A/N: Omg, this took so much time to write. I'm pleased with it in the end though. What do you think? Btw, the following chapter is gonna be a shocker..

I Don't Hate You

Chapter 16: Chain Reaction

The following days they didn't see Derek anywhere. Addison asked the chief about it and apparently he had gone to New York to do some major surgery on a patient that couldn't be moved. How true this statement was she did not know and she didn't think one surgery would take several days, even though he'd had to do the follow up.

Addison had been sleeping over at Meredith's place the last days, but the hospital didn't know yet about them. They wanted to clear it up with Derek before making it official.

~GA~

"I hate this morning," Addison said as soon as she opened her eyes.

"How come?" Meredith murmured, rolling to her side and put her hand on her shoulder.

"I don't know. Everything sucks."

"Why?" Meredith breathed, smacking her lips sleepily.

"I don't know... PMS I guess... Sometimes I hate being a woman," she said and kissed her girlfriend on the forehead before getting out of bed.

Just as she put her feet to the floor she heard Meredith pull a breath. She turned around and looked at her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Nothing," Meredith breathed and smiled reassuringly. "It's nothing."

Addison shrugged, said "Kay," and gave her a kiss on her forehead before going to the bathroom.

While peeing she asked Meredith through the door "Do you think Derek will show up to work today?"

"I don't know, maybe?"

"I mean, he should be there, because we have an important meeting today with everyone who wants to become Chief."

"If he's not there he won't get it?"

She flushed the toilet before answering. "I don't know, it should mean that, but you know Derek, he could just wave around with his perfect hair and he would get chief anyway."

She took a quick shower and brushed her teeth and dried her hair. When she got out of the bathroom Meredith was already done, sitting on the bed and waiting for her.

"Addison, I have to talk to you about something...," Meredith began.

"Uhm, I'm a bit in a hurry. Are you going with me or Cristina to work?" Addison said while attaching her watch to her wrist.

"Cristina," Meredith answered.

"Okay," Addison said and gave her a quick kiss before taking her purse. "You'll find me at the hospital if you need to talk, okay?"

"Yeah, I'll see you later," Meredith said after Addison's back as she hurried out.

~GA~

At work Addison had two surgeries to do before the board meeting. Afterward she didn't have time to see Meredith and after lunch she had to practice before the meeting, so she stayed in the staff room where they had coffee in the mornings and used the mirror that hung there.

She fixated her reflexion and concentrated herself deeply.

"Good afternoon board," she said, testing the effect of taking off her glasses at the right timing.

She put them back on.

"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the board. I'm so," she took off the glasses, "grateful for this opportunity."

"Don't wear the glasses," Mark suddenly said. He had been observing her and she hadn't even noticed him there. "You fiddle with them, it makes you look indecisive. And stop stressing it will be like any other job interview; what do you consider your strengths, what do you consider your weaknesses...," he said and realized he didn't even have the answer to that question. "What do you consider your weaknesses?"

She turned away from the mirror to look at him properly.

"I don't have any. I'm that good. What are yours?"

"I'm an easy mark for evil redheads," he said and began walking out of there.

She followed him.

"Aha! Trust me, you have other weaknesses. Obviously," she said, standing in front of him and leaning against the counter of the nurse's station, "you are a manwhore."

"Correction, I was a manwhore."

"Has Izzie Stevens changed that? Oh please, Mark, grow up."

"Well, so, okay I'm trying not to be a manwhore. A man can change right."

"Hm... No. Men are incapable of change."

"That's mean. And unfair!"

"That's why I chose neonatal."

He rolled his eyes and she turned her back on him and left.

~GA~

When it was time for the meeting with the board, Derek was there. Her heart jumped a few beats when she saw him and her first reaction was wanting to flee the scene. But she stayed, of course.

"Hi Derek."

"Dr. Montgomery," he said without looking at her.

Okay fine, be that way, she thought angrily but decided not to speak to him anymore.

They were sent in one by one to discuss their visions for the hospital, but they weren't to know anything about the thoughts of the board.

When she came out of the conference room where the board currently was installed, she realized that Derek had waited for her. He had already had his individual meeting so there couldn't be any other reason for him to stay outside of the room.

