After their first night back together, Mark laid in the bed beside Addison, one arm drapped over her waist, the other brushing through her hair as he watched her sleep. A smile crept onto his face as he watched her chest rise and fall beneath the thin sheet that was covering her body.

He still wanted to leave Seattle; wanted to head back to the East Coast with Addison and pick up where they had left off, but start fresh at the same time. His hand fell from her hair to her cheek and he stroked it gently, leaning closer to place a kiss on her forehead, admiring how peaceful she looked when she slept.

Seven o'clock comes and goes as does eight and nine. It's fast approaching ten as Alex finally picks up the check, putting some cash on the table before sliding it over to her. Because friends?

Friend only pay their half.

And when he promised her a casual evening he meant every word of it. Because pizza and beer definitely qualified as that. Not that getting her liquored up was at all any part of any bigger plan.

They head out of the hole in the wall that houses the best pizza in the city and head towards the parking lot.

Where they both-- have separate cars.

Derek lets his truck roll to a stop at the curb in front of the house. He checks the dashboard clock - 3:15. Maybe he had overestimated the amount of time his vertebral diffusion would take... but if he was honest with himself, the idea of surprising Mer in the midst of cooking, of all things, was too much to resist. He grabs the bottle of Shiraz and the bakery box from his front seat - Mer's favorite cappuccino cheesecake inside - and heads up to the front door. None of the other interns appear to be home, but he knocks anyway, sensitive to her roommates' need for privacy, since he wasn't officially "living with" Meredith.

As the rain pounded against the walls of Seattle Grace Hospital, Mark sat at his desk, tapping his pen on the paper in front of him.  He stared at the ink filled page, debating on whether or not it was worth giving to Addison or not. He scanned the paper carefully, re-reading the letter in his head, making sure everything was the way he wanted it to be.

Dear Addie,

This letter is by far long overdue. My only regrert is that I didn't write it sooner; that I didn't let you know these things before...well before I lost the most important thing in my life; before I lost you.

I've said so many hurtful things to you that even I am shocked with myself; what I have allowed to leave my mouth. I didn't mean it Addie. I didn't mean all the horrible things that I said to you and you didn't deserve it.

I never apologized to you for cheating on you in New York. After Derek had left, I made a promise to you to be everytign he wasn't and to treat you the way you deserved to be treated. But I broke that promise to you and I want to apologize for that. Maybe I slept with that nurse to get back at you for what happened with our baby. But that's not an excuse; it doesn't justify my actions. I hurt you when you needed me the most; I walked away from you and from our relationship during a time where we needed to be with each other. For that, I am truly sorry Addie. Because I could have treated you better, but I didn't. I screwed up. I hurt myself b y hurting you.

I don't blame you for the abortion Addie. For awhile I wanted to. I wanted to be able to find someone or something to blame that wasn't me that could take the pain away that I was feeling. And it was so much easier to point figners at people than to deal with the actual grief. It wasn't your fault Addie. It was never your fault.

And you're right. I would have been a terirble father. I can't even remember my own birthday let alone a childs. But what I do know, is that you were an amazing mother to our child. You sacrificed your own happiness for our baby's. You took away the hurt he or she would have felt had she been born with me as a father. You're a good mother Addison and you made the best decision for our child, even if it wasn't the best decision for you. You put her needs before anybody elses. You loved her enough to give her the best gift ever. And if that isn't a good mother, then I don't know what is.

I'm so sorry for everything that I put your through Addie. I really am and if I could take it all back I would. Partially because you were always hit the hardest with everything, but mainly because I love you. I love you so much Addie that it actually hurts. And I know I made some stupid mistakes in the past and I know that I'm probaly going to make more in the future, but I guess thats what makes me  human. However I'm going to work on being a better person for you Addie. You make me want to be a better person and even though you and I aren't together I'm still going to be a better person for you. I love you no matter what.

