A/N (07/29/15): Hello friends! As hard as it is to believe, it's been about two and a half years since I last updated one of my stories. My sincere apologies to all of my loyal readers for essentially dropping off the face of the earth, and thank you to everyone who kept reading, reviewing, and messaging me while I was lost in "real life", whatever that is!

I am working my way through this story, tweaking it slightly to take it in a direction that will better bring it to the conclusion I always intended it to reach. I'll be posting the updated versions of the existing chapters in batches until it's all caught up and we get back into new material. Most of the changes are minor in the first 15 or so chapters, but there are a few slightly more substantial changes in the later chapters of this new version. So even if you've read the story before, I encourage you to start at the beginning and work your way forward - I'll date all the updated chapters as they go up, so that it is clear what has been updated. Thank you all for your patience!

"It just doesn't make any sense, Mark."

"Which part?"

"All of it!" Addison signed and leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her thighs and pressing her fingertips into her forehead.

"It's really quite simple when you think about it. You and I slept together. Derek ran away to Seattle and slept with Meredith. Meredith got pregnant, then you and Derek got back together and left Seattle, and Meredith had her kids alone."

"No." Addison shook her head. "Mark, you were Derek's best friend for decades. You know him well enough to know that he would never do that. I don't care if he was married to me at the time or not, Derek would never walk away from his children."

"There was a time that I would have thought that," Mark agreed. "Hell, even Meredith didn't think that Derek would do that to her…"

Mark looked up from his paperwork and frowned at the dark clouds forming outside the window of his tiny new office. He'd been in Seattle a month now, and he was starting to suspect that he'd never get used to the weather. It was moments like this that it was hard to figure out exactly what he'd been thinking when he'd accepted Richard's offer of a job at Seattle Grace. Even though he'd known he couldn't stay in New York, not with everyone he considered family suddenly treating him as though he'd contracted the plague, he wasn't sure why it had been Seattle that had drawn him in.

It certainly wasn't that it was his only offer - when word had gotten out that Mark Sloan was on the job market, there'd been phone calls from around the country. All it would have taken was a swipe of his pend and he could have been sitting in a Miami penthouse overlooking the ocean, or a Malibu beach home with a plentiful selection of bikini-clad potential patients - and dates - at his fingertips. Instead, he had a hotel room at the Archfield, a slow trickle of patients, and a certain intern - or rather, intern-on-leave, as he'd recently discovered - who wouldn't give him the time of day if his life depended on it.

He wasn't sure what it was about Meredith Grey that captivated him. It certainly couldn't be encouragement from his target, that much was clear. If she allowed him to flirt with her, it was a victory for the day. He'd been at it a month, and he didn't seem any closer to landing a date than he'd been when he first spotted her peering over that chart the day he arrived in Seattle. She wasn't even his type, not really, and she clearly violated his number one rule…never sleep with a woman with children. Still, there was something about her that he couldn't put his finger on, something that made him want to know more about Meredith Grey…

A hesitant knock at the door caused him to spin around in his chair and he smiled at the woman in the doorway. "Hey, I was just thinking about you."

"Mind out of the gutter, Sloan, I'm not sleeping with you."

"Now, how do you know that's what I was thinking about? Seems like someone else's mind might be in the gutter…"

He laughed at the glare she shot him as she walked into the office.

"Okay, fine. Well, if you didn't come here to sleep with me, what can I do for you today, Dr. Grey?"

"Just thought I'd drop in and say hi, see how you were settling in."

Mark frowned but nodded. He knew women well enough to know that she wanted something, but he figured it would come out in its own time.

"It's going to rain again," he commented. "I thought you said I'd get used to it, but I don't think I'm getting used to anything."

"Hey, I didn't force you to move here. In fact, I seem to remember telling you it was a bad idea. You're the one who said Seattle would be good for you."

"It still could be."

"Don't even start, Mark. If you think I have no time for you now, just wait until Annie comes home tomorrow."

"She's being released?"

Meredith smiled at the sudden interest in Mark's voice. He'd never admit it, but the few times he'd been around the twins, she'd seen a completely different side of the man who'd already developed a hospital reputation as a ladies' man.

"Dr. Henley says she's ready," Meredith said with a smile. "She's going to release her tomorrow."

"That's great news. What about Evelyn?"

Meredith's smile faded a bit. "Not yet. She's still not gaining enough weight. They may even have to put her back on the feeding tube if she doesn't make her next weigh in."

"Hey, that one's a fighter, she'll get there."

"I hope so." Meredith paused for a moment, an internal debate raging in her as she contemplated her next question. "Hey Mark?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"How well do you know Derek Shepherd?"

Mark furrowed his brow in confusion. "Excuse me?"

"That is him in that picture over there, isn't it?"

Mark followed Meredith's gaze to a framed picture sitting on his filing cabinet, one he'd transferred over from his New York office without even giving it a second thought. It was a small four-by-six, with Derek and Mark standing in the middle of a group of groomsmen from Derek's wedding.

"Yeah, that's him. Why?"

"Are you…I don't know, friends?"

Mark shook his head. "There was a time. Why are you asking about Derek?"

Silently, Meredith reached into her back pocket and pulled out a wrinkled sheet of paper, carefully unfolding it and passing it across the desk to Mark, watching his reaction as he read the first few lines.

"What the hell is this?"

"Did he write that?" Meredith asked. "It doesn't seem right to me. I mean, I get it, he's married and he wants to make that work. I'm not trying to get in the way that, I already told him that. I just…I don't know, I thought I knew him at least a little bit, but the man I fell in love with, he wouldn't have written that letter. So I was just thinking, maybe he didn't? Maybe his wife wrote it?"