She didn't know what to say and waited for him to speak, looking him bravely and directly into his eyes.

"Do you have time to talk?" he asked, his face hard-set and the phrase sounded like he had rehearsed it in his head a couple of times before actually pronouncing it.

Addison nodded and hoped that he couldn't see her fright. She was ashamed of being scared. The strong and independent Addison wasn't an afraid person, but when looking into his acrid gaze she wondered if going somewhere with him would be a wise decision.

He started walking without another word. Even though she was in doubt she followed him and he closed the door behind them in an on-call room.

He looked at her. She wanted him to speak, but she couldn't make herself look at him, so she looked at everything else in the room instead.

"Stop fidgeting," Derek said, after casting a sharp look at her behavior.

She stopped moving. Maybe she even stopped breathing while waiting for him to make the first move.

He sat down on the lower bed while Addison remained on her feet. He suddenly looked old.

"Addison. You know me. You know that I usually yell when I'm angry and you know that when I stopped loving you I didn't care enough to yell at you."

"Yes," she breathed. "Go ahead, yell," she said.

"I don't know if I will. Not yet at least."

"Okay," she said and waited for him to speak.

"I would say," he seemed to choose his words carefully, "that this thing you've done might be the worst thing anyone has ever done to me. Maybe not as bad as killing my father... But since you both have known me as intimately as one can and you betrayed me in the worst possible way... You're god damn close."

She held her breath.

"I need you to tell me, Addie. I want you to explain."

"What do you want to know?" she asked breathlessly.

"How...," he started, the words seeming like an effort, "did this happen?"

She didn't answer.

"I think I deserve to know, and I want to know, even if I won't like it. But if you think I'll give you my blessing you're wrong."

"I wouldn't expect that from you," she said quickly and tried to make her voice sound soft instead of nervously pitched and sharp.

"I need to know."

She looked into his eyes, trying to measure his sincerity and to find out if he really was ready to be told.

"I'm ready," he almost snorted and rolled his eyes at her. It was almost creepy how well he still could read her.

"Well okay," she sighed. "We... Uhm, it's hard to say. For my part, I think I fell in love," – by these words Derek twitched involuntarily – "during the time when Meredith and I tried to be friends."

"Are you telling me it's my fault?" he lifted an eyebrow.

"No, of course not."

He looked as if he wanted to start his shouting at this point but changed his mind and made a waving movement with his hands. "Just go on," he mumbled.

"We didn't actually do anything until after our divorce," she tried to reassure him, but forgot a tiny... enormous detail.

Derek's eyes suddenly looked like there was a thunder storm going on inside of them.

She realized her mistake far too late and he got up to his feet as if he were shot.

"You were fucking Meredith while I was together with her!" he exploded.

She tried to back away from him, but just hit the cool wall with her back.

"You're the reason she broke up with me!"

Addison's fear was replaced by annoyance in a flash and she rolled her eyes agitatedly.

"Come on, don't flatter yourself. She is the only reason shebroke up with you!"

He didn't seem to care about her comment.

"Couldn't you satisfy yourself with just ruining our marriage? Why do you have to destroy my whole life?"

"We're not teenagers. This isn't all about you. No one would-"

"You and I, we were trying so hard to make it work," he cut her off. "I gave her up for you," he said, raising his voice. "I didn't mean for you to take her over!"

"I didn't take her over. How can you even say that? She's not a charity case," Addison said, getting quite cross even though she still sensed the clear danger from Derek. "And she has a mind of her own. No one can decide who she's to love."

"I loved her. She loved me. Where did you come into the picture?" he spat. "She told me to pick her!"

"I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but the thing is Derek... You must understand that we didn't mean to hurt you-"

"Then why did you let her cheat on me? Wasn't it enough for you to cheat on me? You have to make her cheat on me too?"

She got sick of him interrupting her all the time. It wasn't possible to talk to him, he didn't listen anyway. She got fed up.

"Derek, stop making her sound like a puppet! I love her. She loves me. Just deal with it!"

She knew it was stupid of her and she knew that he couldn't deal with it.

She felt her cheeks lose their color as he clenched his fists so hard his knuckles whitened.

