Disclaimer: I do not own Grey's Anatomy.

A/N: Okay, I should stop with the long author's notes, because they're boring, and nobody really wants to read them anyhow. This chapter is really a continuation of the previous chapter, and the only reason I cut it into two is because otherwise it would be one, massive, 8,000 word chapter, and I was just a bit overwhelming. Plus, there was a good place to end it, and I really wanted to put in that poem fragment… Anyhow, if I were you I'd kill me for taking so long to update. I'm really sorry—school has been ridiculous lately. If it's any consolation, the next chapter is completely, 100 written already, so it's just a matter of when to post it. Oh, and I hate this chapter…really, really hate it. I like the next chapter, and I like what I started on the chapter after that, but I hate this chapter.

Show Me A Sign, Part Two

It was night, and Addison lay on one of the beds in the on call room. She had given up on trying to sleep, and now she just lay there, staring at the bunk above her, and reliving the events of earlier. Derek finally knew the truth—well, almost all the truth, and just right now, she couldn't bring herself to tell him the last bit. Addison had expected him to yell when he learned that she had made the decision to sleep with Mark while not intoxicated, but he had simply looked at her, a look which would haunt her for years to come. A look of betrayal, of sadness, of confusion, and of anger; a look which told her, clearer than words, that he would never truly be able to understand why she acted the way she had.

While this was surprising, what kept Addison awake was what Derek had done afterward, something that she had long ago forgot he was capable of doing. He had sincerely apologized for his behavior, said he was going to try and make it all work out, and had asked for forgiveness. Despite her better judgment, she had given him a second (though it was really more like a third or fourth) chance. The only problem was that, the nicer and more civil Derek acted, the harder it was for her to pretend that she didn't love him.

The door to the on call room opened and, after a quick glance to see who had entered, she turned on her side and pretended to be asleep. Truth be told, she was avoiding Mark, and avoiding the confrontation that she knew from years of experience was inevitable.

Mark walked over to the bed where Addison was lying, and climbed onto the bunk above her. When he didn't attempt to talk to her immediately, Addison assumed that she had successfully tricked him.

"Addison, I know you're awake. I've had enough experience with women trying to avoid talking to me that I know the telltale signs of faking," Mark told her from the bunk above, and she cursed to herself but lay there, hoping to convince him otherwise. "You're good. If I hadn't known you for so long, I just might be convinced, but do you seriously think I'm going to fall for this?" Mark asked. "First of all, your face is turned to the wall, and you never sleep facing the wall because you like to see the door and know if anybody is entering. Secondly, you never sleep on your side, only on your back or face down into the pillow. Third of all, when you're asleep, you snore."

Momentarily forgetting she was pretending to be asleep, Addison turned over angrily. "I do not snore!" she exclaimed loudly, before realizing that she had blown her cover. Not that she had really expected to trick Mark, but it was particularly embarrassing to Addison that she had been tricked so easily.

"No, you don't," Mark said, snickering, and leaning his head over the side of the bed to look at Addison, clearly amused.

"Glad we got that settled," she muttered sarcastically, receiving a look from Mark that clearly was still gloating from his victory. Truth be told, she had been worried for a moment there that she did snore—her father had snored terribly, and as a little child she had been terrified that there was a train going through the house. She turned her back to him in mock outrage, because if anything she was mad at herself, and let the room become silent again.

After a few minutes, just as she was beginning to hope that perhaps Mark had fallen asleep before he could yell at her, he spoke again, this time his voice angry, and disappointed. "You sold me out to your ex-husband, my ex-best friend, which wouldn't be that terrible, aside from the fact that practically the only thing he's said to me since I arrived was that he hoped I would return to New York, and soon. Seriously, Addison! You know, the reason I called you was because I figured that you would be more discrete than other people, given what the hospital gossips say about you."

Addison sighed. Not only was Mark not asleep, but he was mad at her. "If it's any consolation, I'm absolutely positive that Derek won't tell anybody, not after the way he reacted."