I'm heading back to New York in a couple of weeks. Seattle just...really isn't my cup of coffee. I know it may seem like I'm running away but I'm not. I'm going back to the fimilar; to a place when you and I were happy. You're my home Addie, and when someone isn't welcome home they go to the place that is the most fimilar - and thats New York. I will always love you Addie. You will always be my best friend and you will always...ALWAYS be the love of my life.

Because Addie...I may have been a terrible father, I may not be the best surgeon...I may suck at being a boyfriend and a friend but...Addie.

You were the only thing I was ever good at.

Yours,
Mark.

He folded the piece of paper carefully, matching up corners and edges, folding it small enough to fit into an envelope. He sealed it shut and scribbled her name on the outside, pushing his chair out from behind his desk and headed towards Addison's office. He slipped the letter under the door before making his way back to his office as the thunder outside crashed and the lightning illuminated the darkness of his office.

Derek flips open his hiptop and sends a text message as he walks down the hall toward the elevator.

Where are you? You didn't tell me it was your day off. We could have had lunch.

By the time the elevator doors open at his floor and he steps out, he has typed up and sent a second, follow-up message.

I miss your face.

Izzie jots down a few notes on a patient's chart and flips it closed to move on to another chart. She sighs and reads through the chart noting the symptoms and adding her own notes in the appropriate boxes. She's bored and tired, and her leg is getting numb from sitting on it. She shifts gently and slips her leg out from under her, feeling the blood rushing back into it causing a severe attack of pins-and-needles.

"Shit!" she swears under her breath and massages her leg.

Down the hallway an intern's pager goes off and he breaks into a sprint in her direction. He whizzes by her and runs up the stairwell to save his patient.

Probably 911, she thinks and wishes one of her patients actually needed something surgical instead of hundreds of labs and bed rest. God, I need a surgery... she complains to herself.

Just then her stomach begins to growl and she jumps off the stretcher to peruse the vending machine. "Hmm, what looks good: chips or chocolate?" she asks herself out loud. "Or both?"

Car accidents were Derek's least favorite surgical cases. Nothing rare or exciting about the case, just horrific injuries that were usually completely avoidable if people would just pay more attention on the road.

His patient this morning had been compromised by her pregnancy - faced with severe trauma, the body of a gestating woman tended to concentrate its energy and bloodflow on the fetus. There had been a lot of spinal lacerations to repair, and Derek could only hope that after fifteen hours of surgery and an emergency C-section Natalie's body would start to heal itself.

Addie always wanted to be kept abreast of the condition of the mothers, even after she had signed off a case and started working exclusively with an infant patient. Derek understood that - saving a child was a bittersweet victory if the baby was left without a mom.

He was rounding the corner to check in with Addie on Natalie's condition and almost bumped into Mark, his eyes flashing with anger and... pain? Derek spared him a glance over his shoulder, but was not that concerned with Mark Sloan's feelings lately.

He approached Addie's door and knocked lightly, noting with interest that he had never seen her office door closed.

After her little talk with Alex Karev in the NICU that morning, Addison had been paged for a 9-1-1. A 3-car pileup put the lives of a 32 week pregnant mother and her child at stake. She did her best in the OR and luckily, everyone pulled through. The baby would be okay although her lungs were a little underdeveloped. With time in the NICU, she would recover nicely. As for the mother, she was pretty beat up from the accident, but Addison expected her to be fine in a couple of days.

She went to the nurses' station with their charts in hand, ready to do her post-op notes. When she went to write the date, she had to check her cell phone, her mind having drawn a blank. The stress and constant mix of emotions had been doing a number on her. Lately she found herself spacing out or just drawing blanks when she needed to recall trivial things like the date.

When Addison flipped open her phone, however, her mind was definitely not drawing a blank. The date. Her date. Their date. Today was the same day that Mark had circled on a calendar eight months ago. She'd almost completely shut that part out of her mind completely, having forgotten most of it, or at least telling herself that she'd forgotten about it. But looking at the date now, it was real. It wasn't just a special day eight months into the future. It wasn't just a day to wait for. It was here and there wasn't anything that was going to happen. She had taken that away.