She had to stall him before he did something stupid. He seemed to fight some kind of internal battle, like one part of him wanted to hurt her physically, but the other part didn't want to do something like that against her.

"Derek," she said silently. "I've loved you, you know that. I would never mean to hurt you."

It didn't have the soothing effect she'd aimed for.

His control wasn't enough, even though if he would have let go completely Callie would have to patch her bits together piece by piece.

He took a hold of her blouse with one hand and twisted it toward him so their faces nearly touched.

"You're so full of shit," he hissed. "No one would do this. Even if you'd want to, you wouldn't, because it's not ethical. Don't you girls have rules about exes of their friends? Shouldn't this kind of rule be applied in our situation as well? Don't you think?"

"I know, I'm sorry," she said, her voice slightly trembling. "We really tried not to, but..."

"But what?" he spat.

With his other hand he took a hold of her chin and tilted her head up while saying "You are good-looking Addison. You could have a really great man. Heck, even Mark wanted to be with you. So why couldn't you just let me have her?"

"That's not my choice to make," she said and twisted her face out of his grip.

Someone suddenly knocked hard on the door.

"Hey!" she recognized Mark's voice.

She let out an internally sigh of relief and her body relaxed some.

Derek moved away from her and her feeling of relief increased even more. With the relief came also tears and legs that didn't want to support her. She had to lean back against the wall to prevent herself from falling to her knees.

"I know you're in there! Open up, or else I'll get a key or I'll just kick it open, but I think Chief would get really pissed if I broke a door!"

Derek seemed to consider his options, but went with opening it of course.

Mark stepped in as soon as Derek opened, making him shuffle to the side.

He shot a glance at Derek's dark face and Addison's now crying visage.

"What the fuck, Derek?" he said, turning to his old friend.

Derek just glared at him.

"I could hear you even out in the hallway! What the hell is going on?"

Derek shot her a glance and she felt a bit embarrassed about him seeing that he'd made her cry.

"I just found out she was fucking Meredith during the time Meredith was with me."

"Yeah! I know!" Mark said like it wasn't a big deal.

Which he got to regret.

Derek's fist flew through the air and hit Mark on his precious cheek bone. They both flew out of the room into the corridor where they commenced a fist fight.

Addison cast a quick look into the mirror, dried her tears and rearranged her clothes. She didn't want to look like a victim of assault.

She went out in the hallway, with the idea of holding them apart, but she just had to stop and watch for a moment, baffled by the violence and harm both of them were causing one another. Especially Derek. She had never seen him so caveman-like before. He probably had all this anger built up inside of him – anger for Addison – and just poured it out on Mark.

A couple of nurses tried to pry them apart. Addison felt it was too dangerous to step between them, but snapped out of her momentarily passive position and started yelling at them to stop.

Mark started look like he was mostly protecting himself against Derek's rage. He ducked a blow from him, and then got around him and managed to throw him onto the ground, but Derek in his wild state of mind got up to his feet with a big push and thrust his fist hard in Mark's stomach.

Mark's body bent like a shrimp and he let out a groan of pain.

"Stop!" Addison screamed.

Derek was about to jump him and they all – she, he, Mark, the nurses – saw that Derek, with his craziness, would be the winner of the fight, but Addison wouldn't let that happen and took a deep breath, as if going for a dive, gathered some courage and then jumped up from behind of Derek and clung to him with her arms around his neck.

He immediately got occupied with pulling her off. Mark got some time to catch his breath and then yelled, or croaked, "Addison...! Get off him!"

Addison wouldn't let go, but she was having a hard time staying there. She internally questioned her liking of pencil skirts, if she would have worn pants she could have wrapped her legs around Derek's waist and therefore hold on to him more easily. Maybe it would have looked more ridiculous too, but she couldn't let the frenzied Derek beat up Mark and destroy their careers.

Mark got close to them and told her to get off him again, which she did, aiming for an elegant landing on her heel clad feet, but it didn't end like she wanted to and she tripped and tumbled to the floor and ended up on her ass.

When she looked up Derek was groaning on the floor and Mark held him down.

Then she heard a voice from behind her that made her turn around as if shot with a taser.

It was the Chief. The lion had arrived to create order in his flock and he roared.

"YOU THREE! IN MY OFFICE NOW!"