"That's not the point, Addison!" he exclaimed. "The point is that I trusted you, and you gave away my secret in exchange for a few moments of pleasant conversation with your ex-husband. It's not the fact you told him, really, it's the fact that you didn't think about how I'd feel. You know, I'm perfectly civil towards him, and I've tried apologizing, but he doesn't want to be civil to me, then shouldn't I be the one making the calls about what information about my life he knows?"

"I'm sorry," Addison said softly. "I didn't mean to tell him, not really, anyhow. It's just that, do you know what it feels like to have somebody who you can tell everything to, somebody who is your best friend, somebody who understands you? I slipped, okay? Derek has been…nice…recently, and I, just for one moment, got carried away and didn't remember that things weren't the same as they used to be. For one moment I allowed myself to hope that perhaps the New Year would bring a new start."

She couldn't see Mark's face, and therefore couldn't gauge what his reaction would be. What she had said she believed to be the truth, but Mark had an alarming point too. Though it pained her to realize this, in essence Mark was right; she had traded in Mark's private story for a few moments of conversation with her Derek.

"The old us would have thought it was funny," a strangled voice said after a moment. "Before…before everything became all messed up and complicated, we were friends, all of us. You would have rolled your eyes, and asked me if I was ever going to grow up, and your ex-husband would have made fun of me, and we would have all laughed."

"What happened to us, all three of us?" Addison asked, though the question wasn't directed to Mark, more to herself.

"I don't know, Addie," Mark whispered. Addison wanted to pretend that she had not heard Mark's voice, because she now knew what she would find if she stood up and looked at Mark, but somehow it didn't seem right to ignore it. She got out of her bed, and stood up so that she could see Mark. He turned his head away from her, but she had seen his face for long enough to know that he was crying. Feeling terrible for making him cry, even though she hadn't meant to, she put her hand on his and squeezed it. The Mark Sloan she knew hardly ever cried.

When he had stopped crying, he looked at her, a slightly haunted expression on his face. "Will it ever be the same?" he asked, but they both knew the answer. Addison shook her head sadly, and lay back down on the bottom bunk, once again trying to get to sleep.

Right as she had finally dozed off, a pager went off. "Not mine," a sleepy Mark said. Addison jumped up, hitting her head on the top bunk, grabbed her pager, and read it. She nodded to Mark to indicate that she had to go, but not before asking what time it was. Finding, to her horror, that it was only eleven o'clock, Addison put on her sweater, and left the on call room. It took her only a few minutes to get down to the Emergency Room, and when she did she found three very bored interns leaning against the wall, talking.

"Stevens, Grey, Yang," Addison greeted them, though not terribly enthusiastically, "why did you page me?" She couldn't think of any reason that she would have been paged to come to the ER unless there was an emergency, which, from the fact that the interns were socializing and there were only three patients sitting in the waiting room, Addison was willing to bed was not the case. Izzie looked down, embarrassed, Meredith shoved Izzie, and Christina just stared at her friends, as if she could not believe they had actually paged Addison.

Meredith glared at Izzie, as if to say that since it was her idea, she should have to speak, before offering a chart to Addison and addressing her. "We have a patient, and he, um, needs stitches."

Raising her eyebrows, Addison took the chart that was in Meredith's outstretched hands, and read it over quickly. From what she could tell, all the patient needed was five or six stitches in his knee, which shouldn't have proven to be a task too difficult for three interns. "Yes, but why was I paged?" Addison asked again, now confused. Was there something about this patient that wasn't in his chart, or that she had missed? Even so, it was a man—normally men do not become pregnant, and this one didn't have a sick or premature baby in Addison's care, so she couldn't figure out why she had been the one paged.

"He won't let us near him," Christina said matter-of-factly. At first, Addison had found Christina's complete lack of bedside manner irritating, and her aggressiveness overbearing, but the more she talked to Christina, the more she liked her. Being to the point and down to earth had its benefits from a medical point of view, and Christina was dating Preston, who was a friend. Furthermore, Christina was in no way involved in her messy and complicated love life, which way too many doctors at Seattle Grace seemed to be.

"What do you mean he won't let you near him?" Addison demanded, and now Izzie and Meredith blushed, while Christina suppressed a laugh.

