𝙇𝙑𝙄𝙄.
ADDISON, ALONE

──────

NEW YORK

Addison could remember the first time she'd ever got the feeling something about Beth was wrong.

It'd been at dinner. They had them regularly in New York.

They would occur at weekly intervals, one evening a week where they would all drop everything and congregate for a family dinner. The day changed based on their schedules, last-minute revisions were accounted for and phone calls were made, seats booked. 

Addison had her favourite venue on speed dial in anticipation for a quick rain check. Despite this, the principals were always the same: Five of them in a fairly expensive restaurant, three courses and countless bottles of red wine.

It would've been an understatement to say that family dinner was Addison's favourite night of the week. It'd overtaken Sunday brunch in its importance and she funnelled all of her energy into making sure that, every week, each of them would be there on time and ready to talk about their week. 

It took far much more energy than Addison would've liked to drag Derek to the dinner table, but once Derek was sat everyone else seemed to fall in line: Beth, Mark, even Amy came without any complaints. 

Archer was always busy, too busy bouncing back and forth between New York and Connecticut to be a regular, but when he did attend, he tipped well. Other than that, every dinner would be the same, every night would work out the same, conversations would be replicas of each other— Addison liked the normality of it.

But this dinner, it'd been different.

It was a year after her sister had gotten back together with Mark, a year of watching them from the other side of the dining table. Addison had watched with bated breath, the seat beside her empty more often than not, watching as Beth and Mark turned up to every dinner together without fail. 

Beth never left her seat empty and Mark vice versa, they seemed to have made some sort of pact not to leave the other man behind. Between their perfectly in-place-smiles (that only seemed to dim whenever Addison touched on a topic that was maybe a little too grating for the time of day) and Amy's completely synthetic enthusiasm, Addison often felt like she was in some sort of alternate dimension. 

A dimension where her sister was in a happy relationship with the man Addison hated almost unconditionally, Amy was clean and Derek didn't spend much time with his wife anymore. It felt like the sort of dimension that should come with a parental guidance warning.

It wasn't as if Addison was naturally sceptical, maybe she'd just become accustomed to the fake.

 After all, they'd grown up in a neighbourhood of plastic houses and plastic people; Addison was pretty sure she'd never seen a real cheekbone in a middle-aged woman until a school trip into New York when she was eight. She'd been born into the sort of society where you looked across that dinner table and wondered exactly why your husband's best friend (the one that seems to sleep with all of your friends) chose to go after your sister and whether this was going to blow up in all of your faces.

Spoiler alert: Of course it was. 

Addison was a few moments from taking bets on how long it was going to take until that bastard broke her sister's heart.

Either way, Mark didn't belong at their family dinner.

That night, Beth was a little dimmer than usual. They'd booked Momofuku Ko for a Thursday night and Beth couldn't even muster a smile as Addison did her weekly 'I'm so surprised we got on the guestlist'. 

Instead, Beth had just let out a little breath, looked over at the vacant chair left by Amy's absence (Addison was, in fact, fuming silently over the lack of heads up). The breath seemed to deflate her slightly, shoulders sagging and lips wilting. It'd confounded Addison completely— one look at Mark and it was enough for her to know that something was going on.

After all, Addison hadn't even bought up the topic of their parents (Bizzy was currently floating around French Polynesia in a shiny cruise ship and The Captain was up in Alaska on some sort of hunting retreat) and she hadn't even made that I-still-don't-like-your-boyfriend face whenever she and Mark made eye contact for a prolonged amount of time. 

But as they waited for their drinks and for Derek's rare appearance at the dinner table, it didn't stop her head from racing.

The dinner itself was off too. Beth didn't really talk. 

Mark seemed to speak for her, smiling tightly whenever her eyes happened to stray in his direction. There was a certain tension between the two of them. Addison couldn't help but watch with bated breath. 

Derek didn't seem to notice anything, but Addison noticed everything.

She noticed when Beth excused herself to the toilet. She noticed how Mark seemed to want to say something but stopped himself. 

She noticed that even Derek seemed to pause as Beth (three glasses of wines in and with a little stammer in her step) ignored everyone collectively and propelled herself in the direction of the restroom.

Mark seemed to stare after her. Addison watched the muscle jump in his jaw. He waited until Beth was gone into the depths of the restaurant. He clenched his fingers around the stem of his glass and sighed, lowering his chin— Derek cleared his throat and looked at his wife out of the corner of his eye. 

