She flexes her hands. "I did that day."
"Did he – did you see him again?" Derek asks.
"Not for a while. A few weeks – two months, maybe. I sort of thought I'd imagined it."
Though imagining it once must have been enough to haunt her, as some of the puzzle pieces slide into place for him. She was mopey, edgy. Angry and clinging all at once.
Don't expect me to drop everything if you decide you've had too much.
Their well-stocked liquor cabinet dwindled more quickly than usual.
What exactly was I supposed to do if I did come home?
Her tolerance had always been higher than his, and he convinced himself that was all.
You seem fine now, so you can't have been that … sick.
He didn't ask, though.
I trust you to take of yourself. You do have a medical degree.
The raw edges of her were only for him, then, so if he didn't go home he didn't see them. In the hospital she was perfectly polished, as always.
I didn't ignore your call, Addie, I was working.
It wasn't long. It wasn't so bad that it interfered with work, that's what he recalls thinking, when he thought about it. They went about their lives, two slow trains on diverging tracks.
You seem fine now.
"Addie…"
"But then I saw him again," she says, her voice sounding far-off. "I guess … his wife was in for fetal diagnosis. He didn't show up until after I'd done the initial consult, and then …"
Derek feels his heart speeding up. "What happened?"
.-.-.
She memorizes the pattern on the patient curtain to avoid looking at him, but sees him anyway.
His hair is more salt than pepper now, but his eyes are the same. Just like they did then, they make her knees feel weak.
Just for a different reason now, the same reason that making her fingers grip the chart so they don't tremble.
It's him.
She can see, across his wife's bed, a faint but definite white scar underneath his right eye. She's never actually seen the mark before – Ethan was gone by the time they came back to Connecticut, erased from that painful year of her life, but she's heard Savvy and her brother discussing it. Savvy's gentle, protective older brother, driven to – she could have ruined his life, too, if he'd been caught.
She ruins things, if she's not careful. Breaks them, beyond repair.
But she can't avoid him now, can't transfer the patient's care without speaking to the patient herself first, not even under these circumstances. And of course he's in the room with her. She keeps focused despite the buzzing in her head. It's one more conversation, then she'll turn the patient over to Amani Khalid, invent a reason, and she'll never have to –
"Doctor?"
She pauses in the doorframe, so close to leaving. Ignore him, she suggests to herself, keep walking, you're a doctor, pretend you have an emergency, but she doesn't move.
His footsteps mark the linoleum and then his shadow is blotting her out.
"Dr. … Shepherd, isn't it?"
His tone is pleasant enough and since he can't hear her heart hammering against her ribs maybe he doesn't notice the effect of his presence.
He's standing a half a step too close – not the first husband of a patient to do so, but the first time she can't quite get her footing to step aside.
"I wanted to thank you for what you've done for my wife. I'm sorry you won't be treating her anymore. Your reputation is … remarkable."
Avoiding eye contact, she nods, lips pressed together. Instinctually, she touches the pager at her hip, praying someone will need her so she can –
"You look familiar," he says slowly, studying her face. "Like … someone I used to know."
"If you have further questions about your wife's treatment, Dr. Khalid is excellent," she says pointedly, not making eye contact. "She can address any questions you have."
"It's uncanny," he continues, as if she hasn't said anything at all. "But … maybe you just have one of those faces." And then before she can register, one of his hands is rising and then his fingers are brushing the skin of her cheek.
She tastes bile in her throat and steps back so quickly she hits the half open door, the knob bruising her flesh.
She hears someone calling her name, but she ignores them.
She just walks.
She walks, and walk, and walks.
.-.-.
"…and you know the rest. The last thing I remember is the bartender giving me the house phone and telling me to call a friend or he'd call 911. And then I woke up in the hospital. Savvy was standing over me, and … she was crying."
"You came to the island," he says, putting it together. He's trying to confirm dates in his head, even as he knows time seems to settle into something altogether different on the island.
She nods.