"Meredith…"

"It's stupid, right? I mean, it sort of looks like his handwriting, but I only ever saw that scribbled in a note on a chart, so I don't know. I just…I need to know if he wrote it, because if he didn't, I still need to talk to him."

"Meredith, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Derek Shepherd is Annie and Evelyn's father."

"Holy shit," Mark sighed, leaning back in his chair.

"Yeah."

"Meredith, I'm sorry."

"Mark?"

"I wish I could tell you that he didn't write this, Meredith." Mark shook his head and tossed the letter onto the desk. "If you had told me without showing me the letter, I would have said there was no way Derek would ever write that. But I do know his handwriting, and he did write that."

"You're absolutely sure it was Derek's handwriting?" Addison asked in surprise.

"The only reason I passed half my classes in high school was because I copied his homework on the bus every morning. Trust me, I know what Derek's handwriting looks like. He wrote that letter, Addison."

"Son of a bitch…" Addison muttered as she shook her head. "Mark, he's spent the last twenty years bemoaning the fact that letting her go was the biggest mistake he ever made. I never understood why he wouldn't just pick up the damn phone and call her. But if he did that to her, he probably thought she'd never forgive him."

"He's right."

"God, he's really gone and gotten himself into a mess this time, hasn't he?"

"Are you alright?" Meredith watched with concern as Annie winced and tenderly rubbed the side of her stomach.

"Oh, I'm fine, don't worry about me," Annie assured her. "I'm just tired from the flight, that's all."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." Annie stared at her mother for a moment before sighing knowingly. "Aunt Lexie told you about the amnio, didn't she?"

"What? No, she…" Meredith sighed as Annie shot her a skeptical glance. "Okay, fine, she did, but she was just trying to help. Don't be mad at her."

"I'm not mad. I'm kind of glad I don't have to explain it, actually. In fact, I'd rather not think about it if I can avoid it."

"Are the results back yet?"

Annie nodded, resting a hand on her stomach. "They were completely normal. There's always the chance that there's still something going on, especially if she doesn't catch up in size, but as far as the doctors can tell, she's just a little on the small side."

"She?"

"Yeah, it's a girl."

"That's wonderful, sweetheart."

"I don't know what I'd do if it turned out there was something wrong," Annie admitted.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not saying I would have terminated, that's not what I mean. It's just, I'm not sure I'm that strong, Mom. I don't know if I could handle the endless stream of doctors's appointments, treatments, surgeries…I'm not you, Mom, I don't think I could do it."

"No one does, Annie," Meredith said. "But when you're not given any choice, you just take it one day at a time, sometimes one minute at a time. You don't even think about it, because your job is to fight for your child. When you and Evelyn were born, I never would have imagined the things I'd go through with the two of you, especially all those years with Evie. I never would have thought that I could handle that kind of pressure, but when you're face to face with it, there isn't an alternative, because there comes a point when you realize that you just love that little baby too much to even think about doing anything else…"

Meredith looked up from her seat in her hospital-required wheelchair, parked between two incubators, and stared at the man in front of her as though he'd suddenly sprouted a second head.

"Open heart surgery? Dr. Burke, are you insane? She's five days old!"

"I wish there was another option, Meredith, I really do. We only have a brief period of time to fix this, or it's going to kill her."

"This surgery will kill her, Dr. Burke. Have you even looked at her?" Meredith turned her head toward the incubator, where her tiny daughter lay hooked up to more machines and monitors than she could count. "She's barely three and a half pounds! She can't eat or even breathe on her own, there's no way she'll survive something like this."

"Meredith…"

"Have you even ever done anything like it, Dr. Burke? You're not a pediatric surgeon, have you ever performed this surgery on a baby her size?"

"No, I haven't," Preston Burke admitted reluctantly. "But I have a specialist coming over from Seattle Children's just for this case. Meredith, I can't promise you that she's going to survive the surgery, and I can't promise you she won't need more surgeries down the road. The only thing I can promise you is that if we don't do this surgery now, Evelyn will not live another week."

Meredith turned back to the incubator, resting her hand on the side of the glass as she started to softly cry.

"I think maybe you could have eased into that a little more gently."

Burke turned his head and frowned at George O'Malley. "Why? It's the truth."

"I know, but…you know what? Never mind that, let me talk to her for a minute."

"I can't do it, George," Meredith whispered as he knelt at her side. "It'll kill her, and I can't do that. I can't make a decision that might kill her. I'm not strong enough to do that, George."

"Meredith, that's not true." George sighed and placed a hand on her forearm when she turned her head away from him. "You are strong enough – you're the strongest person I know."

"George…"

"No, I'm serious. Surgical interns don't have babies, Meredith, they just don't do it, but you did. And how many interns do you know who would threaten to sue the Chief of Surgery when he tried to transfer you out of the program? Meredith, you've been fighting for Annie and Evelyn since the day you told us you were pregnant. Now is not the time to stop fighting, it's the time to fight even harder."

"I wish her father was here. He'd know what to do."

"You don't need some guy from a bar, Meredith, you know what you need to do."

"What if she doesn't make it, George?"

"But what if she does, Meredith? What if she's a fighter, just like her mother? You have to give her the chance, Meredith. At least give her the chance to fight."

Meredith hesitated for a moment before nodding quietly.

"Okay," she whispered softly. "Do the surgery."

"It's the right decision, Meredith," George assured her, standing up to go rejoin Dr. Burke. "I'll give you some time to talk to Evelyn before we take her up for pre-op."

"Good work, O'Malley," Burke commented as they headed out of the NICU. "I'll get an OR scheduled ASAP. You'll scrub in – if you think you can handle it?"

"I can."

"Good, good," Burke nodded encouragingly. "I'll see you this afternoon then."