My Never
Chapter 22
So sorry about the long wait for this … This chapter is mostly just filler, kind of a transition chapter, setting up what's going to happen next. Also, I think I should put a warning: Addison examines some of her darker memories in detail, and there is description of rape and torture. It's not too graphic or anything, just be forewarned.
Derek ~ Seattle ~ present
He'd always been the good guy, the knight in shining armor, even before he was crowned 'McDreamy.' So wanting to punch a woman was an unfamiliar impulse for Derek. There was no question that Bizzy Montgomery made the list of top 10 people he hated most in the world every year, but this was a new low, she'd finally gone too far. How, after her daughter had been kidnapped, missing for five months, raped and abused, and had almost died, could she simply say, "So. You're alive."
Who did stuff like that?
Tuck's assertion that she was Cruella de Vil was not really so far off the mark. The best thing she had ever done for Addison was probably leave her alone. Yes, it had resulted in a lonely childhood, but at least Addison wasn't as monstrous as her mother.
Addison had shrunk back against the pillows, somehow even more dwarfed by the big white bed. It looked like she was trying to keep as much distance between her and her mother as possible. Not out of fear – even after all she'd been through, Addison didn't back down – but for the simple reason that she just wanted to be left in peace for a little while. She was constantly being poked at, having bandages changed and fluids taken from her, her ICU room was in the middle of all the action.
But her feelings about her mother were clearly being overshadowed by confusion, and Derek remembered that Addison didn't know that Bizzy had ever met Devony – it had been him who told her who Devony was when she called him.
"How do you know her, Devony?" Addison asked. Of course, her first concern was for her daughter, not herself. Despite the silver spoon that'd fed her since birth, Addison was anything but selfish.
"Funny you never mentioned I had a granddaughter … I came out here when I found out," Bizzy snapped. Her eyes, crystalline in their hardness, bored into her daughter without a hint of pity.
Addison's voice barely reached his ears it was so soft, but it was not for lack of trying. He winced in sympathy as he heard her struggling to rasp in reply. "Why would I tell you?"
"Maybe because I'm your mother?" Bizzy's tone was sharper than a shard of ice.
"Yeah, you did a great job too," Addison said, and there was a little more strength in her voice, a little more fight, and Derek couldn't help smiling in encouragement, although she didn't look at him.
"Oh, stop with the pity party, Addison. So, you didn't live in a sugar-coated world as a child, didn't have the perfect family. So what? That's real life, and it probably did you good, realizing that life is not a fairytale. Not that it mattered, once Derek came along. Some prince charming you turned out to be," she said to Derek, but he had been rendered speechless. He did not know what such bitterness and hatred stemmed from, to inspire her to say what she did. "And look at your daughter! Look at the situation she's in now!" Bizzy said, gesturing at Devony. Everyone except Mark, Derek, and her had snuck out and Devony was rifling through her toys, seemingly unaware of the argument. But Derek knew better. She was hearing every damaging word.
He watched Addison's hand grip the side rail of her bed, clinging to it like it was her last tie to sanity. Addison didn't need this. How did months of suffering constitute more suffering? Why couldn't the world leave her in peace to search for fragments of her shattered heart, and somehow find a way to put them back together?
"How can you say stuff like that?" Derek asked. "After all she's been through – Addison's a great mother to Devony. Much better than you were to her."
"Poof, Daddy! You a frog now!" Devony said, distracting him from an angry glaring match with Bizzy.
"Okay," he said while his daughter stabbed him with a wand multiple times.
"Daddy, you're a frog! You have to hop!" Devony said, frustrated. When he didn't respond, she moved to Mark, waving her wand at his legs, which were the only part of him she could reach. "Poof! Poof! Unca Mark, you a fairy!"
"What would you know about it, Derek Shepherd? You've been out here with your ridiculous 12-year-old girlfriend, so stay out of it," Bizzy said, watching him closely to see how the mention of Meredith would affect him.
"Like hell I will!" Derek responded, stepping closer.
"I'd like to talk to Addison alone," Bizzy announced loudly.
"I don't think so," Mark snapped. He had been standing off to the side, eyes burning with fury, but he joined Derek in front of Addison's bed.
"Derek, Mark …" Addison protested weakly.
"She needs to recover, and you're not helping," Derek said, never taking his eyes off Bizzy.
"Poof! Bad Gwandma, you a cow now!" Absolute silence followed Devony's words, and Derek, despite the tension of the situation, barely restrained his laughter. "You have to say 'moo'"
"Be quiet, child!" Bizzy said loudly, and Devony pouted, tears forming in her eyes.