"Did you ever – "
"No. He was gone when I got back. Amani handled the patient and – he was gone. It was like the last time. Like he'd never been there."
Derek nods slowly, taking it in.
"How much did Weiss tell you," Addison asks, "about when we were in college, I mean?"
"He told me about the stairs," Derek says.
Addison looks down. "That scar just above my knee…"
His fingers brush it instinctually as she mentions it.
"You told me you were sailing," he says. "You tripped on a sailboat."
He noticed the scar early on, one of the first times, when they were young and drunk in lust, learning each other's bodies with tracing fingers.
"Well, I didn't. It was the last stair on the third floor of Davener Hall."
He feels a little nauseated. "Addison …"
"It wasn't that bad," she says, and his nausea only increases with those words. "I was a little banged up. But considering …."
"Do you remember it?" he asks.
She looks down at her hands for a moment, then back at him, her eyes reflecting the gathering light. "I remember we were … arguing, and I remember waking up in the hospital with Savvy standing over me. She was crying."
It sounds much like how she described the night two years ago, and the similarity can't have lost on Savvy. Picking up the pieces twenty years apart. They're more than friends, he knows – they're sisters, really – but he should have been there two years ago.
"That wasn't the first time," he says tentatively.
"That I fell down the stairs?" She says it lightly, like she's joking. "Like I said, we've both seen much worse. I was young and stupid."
"What about him? How old was he?"
"Older," Addison admits. "He'd taken some time … maybe thirty."
Her fingers brush across her face almost unconsciously. He tracks them with his, and she turns her cheek into his palm briefly, warmly, like a cat. With the vantage point of twenty years, he pictures a nineteen-year-old Addison – younger still by several years than the comparable baby he met their first year of medical school. And the older man who took advantage of her vulnerability when her closest friend was distracted.
"He was violent," Derek says quietly.
"Sometimes." Addison is staring out at the horizon. "It was my fault too, you know?"
"No." Derek frowns. "How was it your fault too?
"I was so stupid. I was nineteen, and stupid, he used to break up with me when – well, he broke up with me, you know, a few times. We were either all in or all out, and I never lasted long before I was begging him to come back."
She looks up at him, disgust in her eyes. "Like I said, stupid."
"You weren't stupid, Addison. You were nineteen."
"Yeah." She flexes her hands again. "Well. We were … loud, we would fight, but Savvy wasn't usually home. She was always at Weiss's. He, um, slapped me and Savvy found out and made a whole thing about it."
Good. He doesn't say that out loud, but he knows if it were anyone else Addison would agree.
"He broke up with me … again … and we had another fight and … it was exhausting," she admits. "He took me back. And Savvy saw … I had some marks on my arms, you know, he had been rough and she flipped out again. Threatened to confront him if I didn't break up with him, so I did. And then I, uh, I was late.
"I didn't tell Savvy. I thought she'd flip out. I thought he'd – that he'd try to get me back if he knew and so I told him I was pregnant."
Derek nods. The story is chilling, but he's heard enough of its outlines not to be shocked.
"He wasn't happy about it. Accused me of sleeping around. He called me – names," she recalls. "He told me he was already seeing another girl and didn't want anything to do with me. And I slapped him," she admits. "We were fighting with each other. It wasn't just him." She glances at him.
"What happened next?" he asks, figuring he'll deal with the cognitive dissonance later.
"I made an appointment," she admits. "And I had a few drinks to get up the courage for it … maybe a little more than a few … and then I ran into him in Davener while I was dropping off a problem set."
He swallows.
"I told him I was going to keep the baby. I lied," she says. "I wanted to make him mad – I must have wanted to – and when he didn't say anything I just remember being furious, I wanted to scratch his face. I remember him shaking me," she says quietly, lifting her free hand so her forearm is raised almost self-protectively, "he used to … do that, when he was angry, it was so disconcerting because you'd be dizzy after, like you couldn't remember your last thoughts."