She twirled her wine glass in her hand and cocked her head to the side.

"Is everything okay?"

 Addison couldn't quite decipher her own tone. She couldn't tell if she sounded attentive or excited. Was it bad to be excited to say 'I told you so'? Maybe she should've bet on how long the relationship was going to last like Derek had wanted to.

"Yeah," The reply wasn't very convincing. 

Mark let out a really long breath, one that, much like Beth, withered him at the edges. He sunk a bit in his chair, avoiding the way the married pair exchanged a look.

He shook his head, "We're fine it's just uh—"

He leant forwards in his chair, appearing suddenly uncomfortable. There was a brief moment in silence, one in which the food on the table was the last thing on Addison's mind. 

Even Derek completely stopped eating. Both of their eyes were tracked on the plastic surgeon as he pulled at the collar of his dress shirt and slowly shook his head. 

He spoke after a large mouthful of red wine, one that seemed to give him the push to say something.

"We had an argument," Mark admitted. 

He said it slowly as if he was scared that Beth was going to appear at any moment. 

Inwardly, Addison made an indifferent comment about how she could've seen that one coming from a mile away. 

"On the way here," Mark said, "in the car... it wasn't... she wasn't..." He squinted at the table in a silent, internal debate, "it's nothing—"

"An argument?" Derek repeated, eyebrows raising, "I've never seen you guys argue before."

Addison looked at her sister's boyfriend with a crinkled brow, watching the slightly bitter chuckle fall from between his lips. Mark didn't seem to disagree with him and Addison didn't either. 

They didn't argue. It didn't happen, it was one of the flukes of their relationship and one of the things that just completely exhausted Addison. They didn't argue, they didn't even seem to disagree on things (Addison couldn't decide whether it was because they cared too much about each other or just too little.) Either way, for Addison in her marriage of tip-toeing and fine lines, she hadn't decided exactly how jealous she was of them quite yet.

"We don't," Mark shrugged. "It wasn't really anything important... I—"

He seemed to pause, as if he didn't agree with what he was saying. It was in that moment, that Addison began to get the impression that maybe Mark and Beth's relationship wasn't as seamless as it appeared to be. 

Of course, she'd had her suspicions (again, she wasn't a suspicious person but... it's Mark). She hadn't had high hopes, which of course she'd voiced to anyone who would listen, yet even when she'd seen it coming it, she conveyed surprise.

She could only wonder what it was that they'd argued about. Oh, the joy of trying to decide what Mark had done wrong. 

Addison would've put all the money in the world on the fact that Mark had done something to trigger such a devastated reaction from her sister. Had he said something he shouldn't have said? Had he done something—

Addison had said to Derek many times that it was only a matter of time. At some point, Mark was going to get bored. It was inevitable. 

It was Mark. MARK!! He was going to get bored like he always eventually got and he was going to dump Beth on her ass again, just like he had last year. It was either that or he was going to cheat (Addison honestly thought that it was a race between the two, what was going to happen first, the breakup or the first affair?).

It was with this in mind that Addison watched him. 

Mark seemed nervous. He seemed deeply uncomfortable— good, Addison liked watching him squirm. She'd never particularly liked him. Mark had always felt more like a misfortune that she couldn't escape than a friend. Like a bad smell that just wouldn't go away. His place at their family dinner was a courtesy. Addison couldn't wait for the day he stopped showing up.

"It must've been bad," Addison said airily, only happy to partake in their drama.

 The last thing she'd expected tonight had been dinner with a show. She was going to enjoy Mark's despair. 

She leant over, refilling her wine glass and shrugging nonchalantly. "I've never seen Beth storm off like that..."

Mark stared at her with an unreadable look in his eyes.

"Yeah," He said in a strained voice, "She's not happy with me."

"Been there," Derek matched Addison's voice, letting out a chuckle. 

It didn't meet the mood of the conversation. His chuckle was misplaced and Mark just smiled weakly at the table. The neurosurgeon looked in between his wife and best friend, grin falling. He cleared his throat and just sighed. 

"I'm sure it'll blow over—"

"I don't know," Mark knitted his brow, "She seems really upset about it—"

 His reply made Addison really wonder what he'd done. He seemed lost in his thoughts. The pregnant pause between his words made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. 