"Mommy, nobody will play with me. And my bad gwandma is a meanie!" the little girl said, running to her mother's side. Addison smiled and stroked her hair, but her eyes were riveted on the battle of wills taking place between him and Bizzy.
"I think you should leave now," Derek said to Bizzy, his voice menacing.
Bizzy's eyes swept the room, but Devony was attempting to do magic on the flowers, Addison was rolled over on her side, facing away from them all, and Derek and Mark stood, arms crossed, in front of her bed. "Very well," she said, sweeping out of the room, looking down her nose at them all. And although she disappeared down the hall without a trace, leaving only disappointment, anger, and unburied memories in her wake, Derek sensed that they had not seen the last of her. He began to believe Fate had a conspiracy against him, using grief and pain and fear to make everything harder.
"Addie," he said, moving to her side, but she did not respond.
"Come on, Dev. I'll be a fairy," Mark promised, a hint of reluctance in his voice.
"Kay. Your name is Toadstool, and my name is Sparkle Blossom Magic," Devony giggled happily, placing her hand in Mark's.
"Addison," he tried again, but still nothing. No reaction. Her slim form was completely still, her eyes open but seeing nothing.
"I think I want to be alone for a while, Derek," she finally muttered. He extended his hand to touch her shoulder, but she pulled away, so he stepped back. Worry dribbled slowly into his thoughts, and he walked slowly toward the door before it got so overwhelming that he would not be able to leave. Throughout this entire ordeal, or at least the portion he'd been a part of, she'd always wanted him. What torment would her thoughts put her through when she was alone?
But she said nothing more, so he left and lingered outside the door, peering through the glass that separated them. Mark joined him, and they stood watching over her like two guardian angels. Behind them Devony and Tuck played, and he envied them their naivety, their ignorance of problems without solutions.
"No! Your name has to be Rainbow Pixie Marshmallow!" his daughter yelled, and he was sure the surrounding patients did not appreciate the shrillness of her voice.
"No, my name is gonna be Mud Man!" Tuck argued back, and he briefly considered intervening before they got their fairy wands out.
"That's stupwid name!" Devony's annunciation and grammar got increasingly worse when she got excited or upset. Although her ability to read at a young age often made her sound much older than she was, she was still only three, although now approaching four.
"Rainbow is a stupid name!" Tuck argued, using a variation of his mother's famous Nazi tone.
Despite Devony and Tuck's loud argument, which was resolved when Tuck agreed to be Rainbow Mud Man, slumber eventually overtook Addison's exhausted body. Watching her sleep, without the nightmares … He tried with every fiber of his being to stop time, to freeze this instant in which she lived without pain, and he was finally there to watch over her.
When she was awake, though … every minute was a struggle, and while recovery was happening, she was gaining an inch a day, still, "She's a shadow, Mark, slowly wasting away … and I'm helpless. I can listen, and I can be there, but I can't take away what happened to her," Derek admitted to Mark, hoping his friend could cast some light on the situation.
"Actually, Derek … she's been fading for a long time now. Every time you snapped at her for no reason, every time you ignored her or said you didn't have time … she's been slowly falling apart, little bits being weathered away, for years now." Mark made an effort to keep his voice neutral, but Derek could hear strains of anger in it.
He opened his mouth to refute Mark's statement, but the truth rung so soundly in it that he was unable to. So he gulped and nodded, knowing he would have to accept his own fallibility in order to change and be what Addison needed. He could hardly remember what had transpired in New York, but his memories of how he'd treated in Seattle … he tried to hide them, conceal them, deny their clarity … but the truth was that ever since she had left, they had been restored to crystal clearness, their sharp edges chafing against his consciousness.
Calling her 'Satan', exchanging looks with Meredith in front of her, all those nights in the trailer. The trailer. He'd made her live in a metal tin in the middle of the woods. Stylish, classy Addison, with her designer clothes and walk in closets, in a trailer. And Devony, with her mountain of toys … Savvy had said she'd had a princess room in the brownstone in New York …
He pulled out his cell phone, turning away from Mark and the kids. "Watch them, will you?" he asked.
"What are you - " Mark began, but Derek waved him off.
"Just watch them."
"Dr. Shepherd, this is going to take a while."
Two hours later, Derek stared down at the house plans, slightly overwhelmed. He'd called a builder and a contractor and demanded that they come down to the hospital so he could get some house plans redone for his sick wife and daughter without being too far away from them. They'd ended up in the lobby.
"I'll pay whatever you want. I need it done in the next few months for when my wife comes home." Ex-wife, his brain reminded him. She wasn't his wife anymore, but for some reason he seemed to have slipped back into that pattern of thinking.