Her slip into second person doesn't escape him. Carefully, he rests a hand over hers.
"My point is, we were equally at fault," she says. "We were both fighting. It wasn't just him."
"Addison," his blood feels cold, "he pushed you down the stairs."
She doesn't answer.
"You blame yourself for all the wrong things, you know that?"
He doesn't say, instead of the right ones, but he can sense she hears it from her response.
She frowns a little. "I can't tell if that's a compliment or an insult."
He tilts his head, taking her in. "How about … a neutral observation?"
"Observation, yes." She recrosses her legs on his lap, graceful as a cat; his hands lift automatically and resettle when she's done. It's as simple a choreographed marital dance as they have. "Neutral … no."
"Fair enough." His fingers move up her shin again to touch, lightly, the scar whose provenance he never knew. "I'm sorry that happened to you. You didn't deserve that, Addison."
"Yeah." She looks down. "That's what Savvy and Weiss said, and Bos. They told me I deserved better. That I would get better." She fingers the chain holding their swing; Derek takes her unspoken cue and pushes lightly off the weathered boards to rock them. "And I did."
She looks at him almost shyly, and he squeezes her hand lightly.
Then her voice hardens. "And then look what I did to you. Doesn't seem like I did deserve better after all."
"Addison." He shakes his head.
She doesn't respond.
"That's not how it works."
She makes a sort of gesture with her free hand, as if to indicate the vastness of the island, of their fifteen years together, of everything.
"Nothing will ever be like it was," she says softly after long moments of silence. "Will it."
There's no question mark in her tone … just resignation.
He blinks, transported back to the bobbing white boat with Savvy's brother and cousin, what feels like years ago. He hears Beau's words:
There's no going back. You can't get the marriage back you had before.
"No," he says carefully, "not like it was."
You can get a new one, if you work at it, maybe even a better one, but it takes time and effort and all that not-easy stuff no one wants to do.
"It's all my fault," she says.
It takes two people to make a marriage. It takes two of 'em to break it too. You must have thought about your part in it.
"No," he says firmly. "It's mine too."
Maybe you need a new marriage.
For a few silent moments they continue to rock on the wide porch swing as he imagines what it would mean to get a new marriage. Addison's the shopper of the two of them, and he almost smiles picturing her on the living room couch with her legs tucked under her, surrounded by catalogues. I've narrowed it down to three choices for our new marriage. What do you think? They don't all look the same, Derek, you have to look more closely!
"I didn't do anything," Addison says, interrupting his thought.
"What do you mean?"
"When I saw Ethan. His wife, I mean. I didn't … she seemed fine," Addison says, flexing her hands again, and he sees her twist her wedding rings around on her finger. He understands her disjointed words. "I hope she was fine. But … neither option is very good, is it?"
He waits for her to explain.
"Option one," Addison ticks off on her fingers, "she was fine, which means that Ethan didn't … do anything to her, which means he's not really like that … other than with me, which means it was my fault."
"Addison."
"Option two," she continues, speaking over him, "she wasn't fine, and I was too wrapped up in myself to notice or try to help her, even though I was her doctor."
"You transferred care. She had another doctor to notice if she needed help," Derek points out.
Addison doesn't respond.
"What about the third option?" he asks after a moment.
"I don't know what the third option is."
"The third option," Derek says, "is that she was fine … because Savvy's brother knocked enough sense into that guy," he's not quite ready to say his name, "twenty years ago to make him realize the error of his ways."
Addison seems to consider this.
"If anyone could do it, I'd think Boswell could," Derek observes.
Addison's brow knits. "Did you just compliment Savvy's brother?"
"Maybe." Derek leans back against the swing. "But I'll deny it if you tell him."
.-.-.
Savvy checks her blackberry for the hundredth time.
Nothing.
"Don't let your brother see you attached to that thing," Weiss says lightly, trying to distract her.
It doesn't work.