There was a large part of her that regretted having aborted Mark's baby. Yeah, it gave her a chance to try and work things out with Derek, but that apparently didn't get her anywhere. Their marriage still ended. She didn't get the baby she wanted with Derek. Addison had just ended up all alone. She didn't have Derek. She didn't have Mark. She didn't even have a baby, a baby she could have had to make her feel loved. What's done is done and she couldn't change any of it.

Feeling like she was losing herself to her emotions, Addison closed the chart and grabbed them to go work on them in the privacy of her own office. When she turned quickly, she bumped into the one person she couldn't bear to see right now; Mark Sloan. Tears pooling in her eyes, she kept her gaze on the ground as she whispered an apology and tried to get past him.

(OOC: Okay, so I know we're pretty AU and I'm stealing this from canon, but come on. Maddison baby abortion? Too good of a storyline to pass up, right? Right ;] )

Somewhere between one AM and three, Alex decides he hates being on call. All the- the hospital is so cool- shit has worn off over the months and sure, he loves his job. But at two in the morning it's hard to remember why. He's sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, surrounded by infants. Infants who are sleeping. Infants who clearly aren't in dire need of his attention. So he shuts his eyes and leans back in his chair- ready to jolt awake if he so much as hears a cry coming from the premature twins Addison delivered earlier.

Alex can't stop smiling; in fact he's still smiling when he hits the surgical floor. But then he's met with a whole mess of nurses and interns all dealing with patients, surgical patients. Patients who need scalpels and Alex- Alex could really do with some scalpels right about now. But what pisses him off the most is that Montgomery is probably somewhere on this floor. Probably with another patient, a surgical patient, getting ready to scrub in or something exciting (well something exciting for gynie) that she is definitely not including him in.

He doesn't feel like searching for her so he approaches the first nurse he can find who isn't doing anything (and lets face it, most of them aren't) and asks her to page Dr. Montgomery. As she does so Alex swears he hears his own pager go off, but then he looks down and it's definitely not his. And there are probably thirty pagers going off right now on this floor but he swears this one, this one went off the moment the nurse paged her.

He takes a step towards the on-call room that is directly to his right. He shrugs, knowing he's probably way off but pushes the door open anyways.

She's there. And she's crying. Shit.

"Ah, sorry. I um. I ah. Shit. Sorry."

Mark slipps out of the on-call room and shuts the door behind him quietly, checking his cell phone for any new messages. He isn't expecting any; it isn't like he gave his real number to each girl he hooked up with, but he was waiting, hoping for one message from one girl and he had been hoping and waiting for a while now.

He knows it isn't coming, but there was still a tiny bit of hope or faith or whatever it shall be called within him that he held onto. The slighest chance things would work out, or that he'd wake up and this would all be a dream.

He stepps into the stairwell and pockets his cell phone only taking it out seconds later hitting number one on his speed dial letting it ring. He listens to the dial tone on the other end looking down at his shoes, hoping again that she'll pick up.

He frowns when he heard a fimilar ringtone and he looks up to see Addison standing only a few feet away from him, her cell phone in her hand. He lowers his phone from his ear and shuts it, putting it in his labcoat pocket.

"Don't you know you're not supposed to have you cell phone on in the hospital?" He laughs as he speaks, trying to joke with her to break the akward silence that has fallen over the room. What is he supposed to say to her? 'Hey sorry for breaking up with you and then sleeping with any woman I could find.'

Derek is not a man who picks flowers. His extreme level of testosterone and raw masculine energy prohibits it.

He contemplates this as he cracks eggs and adds ingredients to the skillet, turning bacon on the back burner and pushing bread into the toaster.

He might buy flowers to impress someone, maybe for a sick girlfriend or for mother's day, but he certainly doesn't pick them. What would people think of a very manly neurosurgeon picking flowers?

He shakes the skillet and flips the food over, adding a little salt and tabasco. The toast pops up and he butters it and sets jam on the counter - two kinds: raspberry for him and grape for Meredith.