He'd had a sudden epiphany as he'd stood by the window with Mark, pondering how he'd treated her. He was imagining when he'd get to take her home when he realized that home was still a trailer. Addison hated that trailer. He remembered the half-forgotten house plans. He remembered a house he'd seen in one of Devony's movies, a beautiful little cottage tucked away in the woods. Brown wood and stone, surrounded by rose bushes, a true fairytale. Addison would love a larger version of it. So he was building it for her.
"That's going to be costly, with a house this size in the location you described. How many months are we talking here, Dr. Shepherd?"
Thoughts of Addison's frail body upstairs surfaced. "Um, I'm not sure. We have at least three months, I'd say. Possibly more. And I don't care how much it costs. It just needs to be done and it needs to be perfect." The guy leaned back a little upon hearing the intensity in Derek's voice, but Derek didn't break eye contact.
"Well, we'll try to have an estimate for you in a few days. And we'll be out to see the property at the time we scheduled."
"Fine. That's fine," Derek said distractedly. He gripped the table as nausea overtook him, teaming up with exhaustion and trying to battle him down … but he would not lose. He could not afford to get sick now, not while Addison needed him.
~ Addison ~
There was so much she wanted. What she wouldn't give to live in a big beautiful house with Derek and Devony, alive and well and free from the haunting nightmares? What she wouldn't give to be the best neonatal surgeon again, saving babies and mothers every day? What she wouldn't give to chase Devony through the halls of the hospital, happy and free, just them together?
She wished that she had not sent Derek away, but there were some things she had to deal with. If she wanted the images of a happier future to someday be real, she couldn't just curl up and hide from the world. Derek, Mark, Richard … they would all say to give it time, that healing and reparation would come eventually … but patience, virtue although it was, had never been a strong point in her personality.
She couldn't walk, could hardly move, so Addison knew she had to tackle her emotional problems first.
Yes, she had been kidnapped, taken away from her daughter. Yes, she had been abused for her own disablement. She had been tortured for the sake of other's amusement. She had been … raped; it still hurt to think the word … for the pleasure of others.
It was easy to pretend that these events had happened to someone else, while she'd merely been observing, but that wasn't true, and eventually she'd have to accept it. She dived back into the memories, swimming in darkness and the stench of pain and desperation. Haunting screams filled the air, tugging at her heart.
They were innocent women, just like her, probably with their own families and their own lives. And much as she had wanted to save them, there was honestly nothing she could have done. Sometimes she wished she'd been a bit stronger, been able to lift her heavy head off the floor, able to shake off the lethargy and drug-induced coma … but it was simply not possible.
For a surgeon, accepting that non-action was the only course available … it was tough. Her brain rejected it. Because recognizing that she was helpless meant admitting that she had been a victim too.
And yes, she'd been violated in the worst way possible. That was easy to deny, because there were no present witnesses besides herself, and all but the most basic details escaped her. She could pretend it hadn't happened, but there was medical evidence that it had. When she thought about what they had done … well, she felt angry, and ashamed, and unable to understand how or why … except that somehow it had been her fault, somehow something that she had done had brought it upon herself.
In those deep buried memories, their murky blackness misleading … she'd been on a hard, cold concrete floor, her clothes so torn they were nearly nonexistent. They laughed, picking through the half-dead bodies, until they spotted her red hair. It drew them toward her like a siren's call, and they joked around in English, Spanish, and other unidentifiable languages before hands crawled all over her body …
Addison felt her eyes fill with tears; she did not want to think of this. But she would not get over it unless she did. She saw them looming over her, pushing her battered limbs and torn clothes aside, shoving her legs apart as easily as if she was a doll. And taking turns pushing inside her, each one hurting more, thrusting inside her until she bled, her fingers shoving against them weakly, the gun pressed up against her head.
Breaking bones, pulling hair, kicking her broken body aside … it was not treatment of a human, but of something less than that. The tears poured in earnest now, taking away a little of her pain as they dribbled down her cheeks … and it was a struggle, every day, to find the will to live …
"Addie?"
And he was there, her savior, and he ran to her side as she sobbed. It was simply impossible without him, but his touch reminded her that there was good in the world. The times of laughing and teasing in the brownstone had existed, and so had the mornings spent in bed, muted conversations accompanying the tingles of bare skin, and other long-past happier days.
"I want to dye my hair," she told him through her tears as he sat beside her.
"Addie, why?" He loved her hair, had always loved it, and used to run his fingers through it lovingly. But now he didn't, he rarely touched her, and she wondered if it was because he didn't find her attractive anymore or he was just being careful.
"Because. When they were looking for women to rape … they saw my hair … it's just so bright, I hate it!" she said.
"No, no, Addie, it wasn't your hair," he soothed.
"Then what was it, Derek? Why me, of all people? Why that night? Why that airport? What did I do?" She struggled to understand, thinking that comprehension would bring relief.