"She hasn't said anything," Savvy cranes her neck by the window as if she could see all the way to Reeds. "She hasn't texted, or called, or stopped by –"
"Savvy. Sav," he says, more firmly, when she starts pacing the floor and doesn't respond. "She's talking to Derek. Give her some time."
"She was upset…"
"It's not your fault. It was never your fault."
"I know that." She doesn't make eye contact, just toes the familiar hooked rug on the weathered floorboards with one bare foot.
"Your words do … but what about the rest of you?"
Savvy turns sad blue eyes on him. "I yelled at her, Weiss."
"Yelled. You?" He raises his eyebrows. Savvy prides herself on being able to get her point across without ever modulating her volume. It's the Southern in me, she would say sweetly, after decimating an opponent with a smile.
"You know what I mean." Savvy paces, questioning herself. "Addie was upset. She thought I was throwing it her face … you know."
"You wouldn't do that."
"She thinks I did." Savvy pauses. "I don't know, honey. Maybe I did."
"Sav … "
"I pushed her. She was alone in the reeds, she was upset and I don't know why I couldn't just …"
She sinks onto the bed and Weiss sits down next to her, wraps an arm around her shoulders. "Savvy, it's okay."
"I don't know if it is." She rests her face in her hands. "She just had a – medical emergency, and all this stuff with Derek, and I stuck the two of them in that room on purpose, which I know you knew along – "
"I did," he admits.
" – and you know Derek's been on her case when we're not watching and then I jumped down her throat when I caught her on the phone with Mark."
"Okay," he says calmly.
"Well, I shouldn't have! I don't know why I did it, I just – I'm frustrated."
Weiss doesn't say anything; he has a hand on her back, playing with the ends of her long hair.
"And then I sent her off with Derek." Savvy leans back, looking at her husband. "They need to talk, honey, but if I upset her and then they can't …"
"You did it because you thought it would help," Weiss prompts.
She closes her eyes. She and Addison have spent twenty years in the kind of fluid friendship where their secrets are knitted together.
"Addie knows you love her," Weiss says gently. "You've been understanding. Maybe she needed something different."
"Or maybe I made it worse."
"She's going to make her own choice, babe."
"I know that, I just …."
She only has to close her eyes again, briefly, to see Addison crumpled at the bottom of the wooden staircase. Blood soaking through the leg of her jeans, red hair splayed messily around her still white face.
"She's strong, Savvy." Weiss's hand covers hers in her lap.
"But I – "
"You've only ever made her stronger," Weiss interrupts. "That's what Addie would say, if you asked – wouldn't she?"
.-.-.
A bird circles above them, calling down through the breeze.
"Why didn't you tell Savvy, the first time you saw him?" Derek asks gently, trying to walk the line between not accusing her and being genuinely curious.
She thinks about it for a while before she answers.
"I don't know. I just didn't." Addison glances up at him. "And then after I saw him again, I couldn't. I just – they would have asked questions. But I was going to tell them, maybe. I was going to tell you," she adds quietly. "I wanted to, I almost did so many times. I just …"
He doesn't pressure her to finish the sentence. They sit in silence, his hands resting lightly along her shins.
"I should have been there," he says simply.
"You were working."
He wants to grasp the proffered excuse like a lifeline, but he can't.
Not now.
She's laid the past bare now and he knows it's his turn.
"I was working," he says, "but Weiss called and when he said it was an emergency they got me out."
She nods, as if she already knew that.
"Addie?"
"I heard something Savvy and Weiss said … I know he talked to you that night. They never told me anything about the call, though."
"There's a reason for that," he says grimly, and when he admits his part in it – when he repeats the words that make his cheeks burn with shame – she doesn't look shocked.
"It's – not particularly kind," she says ruefully, "but it's … just words, Derek. That night … it was more what you didn't do than anything you said."
And maybe more than just that night.
He lets the words sink in. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry I said that. And I'm sorry that I did … nothing. That I didn't do something."
She nods. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. If I had, then maybe … but I didn't."
Silence.
Another bird, another creak as he sets the swing in motion again.
