A/N: I promise, we're almost there. I've had a plan for this story from the start and well, we're almost to the parts I'm really excited about.

Disclaimer: The title of this chapter is from the song 'Bright Lights' by Matchbox Twenty. I don't own Grey's Anatomy either.

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"Are you sure you don't want anyone to come inside with you," Savvy asked one more time as Addison stepped into the taxi.

"I'm sure. I need to do this alone."

The taxi left and Addison gave the driver her address. Her old address. She had put off going to the brownstone for a week. She had seen Nancy, talked to Savvy a lot, avoided Mark, and tried to stop thinking about Derek. But now she had to clear out the brownstone. It was the third week in July, and one more week would mean they'd have to pay a few hundred dollars more for another month of rent. Not they, anymore. She would. And while Addison wasn't short on money, she didn't need to waste it. That and the fact that tomorrow was Sunday and she moved into her apartment tomorrow. Having two houses was foolish.

There it was. The same as it always looked. It felt so foreign, though, as if it was old and abandoned hundreds of years beforehand. In actuality, she had been living there with Derek just a year ago. September is when everything had come crashing down and Derek had left. She had to remind herself that she hadn't been happy the last few years she had lived here. She had been miserable. She had wanted to leave so many times but couldn't. And then, in a twist of fate, Derek had. Not she, but Derek.

She walked to the front door, polished and clean. She sighed and opened it. The hard part wasn't now. She didn't need to get worked up about entering a house she had successfully entered for two months after Derek had left.

She hadn't been a smasher. Nothing was smashed. Pictures were intact. Turned down, facing the tabletops instead of the world, but there was still a clean sheet of glass in front of all of them. She set up a box and took out bubble wrap and picked up the first picture. She hadn't actually seen them in a while. It was her and Derek when they were dating, at a Christmas party with Derek's family. She was wearing a green dress and black heels, and Derek was in a red sweater. It was so tacky and wonderful at the same time. She had looked at this picture in the same place for six years. But it was like looking at it for the first time.

Lingering for a moment, she set to work. She wasn't afraid about being in her house at night, not at all. She had locked the door behind her and knew she was safe. She just didn't have all the time in the world, and she had a lot ahead of her. Nothing much had been done with the house. She and Derek hadn't given it up even as she had given up everything else when she moved to Seattle. He had told her to keep paying it. She had been silently elated and fostered a hope that maybe, just maybe, they could move back one day. Savvy had come over one day, soon after she left for Seattle, to take care of the food in the kitchen, but that was all.

She quickly placed all the pictures away, only stopping at the final one. It was the largest, a framed photo of her wedding day. So clichéd, the picture was, but Addison loved it. She had spent so much time looking at the picture and wishing she could go back to that time. It was funny, really, how she had spent literal years of her life wishing for her wedding day, imagining it, and after the fact, she kept remembering and wishing back. Maybe that was it. Maybe her wedding day had been the happiest day of her life. She had known it would be and now she was certain. And now all she had was the picture and memories.

She didn't wrap that one in bubble wrap, nor did she place it in the box. She put it near her purse, by the front door. She would take it with her. She was starting over, yes, but she got one picture of her former marriage. So it happened to be her wedding picture.

The kitchen was done in twenty minutes. All pots and pans were swept into boxes and the food was already gone. Addison found an old packet of saltines way in the back and chewed on one, realizing how stale it was. A quick check on the package told her that these saltines were three years old. Three years ago seemed so long. Three years ago her marriage had just started falling into disrepair, and it wasn't nearly as bad.

The room with all the books, as Derek had called it, was afterwards. Books were merely books, and seldom few held memories for Addison. She found her weathered copy of Pride and Prejudice that she had bought almost twenty years ago and kept until now. She found the other Jane Austen books and Derek's mystery-thrillers. And then the medical books. There were at least fifty of them, books neither she nor Derek ever read. They were all for show. They willingly admitted that. Addison sighed and packed them away.

She slowly went upstairs. This would be the hard part. Her room. The other rooms were mere furniture and didn't hold anything to be packed. But this room…this room would hold everything. It was where she had shared a bed with Derek for six years. Where she'd slept with Mark. (Although, she hadn't stayed in here with Mark. The door was shut the day Derek left and she never went back in.) She paused at the door, and heaved a sigh.

She quickly turned to her side of the room. She packed away the rest of her clothes and her makeup. She didn't even give a second glance to Derek's things right now. But that could only take so long. Two hours later all of her things were taken care of and Derek's stuff was still there.

