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"Addie, I need you."
She says it again, although it's pretty obvious now that she's standing on the porch with bags in hand, probably looking miserable and sloppy after the long drive.
But this is Addison, Addison who let her stay in her house, Addison who dragged her to rehab, Addison who took her in that first time when she wants even a Shepherd anymore.
You were a better sister than the ones I had she said to her once. She'd always thought this, from the day Addison set high heeled feet in the Shepherd's house, but she never told her that.
And you were way better than my brother.
Derek is dead. There was that one moment where she was blissfully blank, her memories wiped away, and she asked Meredith to call Derek.
She knew it the minute the words left her mouth, when Meredith's face crumpled like a popped balloon. Derek is dead.
Derek died of a brain bleed, the fucking irony of it. She had a brain tumor the size of a clementine. They're both rockstar neurosurgeons, who became neurosurgeons because they watched their father's brains get plastered to the wall.
You'd think God would get tired of this already, but apparently he thinks it's pretty funny.
Or maybe God's a she. Whatever.
These are the things that run through her mind as she stands on the porch of the house her son was most likely conceived in, sweating a little in the long sleeved shirt she wore because it was chilly in Seattle and she forgot this is freaking LA.
While Addison stares at her like she's seen a ghost, mouth slightly open, eyes wide.
"Addie?" she says slowly. She doesn't think she could stand it if she says no. If she can't stay here.. she has nowhere to go.
Her ex- sister shrieks wordlessly, flinging her arms around her so tight she's afraid she might pop a rib.
Jake comes into the entryway, looking concerned at first, his warm face splitting into a grin.
"Look who's here," he calls into the living room; a small boy with flopping dark hair and bright brown eyes comes skidding in sock feet, joining into the group hug with a excited yell.
"Aunt Amy," he sings, arms around her waist, face tilted up to her, and she feels her throat constrict as she remembers the other nephew and nieces she left behind. "I missed you!"
"We all did." Jake smiles, giving her a one-armed hug; he's holding a small redheaded girl in the other, her dark eyes surveying the visitor with interest.
"Hello, Cat." she says solemnly. She's never met this miracle-child, the baby whose nursery her son was to have slept in. Her son died and Addison never had her baby and that nursery sat empty until Henry came along, and then finally his baby sister, who now turns her face into her father's shoulder.
"It's Aunt Amy, Cat." Henry says. "She's really cool."
..
She feels decidedly uncool, sitting on the deck with Addison like nothing has changed. Her life has come full circle.
She left LA for ... what? To be in Derek's shadow again? To prove to her self that she could never have had the family life he did?
She runs, that's what she does. She ran from James and everything she had built in LA. Maybe that was the tumor.
She ran from Owen. What was that ?
You're not supposed to run. You're supposed to stick it out and fight, like Addison and Derek, like Meredith and Derek.
Although it was mostly Addison and Meredith who did the sticking and the fighting; maybe Shepherds aren't cut out for this.
She feels a slight tug at her neck and looks down to see Caitlyn's pudgy fingers curled around the thin gold chain she's wearing. The child took to her after a while, curling upup in her lap and allowing herself to be fed small bites of dinner, most of which ended up on her dress, but was nice to be accepted.
And now she's hanging on determinedly to her necklace, tiny lips pursed.
"Let go of that." Addison says sternly; she sounds like she doesn't use that tone very often. She probably spoils the baby rotten, late-life miracle that she is.
She knows that she also spoils Henry rotten, though. That's just how she is. She likes to do things for people. Does she notice that sometimes, people don't do things back?
Cat ignores her mother, opening her rosebud mouth to taste the thick gold band dangling from the chain. And then drops it onto her finger instead, admiring it.
"I'm married to your kid now." she laughs, kissing Cat's sweet-smelling head.
"Amy." Addison sighs, her eyes sad. She's looking at the ring. Owen's ring, the one he pressed into her palm still warm from his skin, and she held it after he'd released her from that hug until she wasn't sure if her own body had warmed it or his.
She didn't ask him why he left without telling her. She didn't ask him to stay.
Tumor?
She hopes.
"We both decided it was...better this way." she says softly, swinging her legs onto the lounger. Jake's gone to the hospital to deal with a hysterical pregnant patient - do you have any other kind Addison teased him - and Henry's in bed and Cat, the little madam, is soaking up the solitary attention.
"I'm sorry I couldn't come when you called." Addison replies.
"I never come when you call." she reminds Addison. "It's okay."
"You were sick, Amy." she says. "You had a .. a brain tumor, you weren't calling to invite me to a party."
"True." she concedes. "But I never came down, even after the baby."
"Derek had just died." Addison says, looking away. "I understand."
She knows it was a difficult birth, that they both nearly died, that Jake had been scared enough to call her in Seattle, his voice shaking and hoarse, to tell her she might need to come.
She'd just buried her brother. She was busy picking up and clearing away the detritus he left behind, patients and unfinished work and a missing wife and children. She couldn't handle burying her best sister. And thankfully, Addison managed to not die - she always comes out on top - and she didn't have to, and she never gave it another thought.
Tumor?
She hopes.
"Megan lives here now." she says, waving a hand vaguely around her. She knows the house is on the beach, that it has windows looking out over the water, that the air smells of salt water and they can hear the gulls. It must be here somewhere. It's such a small world.
"Who?" Addison asks, quirking an eyebrow as she prises a wineglass from her daughter's marauding hands.
"Owen's sister, Megan, the dead one."
"His dead sister lives here." she asks, frowning. "Did Koracic get your whole tumor?"
"I mean his dead sister who wasn't actually dead lives here with her adopted kid and Meredith's ex-boyfriend." she clarifies, accepting the rescued and filled glass.
"Juice." Cat says, reaching for her hand. Addison swoops her away, making her giggle wildly.
"He didn't get your whole tumor, did he?"
..
She calls Owen when she's finally lying in her old guest-room bed, listening to the waves crash against the beach and Addison singing wildly off-key in Caitlyn's room.
She calls him three times.
He doesn't pick up. They need to talk, to discuss things, like who gets the watercolor of Puget Sound and who gets the vacuum cleaner and who gets the freaking magnets on the fridge.
They need to talk.
And this isn't her tumor talking, it's her, maybe for the first time in years.
She hopes.
Okay, so this is not defined Omelia. Or any pairing. Not yet.
It's kind of Amy's journey, where she goes next,trying to figure out how much of ther life was tumor and hiw much was real, where she's going next, that sort of stuff.
There will be lost of people from the past, because if there's one thing I hate about Grey's it's that they believe in forgetting the characters' whole pasts, like they were just dropped into Grey-Sloan with no memory of here they came from. And also I love writing backstory.
So please review and let me know !