He's next to speak.
"Mark," he says tentatively, feeling her tense next to him at the mention of his name. "Did he know?"
"Know … about Ethan showing up at the hospital, you mean?" Addison looks confused. "Of course not. I didn't even tell Savvy."
"So that wasn't why … ." He stops talking, but she picks up the thread.
"No." Addison shakes her head. "Not at all. I know how this sounds, Derek, but he was just … there. He was there, and I was sad, and I missed you. He was the … human equivalent of a gin and tonic."
"Does he know that?"
"I don't know." Addison looks pained.
"You haven't told him."
"It's not that, it's just …." Her voice trails off. "I haven't handled it well. Any of it."
He doesn't respond to this.
"I don't expect you to forgive me, Derek, I just – if you could just hear that I'm sorry, I would be … I'm sorry," she says again. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I did it and I'm even more sorry that you saw it."
He nods.
"I know you were angry," she says, and all of a sudden, with a sickening sense memory, he's holding her by the arm, pushing her out the door toward the –
"Stairs," he says abruptly. "Addison. That night, you know I – "
"I know."
It's not satisfying, somehow. "But I didn't – "
"Derek, I know that's not what you were doing. Not that I would blame you if you had."
"Don't," he says sharply, and sees her flinch at his tone.
He finds himself apologizing again, and she waves a weary hand.
If he knew …
If he knew, what?
The swing creaks back and forth as he ponders the possible ends of that sentence.
Addison is the next one to speak, after long quiet moments.
"You called Meredith," she says tentatively.
"I called Meredith." He glances out at the horizon. "I wanted to be honest."
She's studying his face as he speaks.
"But you didn't call her until …"
He shakes his head. "She … didn't exist to me here."
"Is that how you felt about me when you were in Seattle?" Addison asks, too clever to avoid the parallel.
"No. That was different." Derek glances at her. "In Seattle, I had to pretend you didn't exist because you were filling up my head. And here, Meredith stopped existing," he admits, "… because you were filling up my head."
She blinks, then crosses the space between them to press her lips to his. He kisses her back for a moment, but as his hands slide instinctually over her ribs he's assailed with images he's never seen: her broken body at the foot of a wooden staircase, her slumped shoulders at the bar while she dialed calls he didn't take, her journey to the island two years ago when he didn't notice she was gone.
Her hands wind into his hair and then the images in his mind are ones he has seen: Addison looking small and tired in her silk robe, standing in their foyer denying a hangover; Addison hunched and pleading on the staircase, begging him to stay; Addison crouched in the bathtub at Reeds, blood pooling under her shivering body.
The magnitude of pain overwhelms him. It's too much, their past, and he can't do it again. Gently, he pulls back, holding her upper arms. Her hands are still on his face when she turns hers upwards. Her eyes look huge in this light, reflecting the muted greenish-blue of the island.
Slowly, she withdraws her hands; the breeze replaces their warmth on his cheeks.
"Sorry," she says softly.
"You don't have to apologize." He takes one of her hands, rubbing his thumb absently across the back of it. "You've apologized enough today." One of her bare wrists catches his eye and in a blink he's back in the reeds under gathering storm clouds, holding that small turn of bone in one of his hands. He's hurt her so many times, in ways he's only starting to see now. He can't do it again.
"But I'm sorry," she says.
"Yeah, I know. So am I."
The swing creaks in silence again. She doesn't ask why and doesn't press for more, but he hears her without words.
"It's … me," he says finally. "I'm sorry, Addie, I just … after everything. I, uh, I can't."
Slowly, she nods.
"It's okay," she offers after a moment. She leans her head against his shoulder and he shifts his arm so she's resting in the crook of it.
After a moment, the swing starts moving again; Addison must have pushed it this time.
To be continued. Three more chapters, and one is already done which means it can go up fast. (That's right - I actually have an outline). I would love to hear what you thought, so pretty please review and let me know. And as always, thank you so, so much for reading!