"I just got here after they had paged you, but from what I gather he won't let Izzie near him because of a certain underwear ad for Miss Bethany Whisper that he saw last year." Addison gave Christina a curious look, and Christina clarified. "It's not just that he saw the ad, it's that he has a picture of Izzie tattooed on his thigh."

Addison looked at Izzie, who was a color of red seldom found in nature. "Seriously?" she asked, and Izzie nodded, mortified. "Okay, then. Why couldn't Dr. Grey have stitched him up?" From the look that Christina shot Meredith, she was almost certain that she didn't want to know the answer, because it would either make her mad, or cause her to say something not professional, and she had made a vow after her incident with Christina to be professional at work.

"She was so absorbed in something else that she, um, forgot to put any sort of numbing agent or anesthesia in before attempting to stitch him up." Meredith glared at Christina for betraying her, but the glare wasn't serious. Presumably Meredith was at least somewhat relieved that her mistake was now out in the open.

To her amazement, Addison found herself embarrassed for Meredith. At first she had hated Meredith, hated her for being sweet and kind and loyal and hated her for being loved by Derek. When she had been married to Derek, she had forced herself to like Meredith, since they were friends by proxy, or whatever. She had gotten along with Meredith okay then, until she had found Meredith's panties in Derek's coat. Right after that incident, Addison had hated Meredith, but she had since realized that she no longer felt any strong emotions regarding Meredith.

"May I ask what was so absorbing?" Addison asked, and now Christina looked away, as if to say that her part was done. When, after a few minutes of persuasion, they still wouldn't tell her what had been so amusing, Addison gave up. The only thing she was able to find out was that she had been paged because she was listed as the attending to contact if needed, presumably because she had told Richard that she would volunteer earlier in the day. She went in and stitched up the man, apologizing for the lack of professional behavior among the interns.

When that rather unpleasant task was done, Addison found herself exhausted. She went to find Richard in his office, and he told her that she could leave, even though she was supposed to stay over night. She needed to rest, or to do something so distracting that she wasn't aware of her troubles. She needed Savvy, but Savvy wasn't in Seattle and, even if she was, Addison felt guilty laying her troubles on top of somebody else.

At home, Addison didn't know what to do. She couldn't stay at the hospital, yet in her own home she wondered if she had made the right decision, if she wouldn't have been happier staying at the hospital. Rubbing her eyes tiredly, Addison turned on the TV and watched a half hour of bad TV before she decided that enough was enough, turned it off, and went to her room.

Unaware of what she was doing, Addison opened her dresser, rooted around in the back of the top drawer for a small jewelry box, and pulled it out. She opened the jewelry box, and stared at the contents of it, as if in a trance. After all of these months, it still felt weird to not be wearing her rings, rings which she had worn every day for over a third of her life. Right after she had taken off her rings, she had vowed that she wasn't going to look at them ever again, but it was impossible for her to do that.

The rings represented everything she had had with Derek, reminded her of her past life, not the past life when she cried to sleep because Derek wasn't home for the night again, the past life when she and Derek meant the world to each other. She needed to go back and fix it all, but it was impossible, and even if she could she wasn't sure what she would change. Looking at the rings was a sort of guilty pleasure she engaged in occasionally, even though she knew it wasn't healthy. She slipped the rings on her hand for a minute, admiring them, before taking them off and putting them away again.

Addison got her laptop out of its charger, and sat on her bed, checking email and reading the news online. She didn't pay much attention to most of the articles she read, or emails she replied to, except for one from Savvy, saying that she missed Addison, and was thinking about coming to Seattle in a few months. Addison thought about calling Savvy and talking, but a quick glance at the clock told her that it was too late—it would be two thirty in New York.

With a groan, Addison put her computer away and got into bed. Despite the hour she wasn't tired, but forced herself to at least lay there in the dark and attempt to sleep so that she would be able to function tomorrow morning.

Truth be told, Addison didn't want to go to sleep. If she went to sleep, when she woke up she would have a decision to make, one that she didn't want to, a decision that she knew should be tough, but was so simple it was alarming. Could she even consider not forgiving Derek? The answer was no—she loved Derek, loved him uncontrollably and unconditionally, and it would take a lot longer than a few months for her to truly get over Derek.