And I haven't updated for a while....

2038-01-19T03:14:07Z

Let's see if I remember how. Thanks, as always, to anyone who gives feedback. I always appreciate it.

Formalities: In case anyone hasn't ready the first 19 chapters, this is Cracks and Foundations, a long opus primarily about Addison and Derek, two Grey's Anatomy characters, although other GA characters as well as Lost characters make appearances. I do not own any of these characters. If I did, this might be on screen rather than in a livejournal. I make no profit. Thanks for the loan. I return them undamaged and only slightly used.

“I need to know, Derek. What made you decide to take the chance? Why didn’t you sign the divorce papers?”

Derek looked at his wife, practically curled up into a ball on the bench beside him, the angst and pain in her eyes as unmistakeable as the tears falling almost unconciously from her eyes.

He knew this was hurting her. It was hurting him.

Deep down they both were so wounded -- and part of the reason those wounds hadn’t healed in the months they had been back together in Seattle is that they had never really exposed their emotional gashes to air, to the oxygen of honesty and expressed emotion. Instead, fearful of making the situation worse, they had kept the wounds covered, and the infection festered.

Derek believed deep down that their marriage would be better for cauterizing the wounds. And he knew Addie believed it, too. That’s why they were putting themselves through these conversations.

But, sometimes, sometimes, he really wished for anesthesia.

Nevertheless, he realized that sometimes it was just better to rip the stitches, get all the pain out there. Then, maybe, they could really heal.

They could repair the foundation of their marriage.

“I wish I could give you a real reason, Addie, some wonderful romantic answer about how I knew you were my soulmate and I couldn’t live without you, even though I was still angry. I wish I could say that I looked at you and I just knew that I loved you and I could forgive you and that we would make it and live happily ever after. . . . I wish that was the case. The reality --”

Derek paused, took a deep breath, and Addison braced herself again. She could handle it, she told herself. They were committed, so she could deal with anything Derek had to say, anything she had to hear. . . . No matter what.

“When you handed me those papers, god, all I wanted to do was sign them.”

“I wanted you to disappear, to vanish from my life as if you had never come to Seattle. To take with you all those nasty feelings that you had brought back with your presence."

"I thought, if I signed the papers, I could get rid of them again – the anger, the resentment, the jealousy, the rage, and even the love – and all of my memories, too, of you and Mark, and even of the good times we’d had together. . . . Because those memories, they were reminders of what I’d lost.”

“I sat there with those papers, pen in hand. . . . And I wanted so badly to sign them, to excise you from my life, to go back to my world of denial, a world where you didn’t exist.”

“But every time I tried to put pen to paper, I just couldn’t do it. Believe me, I tried.”

“Something in me, for as much as I thought that I wanted you gone, that I couldn’t forgive you, that I was living a better life without you, couldn’t let you go. Rebelled at the very concept of permanently separating us.”

“Deep down there was something, something I couldn’t conciously put my thumb on, but something that wouldn’t allow me to sign those papers. . . . Something in me couldn’t conceive of a Derek actually living without Addison -- forever."

"I told Meredith that it was that you were my family. Twelve years of birthdays and holidays and just plain old ordinary days. Twelve years of memories -- of our wedding day, and the time I was doing laundry and flooded the laundryroom, of fighting over the Sunday crossword puzzle. Twelve years.”

“I didn’t know how to let go.”

“But I also didn’t know how to hang on. To forgive. To build something new. I was a walking mass of confusion, because I couldn’t seem to move forward, and I couldn’t seem to go back, and I just was in this limbo.”

“I know that even after I chose you, I still didn’t know how to get back to us, back to Derek and Addie.”

"I didn't know if I loved you. I remembered loving you, remembered us. But how could I love you if I coudln't trust you? How could I love you if I had no faith in myself?"

“And you were still chasing Meredith.” Addie whispered, and Derek looked up again at the sound.

“I don’t know if chasing was the right word. . . . Or maybe it is. I know I promised you that I would stop talking to her, but I couldn’t do it. It was like something was pulling me toward her. I thought at the time that maybe it was love.”

“You said it was love,” Derek’s heart twisted at the pain in Addie’s voice, “You told me you loved her.”

“I thought I loved her.”

“But the more I think about it, I don’t think I could have loved Meredith, because I was so wrecked that I was incapable of it. I think I chased Meredith for a lot of reasons.”

“For one, being with her -- even after I chose you -- was still easier than being with you, being reminded of everything we had been through and had to deal with, seeing the flashbacks of you and Mark together, intimate, that would pop into my head without warning. Meredith was the easier path.”

“And, I felt guilty. So guilty. I had never thought of myself as the kind of guy who would lie to a woman about something so fundamental as being married. . . . What kind of sleaze did that make me? I was her boss, too, and I had disregarded so many warnings about getting involved with her. Everything was playing out in public, in front of all the people we worked with and her friends. And then to dump her on top of it? I felt so guilty, and so horrible about myself.”