He knew what kind of flowers Meredith liked best, of course. He had screwed up too mant times not to have asked that question and tried to put the knowledge to good use. She had been gracious about accepting his bouquets in the past, but had mentioned politely that the daisies they sell in stores were "weird, tortured little flowers" that smelled like plastic rather than sunshine.

He portions the skillet contents onto two plates, adds three strips of bacon to each, and slices the toast diagonally - the way his mother taught him - and opens it up at the side of the plate in a big V. He slides the jam jars onto the table without turning and picks up the two plates, setting them at the pre-set places on either side of his tiny kitchenette table

Next to a vase of daisies he had found on his hike this morning.

[Can you tell I was totally excited that Derek was something other than an asshat this week?]

Izzie smiles to herself and take another sip of her tea. It's pouring outside, but somehow she feels like the sun is shining down on her. She sits alone for now, enjoying the solitude. The other day with Finn was unexpected but somehow refreshing. They talked for hours afterwards and he convinced her to reconsider her internship at Seattle Grace.

Izzie had just finished a two hour meeting with the Chief and Dr. Bailey and was granted permission to continue her internship. Even though she is now under strict probation and being watched like a hawk by Bailey, she doesn't mind so much. She tugs her lab coat around her tighter and it's as if she's starting to become whole again.

She hasn't told her friends yet and she grins to herself again, imagining their faces when they see her sitting casually in the caf in her scrubs and lab coat.

(ooc: I needed to get back in the game and fast forward through some stuff...bare with me here. And someone join Izzie for a little chat.)

Meredith closes the door behind her the click of the door ringing through the almost silent pediatric floor. Everyone had gone home hours ago. Meredith rests her head on the nurses stations. It had been a long day. The baby was finally stable. It appeared that both the mother and child would be okay.

Meredith picks up her head and walks down the stairs to the surgical floor, figuring something would be going on down there. She walks across the floor and looks at the board-- quiet board. Meredith looks at the time on her pager, it was well after 2am. Meredith looks over a few charts, signing where necessary on the chart and Derek's post-op notes.

She allows her mind to wonder. She wonders what Derek did today. He probably was at home asleep getting the sleep he so desperately needed. The sleep that he couldn't get when she was around because they couldn't seem to keep their hands off of one another.

Working with Addison had went well. She was a kind woman, and did not go out of her way to make Meredith uncomfortable. They were two professional women working through a very awkward, and sticky situation. She hadn't seen Dr. Sloan all day, and wanted to ask Addison if he had went home, but she figured that wouldn't be exactly appropriate.

Meredith puts the chart back in it's place and slowly makes her way around the floor looking for an empty on-call room. Finally finding one, she pushes on the door, and takes off her shoes, pulling her blue scrub top over her head. She's asleep before her head hits the pillow.

(ooc: *cough, cough* someone should join Meredith)

Addison arrives in the cafeteria four minutes before their agreed time with the papers Derek had given her in hand. She lets out a sigh and sits down at an unoccupied table. So many eyes were on her as they stared and gawked. The papers she was holding had nothing to do with work and everyone knew it.

She purses her lips together and sets the papers down onto the table to stare at them. Even as she did so, her mind was wandering elsewhere, not focusing on the subject at hand.

After everything that had happened, how could Derek's smile still do this to her; make her heart flutter, make her breath catch in her throat, throw all coherent thought out the window. It isn't supposed to and he doesn't have a right to, not after everything. But really, what was Addison supposed to do? Tell him to stop looking at her that way, to stop smiling at her, to stop being the man she loves (loved?)?

She couldn't do anything to make it stop. She just had to wait it out and hope that these feelings she has for him would go away eventually. The possibility that it wouldn't scared her most. She wondered if Mark or anybody else would prevent her from feeling this way, but then again, would she ever be ready to let anyone else in?

With a sigh, she sits and waits for Derek's arrival. Addison silently hopes that she could handle what was to come.

Addison was standing on the other side of the window, talking with Candice as she woke up. Both the mother and her child had suffered brain damage, complicated for the infant by an emergency C-section after she'd presented with bradycardia in the OR.

