Some Christmas story this is... we're at the end of March already!I hope you're still reading... this chapter is for simbagirl, whose review reminded me there are actually people out there interested in this thing.
Suicide rates go down during the holidays.
That's what he told Joe. It's true, statistically. But it isn't like tragedies go down; there are always the people driving too fast to catch a last minute flight, ladders slipping, icy roads.
Holidays bring perspective; surrounded by the buzz and the cheer, sometimes all you can hear is the sound of your own mistakes. All you can see is the things you should have, could have, done better.
Looking around him earlier, at his sisters, all happily married for over a decade each, their children, some still small enough to be wide - eyed about Christmas, some old enough to know how to keep the magic for them, he fekt a sense of loss for the years he has wasted.
Their marriage didn't disintegrate that one night, he tells himself. He knows this well, but he doesn't admit it because the role he played is dwarfed by the way Addison reacted to his absence. But he knows he pushed her to the point where she lashed out so viciously.
He reminds himself of this again as he rises from his position crouched on the floor to stare his ( former ) best friend in the eye.
"Merry Christmas, Shepherds." Mark booms, as infuriatingly himself as ever.
There's a flurry of cheering and hugging, cries of Uncle Mark and high fiving, loud enough to draw Nancy and Kath from the kitchen.
"Mark?" Nancy snorts. "Ha."
"Mark." Kathleen says interestedly, drawing out the A. "You're..."
"Here." Liz finishes.
Addison chooses that moment to emerge from the bathroom, trailing Hannah re-zipped into her snowsuit. She stops in her tracks, staring at the door.
"Oh my god." she mumbles.
"Oh my god." he echoes, but not so Addison can hear him.
"Oh my." his mother says. "My, my."
..
"Careful," he says warningly. "Those are sharp." He keeps his hands on Hannah's shoulders - it's killing his back - as she wobbles on her double bladed skates, arms extended to keep her precarious balance.
"I'm doing it!" she squeals, thrilled. "I'm skatin' !"
"Great job." he says, as cheerfully as he can manage when bent nearly double. "Han, why don't we -" He switches so she's skating closer to him, and he can hold her outstretched arms. "Better."
She seems amenable to this new method, wobbling along as they watch the rather rough game of ice hockey on the other side.
"I want to go to Aunt Addie." Hannah announces. "I wanna do the twirly stuff."
He forces himself to look over at Addison. She's graceful as ever on the ice, guiding Nancy and Kath's older girls through figure eights not far behind them.
It's not her fault. She didn't ask Mark to come here.
Seeing them together in the same room, though, it's like he's back in his own darkened home, one hand on the doorknob, about to brimg his life crashing down around him. He's back in Seattle, on the wrong side of the elevator door while they stand shoulder to shoulder, asking him to forgive them.
He's standing in the hospital, punching Mark. He's on the trailer, ignoring Addison, he can feel her writhing in silence but he draws satisfaction from it.
What kind of man does that? Who hurts his wife like that?
Who the hell tells their wife on Christmas Eve - her favorite holiday - that he loves another woman but doesn't intend to end their marriage?
"Aunt Addie's busy." he starts, but Hannah's already on her way, speeding across the ice. The shortening of her name feels odd, sweet in contrast to the bitter tinge of his memories.
"Hannah!" he yells after her, lunging, a second too late. His hand brushes the back of her snowsuit, and he just manages to recover his own footing in time to watch her tumble onto the ice face-first.
..
Addison's there before he is, kneeling on the ice, bundling the shocked little girl into her arms. "It's okay," she soothes.
Hannah seems too surprised to cry, but he can already see blood welling in a shallow scrape on her forehead. Addison runs both hands over her expertly, tucking a bare hand into her pocket where her mitten must have come off.
The older kids come over, worried, and then Hannah begins to wail.
"It's just a little scrape." Josh kids. "I can't even see it."
Hannah, red faced, doesn't look convinced.
"Some juju will help you, I bet." Addison says brightly. "You want some juju? And...a marshmallow?"
Hannah nods, hiccuping, then lets Addison get to her feet.
"You sure you don't need -" he starts as Addison picks her up.
"No, you - stay with the rest of them." she replies. "The older kids, they don't - they know."
"What, that you slept with Mark?" he says, recklessly, his tongue assuming control the way it seems to do when he's confronted with any reminder of why he left New York.
Addison looks hurt, but just for a moment. These moments are starting to feel fewer and farther in between, and he wonders if she's simply stopped caring or if, even worse, she doesn't expect better.
"We're okay." she replies coolly, regaining her composure. It never takes her long.
He watches them skate away, her bright hair fluttering under the festive knit cap with the pom-pom he thinks Liz made her. Hannah has on one just like it.
..
"Mark Sloan." Carolyn says, eyeing him beadily. "Really."
"Merry Christmas?" he shrugs. The kitchen smells as warm and homey and inviting as it always does, but the woman in front of him emanates a distinct chill.
"Very merry, indeed." she says, sitting down at the table across from him. "Mark...why are you here?"
"Come on, Mom Shepherd." he tries. "You asked me to."
"I did not."
"You did." he grins. "I was six, and you said I had to come every year."
..
She looks at the man sitting across from her - it seems just yesterday he was a little boy, a little who knew how to charm his way out of, or into, just about anything. Derek's best friend, his brother in arms against his gaggle of sisters.
Her Derek was a odd child. As much as she loves him, she knows this. He was interested in things that bored most boys his age. He was the kind of child who was teased but didn't know how to stop it.
Mark...he's spent most of his life as his usual assured, confident self. He was the reason Derek managed to get through high school wothout developing some sort of lifelong need for therapy. She was infinitely grateful for Mark Sloan.
