A/N: I need new sentences! Feel free to suggest! One more to go.

Marry

"Because she is Addison!"

His mother had once asked him, her hands stemmed into her hips and her eyes fixated on him, "Why do you want to marry her?"

Derek had always suspected that his mother had never liked his girlfriend – condemned her family background and everything it allegorized. But until this very moment she had always held back, smiling and nodding politely during conversations, inviting her over to family dinners and showing gratitude for the gifts Addison brought for her, albeit a materialistic and pricey way to win someone's appreciation she would admonish herself; quietly but vehemently nonetheless.

"Because she is Addison," Derek had replied insistently.

Derek supposed it did not make sense in his mother's eyes or anyone else's for that matter. But it made perfect sense to him in an indescribable, somewhat absurd sense of veracity.

When Mark came to see him, took a seat next to him on one of Joe's barstools and bluntly asked him with a hint of anger and despair in his voice,

"Why can't you forgive me?"

"Because she's Addison," Derek replied dryly before taking a drink from the Scotch he had ordered.

Mark should have understood, Derek chided silently. Addison was inexpressibly beautiful, genuinely caring and exceedingly smart; too big a catch for him, he had always told himself so Mark had slipped Addison a note, asking her for a date and signed with Derek's name. She had accepted with a radiant smile on her lips, tempting Derek to taste her lips; and so he had. They had gotten married one year later and Mark had sat with Derek the night before the wedding, calming his nerves and listening to every attempt Derek had made writing his vows and declaring them unworthy of use until he finally found the right words,

"For me it's you and no one else because you're Addison."

When Meredith asked him, unbelieving and obviously hurt by the rejection, "Why won't you leave her?"

Derek sighed in defeat, knowing well that there were no words to justify this betrayal. He had fooled her and himself with the idea that a new city brought a refreshing sense of independence; from the person he had become by loving Addison.

He should have chosen his words more wisely, Derek reprimanded himself. He should have told Meredith that they – Addison and he, had lived together for twelve years; that meant twelve Christmases, twelve sets of birthdays and twelve anniversaries. He should have told her that he honestly could not give up on a relationship which had lasted for most of his adulthood, without even trying to salvage it. Instead he simply stood there, quietly for several moments, before he spoke merely above a whisper.

"Because she's Addison."

When his daughter asked him curiously with one of her eyebrows elevated - a similarity in behavior that was not lost on Derek, albeit biologically impossible.

"Why have Mom and you never gotten married?"

Derek took her hand and let his thumb run softly over his daughter's knuckles. When he looked at her with his piercing blue eyes and his unique, slightly crooked smile, he simply said.

"We didn't need to."

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