"It wasn't your fault, Addison."
"Then whose fault was it?"
"Not yours," he said, desperation in his voice as he tried to convince her.
"I must have done something … I didn't think my skirt was that short … maybe it was the shoes …"
"Addison, I'm telling you …"
"There's no one else, Derek!" she said, pulling away from him. "So don't lie to me! I did something, something to deserve this."
"It wasn't your fault, all right, Addison?!" Derek snapped, exasperated.
She was shocked by his harsh words, because McDouche had been absent since she got back, there'd only been McDreamy. But there was something about Derek … he didn't look well. His skin was cold against hers, the scrubs hugging his limp body unable to conceal his thinning physique. She wanted to ask if he was okay, but the iciness of his tone, had frozen her, bringing back the days of their marriage where she'd lingered in the hope that the real Derek would come back, but she was rewarded with the dark, dismissive version instead.
"I'm sorry," he said, burying his face in his hands. "God, Addie, I'm so sorry. I swear, I didn't mean to yell," he said.
She shivered when he reached for her, because they had yelled, the warehouse had echoed with it. Was this finally the return of the old Derek, the one that had ripped her heart to shreds with a single comment and then walked off to another surgery or Meredith Grey?
"I shouldn't have yelled. It isn't your fault, none of it is, and none of it ever was, okay?" Mournful blue eyes met his, and she couldn't help believing him.
"Sorry too," she muttered.
"No, no, you don't need to be sorry," he whispered.
"I just want it not to be real," she moaned.
"I know, Addison. I know." He hesitated, standing in front of her, and then peeled the covers back swiftly. Their eyes met as he reached for her, and he knew by her mere expression that she trusted him. He slid one arm under her legs, his strong arm brushing up against the tender skin under her knee and the roughness of her cast. His other cradled her back, strength and warmth emanating into her as he lifted her gently, careful not to aggravate her broken pelvis. And as he slid onto the bed beside her, her head bumped up against his chest, attuning herself to the steady rhythm of his beating heart.
Addison's breath caught as he pulled her closer, his arms encasing her in a stronghold which the darkness could not penetrate. Derek's eyes were closed, but he smiled at the inevitable increasing of her heartbeat as heard on the monitor, but she didn't mind, because here, she couldn't be touched. Here, cradled against Derek's chest, with one of her legs on either side of her, the feeling of his warm breath on the top of her head … here she was finally safe.
Derek her castle, Derek her sky … Derek, pushing the darkness away.
Derek kissed the top of her head, fingers stroking her scarlet locks lovingly, and he kicked off his shoes and pulled the covers over her thin hospital gown. And they both succumbed to the beckoning calls of sleep.
~ Meredith ~
She didn't mean to notice, did not even want to. She wasn't a masochistic person, and Meredith was only too aware that no part of Derek Shepherd belonged to her anymore. But old habits die hard, and after being with him on and off for four years, she couldn't help noticing.
Derek looked like hell.
Not in a normal way. Not in a 'the love of my life is severely damaged and abused and I have to stay up for all hours to help her' kind of way. No, while Derek was nowhere near as skinny as Addison, he had definitely lost weight, and his eyes had acquired a sunken look. At first she had suspected that he was simply working himself too hard, trying to take care of his ex-wife and daughter and surgeries at the same time, but now she knew it wasn't that.
Three times she'd watched him nearly fall asleep filling out post-op notes, standing up with the loud bustle of the hospital surrounding him. That was when she'd began to watch closer. He didn't eat, frequently stopped because he seemed dizzy or nauseous, and once she'd been sure he was about to faint.
So that was why she'd called this impromptu meeting.
"Dr. Grey, I don't have all day," Richard said, glancing at his watch.
"I know. It's just … it's Derek." She watched as Mark, Bailey, and Richard's expressions turned wary, displaying a mix of sternness and pity.
Mark Sloan had never exactly been known for eloquence. "Derek's moved on," he told her bluntly, his words and gruff voice slightly offset by the princess crown he wore, courtesy, she was sure, of Devony.
"I know. It really has nothing to do with me. It's just that lately, he's been … Well, I think something's wrong with him. I think Derek is sick," she said, and the weight of her words bore down on all of them. They knew, instinctively, that she did not mean 'sick' as in a cold or the flu. She knew wheels were turning in their heads, they had watched him walk, gripping the counter for support, and they were forced to acknowledge the truth of her words.
Sooo … what is wrong with Derek? I've been hinting that something is up for a couple chapters …
Well, anyway, I really hope you liked it, and I will get the next one out quicker. You can bug me until I do. In fact, if I get inspired I'll start it today ...