"They always are," Derek muttered and it took everything within Addison not to shoot him the dirtiest look. He looked at her out of the corner of her eye, waiting for Addison to say something but she bit the inside of her cheek and just continued staring at Mark. Again, Derek continued despite the tension: "But it usually dies down after—"

"Have you noticed anything different about her?"

Mark's question made the two of them frown in unison.

"Different?" Addison repeated, cocking an eyebrow. Her sister's boyfriend nodded. Slowly, Addison looked over at her husband and the two of them had a very silent conversation with their eyes. "Different."

He shrugged.

Derek tilted his head to the side. "Different in what why?"

"Well..." Mark appeared uncomfortable, "I think something's going on—"

"Like what?" He questioned, not appearing very worried by the lack of joke in Mark's eyes. In fact, he seemed extremely worried— Addison was almost unsettled by the emotion on him, she'd never seen it before. "It's Beth. She's always doing something."

"I know," Mark replied almost tiredly, "But I think that there might be—"

"Look," Addison interjected with a slight chuckle. Her tone pitched with a condescending smile. "Mark... if you can't keep up with my sister's busy lifestyle I think that's a criticism on you rather than her—"

"That's not what I mean—"

"All of us are extremely hard workers," She continued onwards, despite the exasperated sigh that Mark let out. "I mean, just look at me and Archer. We're not this successful because we just turned up to work. We really worked hard for it. It's almost a genetic thing. Beth is just following in our footsteps."

"Maybe she is overworking herself," Derek stated thoughtfully, looking over at his wife as she shook her head. "I remember I was working long hours when I was doing my internship but I don't think I've even heard Beth take a day off—"

"She's an adult," Addison replied. She held up her glass and twisted it in her fingers. "She's perfectly capable of running her own life. I don't see it being my responsibility to get involved. It's Beth's life— It's not like Amy who we have to babysit constantly—"

Derek balked slightly. "Amy's just a bit different—"

"Beth's not that different."

Mark's voice was sharp. It cut through the conversation they were having over them and made the married couple pause completely. They looked over at him, watching as a muscle twitched in his jaw and a breath seemed to rip its way straight out of his chest. He didn't like the way they looked at him. 

They were staring at him, caught completely off guard by his assertion, as if he'd just grown a second head. Mark was slightly breathless by the sudden exertion of energy. He swallowed, cleared his throat and then continued.

He didn't know how to word this properly. His eyes flickered to the wine bottle in the centre of the table and then to her purse on the back of her chair.

"I tried to speak to her about this but it just..." He'd bought it up to Beth on the way to dinner. He'd tried to say it casually, very softly, and Beth had acted as if he'd yelled. Mark shrugged haphazardly and leant back in his chair, thinking that maybe he shouldn't say it at all. "Haven't you noticed that she's acting different—"

"No," Addison replied curtly. She sounded just a bit jostled, as if she didn't appreciate Mark's words. "The only thing I've noticed is how you've upset my sister, Mark. Surprise, surprise—"

Derek just looked between the two of them, completely lost between Mark's short tone and Addison's deep frown. It was the sort of frown that Addison's mother would have never allowed, it was the sort of frown that was going to leave its imprint. 

Meanwhile, Mark's eyes were blazing slightly, as if Addison's words were completely out of line. They were, but no one was here to back him up. Derek was far more interested in rereading the wine list to raise his voice. 

He was too tired to fight with Addison in public today.

Mark didn't want to argue either.

"She's working a lot," He said with more patience than Derek had. "And I'm concerned about her. I think that she... she might have a problem."

"A problem?" Addison repeated again. 

They seemed to be doing that a lot in this conversation, repeating and cross-examining his words as if he hadn't been thinking them over and over for the past hour. 

Her eyebrows raised again and her brow furrowed. "What problem?"

Mark's throat felt dry.

"I think you should talk to her," He said. 

He didn't like this. He didn't like feeling as if he was tattling on his girlfriend to her sister. This was the sort of thing he didn't like about relationships, the feeling of vulnerability that it carried.

"I tried," Mark sighed, "I tried and it didn't work... so I don't know what else to do—"

"What problem?" 

It was Derek this time who repeated it. He was staring at Mark, all humility drained from his face. It made sense, he'd spent so long with Amy that problems felt less like problems and more like death sentences.

Mark didn't want to say it, but he did.

He let out a breath. "She's been spending a lot of time with Amy—"

"Amelia?"

This caught both of their attentions. 