"Being around her was in a way like pennance. I wanted to torture myself, to hear her condemn me the way that I was condemning me."

“The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that what I loved was what Meredith represented. Meredith was a fresh start, she was potential. . . . While Meredith and I each had baggage, it wasn’t the same kind of baggage that you and I had; it wasn’t 12 years of baggage. It was her baggage and my baggage; it wasn’t our baggage.”

“And,” Derek wanted to reach out and touch Addison, but she didn’t look as if she could bear it. He didn’t know if his touch would be reassuring or not, so he kept his hands to himself. “I was around her more than you knew.”

“What do you mean?”

“I used to seek her out, jump in elevators to get a few minutes with her, arrange to work with her.”

“Just how oblivious do you think I am, Derek? . . . There is a reason why I generally walk the stairs at Seattle Grace. It's not just because stairs are good for cardiovascular health, or to keep the cafeteria from adding pounds to my hips.”

“Do you really? . . . I guess I’m the oblivious one. . . . We also, we used to meet in the mornings to walk Doc when it was my turn. We told ourselves we were friends, but I don’t think we were at that point. We were still emotionally involved; I was still cheating on you emotionally. . . .”

“And I’m so sorry, Addie.”

“I know you were working so hard to try to make things right, and I just wasn’t focusing on you, I was focusing on Meredith. . . .”

Derek saw new tears begin to fall from her beautiful eyes and he idly wondered if it was possible for a person to actually damage their tear ducts from too much crying. And he made a vow, a silent one, that if -- when -- they survived these discussions, he was never going to make his wife cry again.

“And another reason for that, although I only admitted it to myself recently, was that I wanted to make you pay, to make you suffer the way I suffered.”

“You got your wish,” Addie wished she had bitten her tongue fast enough to keep the retort in.

“Not very honorable, is it? . . . I wanted to punish you, to get my revenge. And I wanted to test you, to see if you really wanted me, if you would put up with me. . . . I didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing until recently, but in hindsight it seems clear.”

Addison nodded.

“I’m about done, about ready for our break,” she said, reaching up to wipe away yet more tears. “But I have one question that I need the answer to.”

Derek nodded his assent.

“Do you still love Meredith?”

“No. I am not in love with Meredith Grey.”

Derek looked his wife in the eye when he answered the question, softly but firmly. But then Addie dropped her own eyes back to her knees curled up to her chest, and he knew that he had to move forward, had to finish this before they separated to process the conversation, the pain and heartache brought to the forefront by his accounting of his own affair.

“I am in love with you . . . . I told you before. . . . I don’t think I ever loved Meredith, at least not like I love you. My heart was in pieces when I met Meredith, and maybe I wanted to love her, because that would have shown that I was still capable of loving anyone, and because she was like this fresh new innocent woman in my world of pain and heartbreak.”

“But to love someone, you have to know them, you have to trust them with who you are, your good points and your bad, and trust them to love you in spite of the bad. Meredith and I were never at that point with each other, because I couldn’t possibly trust anyone with me, with my heart, with my future.”

“She only ever saw a shell,” Derek let a flash of a grin sneak through, “a fabulous shell, but a shell nonetheless.”

“And then you came back,” Derek’s grin faded. “Like I said before, Addie, seeing you just generated this giant morass of emotions from which I could not escape. . . . How could I, how could I possibly even think of loving someone else when I was so mixed up, so confused, so overwhelmed by my feelings for and about you?”

“I might have wanted to love Meredith, and I might have tried to love her, and I told you I loved her, but I didn’t.”

“I don’t know exactly why I told you what I did, because even then I don’t think I thought it was true. . . . Maybe I wanted it to be true. But I think it was really more about you and me then it was about me and Meredith.”

“Maybe I was feeling trapped by you, your presence, your eagerness to reclaim what I didn’t know how to find. . . . And maybe I just wanted to hurt you. I know I did, and for that I am sorry.”

“Even if I had loved Meredith, it wouldn’t have been the same as the way I love you. Because I firmly believe that a person can only have one other half; it’s two halves that make the whole. . . . And you were my soulmate. You had ripped me apart, but that didn’t change the fact that underneath that swirling ball of emotions I still loved you and you were my other half, my soulmate. It just took me a while to recognize it. . . . And it took me even longer to trust in it.”

“To believe in you, in us again.”

Derek couldn’t help himself and he reached forward and covered Addie’s hand with his own, but she kept her eyes down. She just couldn’t handle any more from Derek at that moment.

“But I’m there, Addie. I do believe in us, in our future, and that’s why we’re doing all this.”

“I still care about Meredith. I’m not going to lie.”

“But, whatever I may have felt before, it’s morphed into caring the way one would care about a friend with whom you’ve been through some tough times. Because we went through some tough times together.”