Addison tried going quickly. She tried to remove herself from her body and just go through the motions. She tried not to think about Derek. But everything smelled just like him. She was crying before she knew it. She dropped down on top of a box filled with his sweaters and cried. She missed her marriage. She was moving forward, sure. But maybe she should've been swept up by Derek's declaration of love. Maybe she should've let him kiss her and hold her and tell her he loved her.

Maybe she had made the wrong choice. She had tried to be so strong that maybe it had ruined any chance she had of going back to Derek. Her stomach sank at that thought. But Derek…he was the one who'd slept with Meredith, who'd insulted her for weeks after their divorce. She didn't love that Derek. She loved the Derek she knew. Had known.

Their marriage hadn't fallen apart from a specific event. Many at Seattle Grace had theorized a baby that had died, a death pushing them apart. But there was no such incident. Addison hadn't ever gotten pregnant from Derek. She had never carried his child. She could have, but they had always put their careers first and a child was out of the question. When he did ask her, five years into their marriage, if she was ever going to be ready to have children, she had said that she didn't think so. He had never asked her again, even though she would've changed her mind mere months later. She never brought it up and took no action to follow through. Maybe that was her fault. Maybe she should have brought it up. But a child was no guarantee of a marriage.

She left the brownstone an hour later, Derek's things packed. She had taken one of his sweaters, a green one, just to have it. The rest she was to be divided amongst Nancy's husband and Weiss. They had both been reluctant to take clothes of her ex-husband, but Addison had insisted. She didn't want them in a secondhand shop.

A wedding picture and a sweater. It wasn't a lot.

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"You can handle this kind of commitment?"

"Absolutely."

Richard watched Derek carefully. He seemed to be telling the truth, and Richard wouldn't deny Derek this. It would be wonderful for him.

"It will require a lot of work, many extra hours."

"I know."

"You'll have to give up a few key surgeries to work on it."

"The end result will be worth those few surgeries. It will be ten times better, the end result."

"If it works."

"It will work, Richard. I am confident."

"Don't lose me any money."

"I won't."

Derek stepped out of the office. He ducked into an elevator when he saw Meredith coming. She may have broken off with him; she may be doing 'fine', but regardless.

"Dr. Shepherd."

"Dr. Bailey."

"What the hell did you say to Addison last week?"

"What?"

"Don't 'what' me. What did you say?"

"Ask Addison."

"'Ask Addison'", she mocked. "You think I don't know? I was hoping you'd give me a chance to redeem your sorry ass. The whole damn hospital knows."

"Who told you?"

"Addison. You told her you loved her and now you're sitting in Seattle. She went back to New York and is gone and you're here. What is wrong with this picture?"

"Dr. Bailey, with all due respect, could you stay the hell away from my business?"

Bailey sighed. "I thought you finally did something right, working for your marriage or ex-wife or whatever the hell you two are now; but it turns out I was wrong. Do you commonly tell women you love them and then let them leave?"

"Dr. Bailey, let me deal with this myself."

"I am letting you deal with it yourself. I'm just saying that if this is how you're dealing with it, you're a damn fool."

Derek gritted his teeth. "I am not dealing with it like this."

"Really now? I would've guessed otherwise."

Bailey got off at the next floor. Derek stood on the elevator. He was getting to it. He was dealing with it. He loved Addison. He did. And he wasn't letting her go. He was dealing with it soon. Just because he didn't run off after her didn't mean he wasn't going to deal with it.

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There wasn't much to say about her new apartment. It was spacious and had a large enough closet. It would suffice. That was all it needed to do for now. It needed to suffice. She spent most of her time at the hospital anyway. Kirsten Farleigh, true to her word, had given Addison work and surgeries. Lots of it. Addison had never been so swamped after two weeks at a new place. But it was better than nothing.

She had put Derek's sweater in her bottom drawer, and the photograph hung on the wall of her bedroom. Savvy hadn't seen it, nor had Nancy or anyone else who had come. It was in her bedroom for a reason, because she didn't want to think about what it meant that she still had it. She didn't want to deal with what other people thought about her still having it. It was just a picture.

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Derek sat in the waiting area. Friday night, it was busy. But he was nervous and noticed nothing. He sat there for hours thinking. Wondering if he was doing the right thing. And while he had told Richard he was confident, he wasn't. He wasn't at all. He didn't know if this would work or fail but it was what he knew he had to do. He had to. He wasn't going to let Addison go.

Outside, the hubbub of New York buzzed on.

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A/N: That's all for now, folks. Reviews would be nice.