Derek watched from the hallway, seeing the interplay of empathy and concern on Addie's face. She had the gift of supreme and honest compassion for her patients. It was what made her such a good surgeon. She was the kind of doctor a young mother wanted to talk to when she woke up, reassuring, gentle, able to smile in a way that didn't belittle the pain Candice was facing.

Derek signed off on the post-op notes and lay them on the counter for Addie to sign when she got out of the patient's room, sitting down behind the unit desk and rubbing the sore muscles on his shoulder.

Derek sits behind the ward desk on the surgical floor, contemplating the feeling of being in the hospital and not practicing any medicine. He came in this morning to close his open cases, review charts of patient in recovery, and refer patients that need to be turfed while he's on leave. He watches the bustle of the staff around him, the controlled chaos of the surgical ward.

When his charts are finished he sneaks into the locker room and slips a note into Meredith's locker. Three words he can't seem to stop himself from saying everytime he sees her. After the first time he told her it was like a dam broke.

I love you. :)

With a self-depricating smile on his face, he rides the elevator down to triage. As soon as Dr. Cullinson signs off on his ventricular dystrophy, Derek is home free for two weeks. He hasn't gone that long without a scalpel in his hand since his internship. He knows he could operate to some degree without his left hand, but Meredith had pushed him to take the time off that he needed to heal, and he didn't particularly relish the idea of running into Mark again.

He spots Cullinson by the ambulance bay with an incoming head trauma. Derek watches the patient pass by, listening to the chatter of EMTs and making a silent diagnosis in his head.

"There's another one inbound - foreign body wound from a crossbow. Constant seizure activity in a late 20s pregnant female," the medic is presenting to him before he can explain that he's off duty, and Derek realizes that right now, this minute, if he walks away a woman and her baby will die.
And he's not officially on leave yet.

"Page Addison Shepherd, get me a portable x-ray and CT Scan and two interns. What'd she get in the field?"

Addison walks up to the nurses' station and sets the chart down onto the counter, flipping it open to read the notes whoever was on call wrote in it from the previous night. She looks like a mess, dark circles under her eyes from the lack of sleep. She's only slept a few hours since the last time she talked to Mark, the day she ended it.

The uncertainty of her decision is still there, haunting her every waking minute. She wishes she were stronger and that somehow she could fix it, maybe even take it back. But he's been avoiding her, and she understands. There are rumors of him moving back to New York. She wishes they weren't true, but maybe it's for the best. She keeps telling herself that.

She closes the chart and waits for her intern, Alex Karev. Torturing him is the only thing that can completely distract her mind nowadays.

Izzie hums to herself as she washes the dinner and breakfast dishes. The dishwasher seems to be broken, so everything has to be washed by hand. She doesn't mind though, because it gives her something to do in the afternoon. George left at 4am and Meredith never came home last night, which doesn't surprise her considering the little chat they had yesterday. Izzie grabs the last bowl and rinses it off before placing it in the drying rack. She scans the kitchen for anything out of place, anything dirty in need of washing and comes up empty. The house is practically spotless and she feels proud that she's kept herself busy for half the day. Her stomach grumbles and she checks her watch. She turns to open the fridge when she catches sight of the 8.7 million dollar check. It's mocking her, just staring back at her with the swirly letters and all those zeros. She still hasn't figured out what to do with it and George's constant nagging isn't helping things.

Just then she hears a knock on the door and heads to the front entrance. Alex really doesn't need to keep checking up on me, she thinks as she grabs the door handle. Lunch with him yesterday was actually enjoyable, but she's not ready to make it a habit. She lets out a little sigh and opens the door only to see Finn standing outside instead.

"Uh, hi?" she says slightly skeptically. She's only met Finn once before, and after that the next time she saw him she was leaving prom after Denny died. "Meredith isn't here," she continues after he just smiles back at her. I'm guessing Meredith hasn't told him that it's over, yet, Izzie thinks and smiles back to be polite.