“And I do think she’s amazing – a littlle messed up, but who am I to judge anyone for being messed up? And I still feel a little guilty, for screwing up her life while I was such a disaster about my own. I guess you could say I love her, but I’m not in love with her; I love her the way I love Savvy and Weiss, the way I love Bailey. She really is a friend. . . . Only now, I truly believe, the friendship is not about trying to hang onto her as more than a friend, or as she puts it, as her ‘not-friend,’ but about actually being friends.”

“And what I feel for her, it’s nothing compared to what I feel for you. And that is ultimately why I believe I couldn’t sign the divorce papers, because beyond all the pain and the hurt there is this fundamental truth. That I, Derek, love you, Addison, and that there will never be anyone else who can hold a candle to you in my heart.”

Addie nodded, before she unfolded herself from her curled-up position on the bench. She abstractly noted that she shouldn’t have sat like that for so long, as her limbs were stiff and unwilling to do as she commanded. But she needed to get away, to process, to deal with what Derek had revealed before she said something she regretted, before her own body imploded from the ball of emotions that Derek’s words had set free.

So she started walking.

“Addie.”

She heard Derek’s voice and she paused, but she didn’t turn around.

“I love you, and I’ll see you back at the B&B.”

Addison took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’ll see you there.”

Derek watched Addison walk away, and he knew that he had once again caused her pain.

That was hard for him to deal with – even though he believed that the pain was for a good cause, that it was healing pain, rather than the kind he had inflicted either through his absence or through his intentional infliction of hurts large and small since the affair with Mark.

Unlike yesterday, when he had spent three hours trying to process what he was told, now he had three hours stretched in front of him in which he didn’t know how he was going to avoid thinking about the anguish he caused his wife.

What if, after everything, she decided she couldn’t forgive him after all?

He had done some pretty unforgiveable things.

He had told his wife that he loved another.

He had flaunted his past physical and ongoing emotional affair in front of her, and he now recognized that she had been far more aware of his actions with Meredith than he had even attended.

What if she didn’t come back?

‘No,’ Derek told himself firmly. ‘You have to believe in Addison and in your love. In your life together. In your marriage. In your wife.’

As Derek worried, it was Addison’s turn to walk away, to choose for the first time to get away from Derek.

Their conversation, well to say that it had been hard for her to hear was the worst kind of understatement. There were points when she thought her heart would simply stop beating from the pain. As a physician, she believed that emotions could affect the body, and vice versa, and Derek’s words had caused her so much pain that she thought it could potentially stop her heart.

Derek had wanted to sign the divorce papers. Affirmatively wanted to.

Derek had actually pursued another woman. He had chased Meredith Grey, despite everyone’s warnings, despite the fact that he was married, despite the fact that he was her boss. He had been so attracted to her that it had overcome his common sense.

He loved Meredith. Even he wasn’t in love with her, the fact was he truly and deeply cared about her. And, while she knew that she cared about Mark, the caring in her case was a result of more than a decade of friendship that pre-dated her affair with him, not a result of the affair itself.

He had wanted to hurt her back. She could understand that. She could not imagine what Derek must have felt when he found her with Mark, and despite his best explanations and his forgiveness now, she understood that desire to cause pain in return.

But the method he had chosen. Derek had – when she believed they were trying to fix their relationship – lied to her, misled her, about the extent of his ongoing relationship with Meredith. She had suspected and let it go, to some extent, because she was afraid of what confrontation would bring. But, that didn’t stop the confirmation from devastating her.

How was she supposed to trust him again? And how was he supposed to trust her? What if they couldn’t get back what they had lost – the trust that was the foundation of who they were?

For the second day in a row, Addie let her emotions overcome her. She cried, she tried to drown the pain, the doubts with her tears.

And when her tears were spent, she tried to sift back through their conversation, looking for the positives, looking for the things that she could cling to, could pin her hopes and dreams on?

Whether he’d wanted to or not, Derek had chosen her. He hadn’t – even when they were at their worst – been able to sign those divorce papers. She looked down at the bands on her hand and said a silent prayer of thanks.

Derek was willing to go through all of this, to really fight for them. For the first time since she had moved to Seattle, he was really willing to talk about their feelings. Though it was killing them both, that had to be better than the faked progress they pretended to make with their marriage therapist.

Derek said that what he felt for Meredith paled next to what he felt for her. Addison clung to his words as they echoed in his brain, for she knew that if Derek were to wake up one day and decide he made the wrong choice, it would surely kill her. She liked to think of herself as strong, but there was only so much emotional trauma she could take.

So she let her memory of his words wash over her again:

“What I feel for Meredith, it’s nothing compared to what I feel for you. And that is ultimately why I believe I couldn’t sign the divorce papers, because beyond all the pain and the hurt there is this fundamental truth. That I, Derek, love you, Addison, and that there will never be anyone else who can hold a candle to you in my heart.”

lilybeth0529

And I haven't updated for a while....