And then there was the whole matter of his parents. She remembers, vividly, the day Derek met Mark. He came home from his first day of kindergarten - oh, how much she cried! She was so sure then that Dedek would be her last baby - and he asked in all innocence if Mark could come play.
And the next day, a small boy with resolutely scruffy dark blond hair and the naughtiest gray eyes was dropped off by a driver, picked up by a nanny, and went home to dinner made by someone she assumed was also paid to care.
She never met Mark's parents until the boys were in first grade, and in trouble for burying the dead class goldfish in the sandpit - but Mrs. Shepherd, they were gonna flush him! - and she remembers feeling sad. Sad, that they seemed so uninclined to get to know their son, so uninterested in this sweet child, that she told Derek to go ahead and invite Mark. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Mark was a permanent fixture.
Until Addison. She knew that girl wasn't right for her son. She knew she would cause trouble. She was too much but not enough - gorgeous to look at, clearly intelligent and ambitious, but she wishes Derek had chosen someone with more...gravity. Someone who wants a family. Someone who had an actual upbringing, someone to teach them right from wrong.
She doesn't hate Addison, just to be clear. She just wishes Derek hadn't married her.
And then didn't Addison prove her worst fears? She slept with Mark, for heaven's sake. Derek's best friend. She can't even imagine the anguish that must have caused, because for all her warnings she knows Derek did love Addison.
Even if he was rather...absent towards the end of it.
"I'm sorry." Mark says without preamble. "Really, really sorry."
"You broke his heart."
"I know." he replies heavily. "I'm trying to fix it."
"By showing up here?" she asks pointedly. "They're still together, Mark. I don't know how much I like that, but I don't want to see them broken apart."
"They're...trying." Mark says pensively.
"And what are you doing?" she cries. "What do you think your being here will do? Are you here for Addison?"
"No." he says, eyes flashing, a side of Mark she's never seen before. "I'm here for Derek and you amd the girls and the kids and yes, Addison, but I'm here for all of you. You're my family, Mrs. Shepherd, all I've got."
..
She makes it back to the house all right, her muscles throbbing with the effort of carrying Hannah all the way. She's not crying now, lolling sleepily against her shoulder.
The first lerson they run into is Liz, and her eyes pop at the sight.
"Oh my god, what happened?" she shrieks, lifting Hannah's chin to take a look. "Oh, poor baby. Addison, for God's sake, we told you to watch her."
"Hannah?" Nancy's voice drifts downstairs. "Holy sh- baby, what happened? Are you hurt? Did you fall? Where's Derek?" she demands. "I want him to look at her head right now."
"Addison, were you...distracted?" Kath asks sweetly.
"I was." Derek says gruffly behind them. "I had Han, and she wanted to skate with Claire and Sam. She got away from me."
His sisters are silent, Nancy swaying slightly as she cuddles Hannah, renewed her crying for her mother's benefit.
"Oh." Liz says finally. "All right, then."
..
"Thanks for that." Addison says quietly. They're back in their room,.silence hanging heavier than the cold air between them.
"It was my fault." he says, yanking a warm shirt over his head. She's still dressed in her skating outfit, damp mittens crumpled in her fist.
"Still." she says simply. "You didn't have to, but you did."
"Do you really think I'd let the lions eat you if it weren't your fault?" he asks, turning to look at her.
She looks up at him, eyes sparkling with the tears he heard in her voice. "It's not my fault Mark's here, but you're all acting like it is."
"Can you blame me for that?" he quips, then regrets it when she closes her eyes, moisture trailing down her cheeks.
"Sorry." he says, reaching for her. "Addison, look at me, I didn't mean it. It just happened."
But isn't that what she said to him, that night? He was just here, it just happened?
He can't control his reactions, the casually cruel comments he makes. He can see the pain in her eyes, the strain in her face. She's not herself in Seattle anymore, he barely recognises his wife. She's docile, accepting, rarely nagging or demanding. Resigned, almost.
Who is he to blame her for not controlling the decisions she made? He made the decision to take her back. He asked her to stay. It just happened can't be his excuse anymore.
There's a brisk knock on the door, and Kathleen barges in without waiting for a response. She wafts in the scent of warm gingerbread, and she's smiling.
"Peace offering." she says cheerfully, the shrewlike expression she wore downstairs replaced by a wide grin. "Fresh out of the oven."
She doesn't mention Addison's tears, hastily wiped away, or the fact that Derek is ineffectively holding her elbow in an attempt to console her.
"You don't let anyone have these before Christmas morning." Addison says, blinking. "These are Santa's cookies."
"I have a lot to apologise for." Kath says. "We all do."
"Don't tell the kids about the cookies." she hisses as she closes the door behind her.
"Some olive branch." he smiles. Kath has brought them five perfectly shaped gingerbread men, three in dresses, one a little bigger, one smaller than them all. The five Shepherd siblings, in cookie-cutter form, his mother's tradition from when they were little. One each, to decorate as they liked.
"I always thought they were a little creepy...cute, but creepy." Addison confesses. "Like voodoo dolls."
And she bites the head off the cookie shaped to be him.
"Ow." he mutters, making her smile tremulously. He takes a cookie too - one of his older sisters - amd takes a bite. Delicious.
"Hey," she says, amused. "On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five voodoo cookies, four noisy sisters-in-law, three on a plane -"
"Two nosy septuagenarians and one delayed flight." he finishes, stealing the last bite of her Derek cookie. "Some Christmas we're having."
I'm begging you. Review.
And everyone who's anywhere near snow/weird weather, stay safe!