Amelia, Amelia, Amelia. The black sheep of their group. Addison's stomach curdled; the thought of Beth dating Mark and spending time with Amy. She almost wanted to massage her temple and curse loudly. 

Why couldn't Beth just choose nice boys and nice friends? 

Why did everything have to be so difficult?

"Yes," Mark said quietly. Again, he kept looking over towards the restroom as if Beth would appear at any moment. "She doesn't want me to say anything. I should be saying anything so can you not mention this—"

Addison let out an aggravated breath.

"So you've been hiding this from Derek?"

Mark made the wise decision to ignore her completely. "She's been going out a lot and between her shifts and everything... I've just noticed that she's become quite reliant on..." He faltered slightly. "Beth's taking a lot of pills."

Pills? 

Addison, at first couldn't quite comprehend what he was implying. 

Pills. 

They were doctors, they knew what pills were. Addison spent half her life prescribing pills. Just today she'd handed out five different prescriptions with different doses and intentions. 

Pills. There were lots of different pills. Pills. What sort of pills did Mark mean?

 There we so many different pills. Pills that were legal. Pills that weren't. 

Pills. Pills. Pills. 

Addison was thinking about that word so much that suddenly the word was falling apart in her mind.

"Pills?" Addison's voice sounded a lot more coherent than her thoughts did. The only response she got was a slow nod from Mark. "Pills? Beth's hooked on pills?"

This whole conversation felt off. 

This whole evening now just felt off. 

Addison blinked at him, trying her best to rearrange her thoughts into something she could make use of. 

Beside her, Derek was looking at the wine menu again, paying barely any attention to the fact that Mark looked as though he was about to whip out a case file and start pouring over evidence. That left the Montgomery sister practically on her own, staring at Mark as if he were a mad man.

Maybe he is, she thought to herself, Beth... an addict? I don't think so—

"It sounds crazy..." Mark began.

"It does," Addison agreed with him. She was nodding, dismissing his concerns completely. "Beth isn't addicted to pills. I mean.. it's my sister we're talking about. You sound more than crazy, you sound insane."

Her voice was a little bit too loud for such a fancy restaurant. People on the surrounding tables were starting to look. Only Derek wondered what was taking Beth so long in the restroom. Addison was staring over at her husband's best friend with eyebrows so high that they almost integrated into her hairline. 

In return, Mark was groaning quietly, visibly regretting even bringing it up.

"It's not insane—"

"Really?" She questioned, voice slightly pitchy. She couldn't believe Mark's nerve. Accusing Beth of being a pill-pusher? No wonder her sister was so upset. "Beth doesn't even take advil— You sound delusional."

"How would you know what's right or not?" Mark asked, voice raising enough for one of the passing waiters to shoot them a vaguely (but professional) dirty look. "It's not even like you notice a damn thing outside of your own life. Beth could literally die in front of you and you wouldn't even give a shit."

The malicious smile on Addison's dropped. It wilted very slowly, like a dwindling flame. Mark watched it with a victory that was short lived. 

When the fire disappeared, it left behind some very ugly looking ashes, ones that looked as though they were just itching to get blown into his windpipe.

Derek, who was picturing this dinner going south very quickly, just waved down a waiter and asked for the bill. It'd take them a while to chase it down, enough time for this conversation to rid itself out before they were inconspicuously asked to leave by management— this sort of thing happened sometimes. 

Last time Addison and Derek had a screaming match over a botched dessert and they weren't allowed reservations at Eleven Madison Park anymore.

"Pray tell," Addison's voice was deathly quiet. She was sat back in her chair, glaring at a man she'd hated more than any other she'd ever had the misfortune to meet. "As you're the... leading professional only sister's life... how is she an addict?"

"I'm not saying she's an addict, Addison," Mark said without missing a beat. "I'm saying that.. she's acting out of character and..." A sigh. "I just think she needs a break or something. She won't listen to me—"

"She doesn't have any pills," Addison pointed out.

"She does," he said, "She has a bottle of Adderall in her purse."

"Why would she take Adderall?" Addison laughed as if it were the funniest thing in the world. "She doesn't have ADHD. Where would she even get it—"

"A doctor upstate."

"Wow, you had that answer just lined up, didn't you—"

"Addison."

"No," She cut him off, shaking her head. "I don't think you understand—"

"I do."

"I don't think you—"

"Don't think you... what?"

The whole table halted. 

Heads raised and eyes fell on Beth as she approached them. 

A pale face appearing from behind a passing waiter, eyebrows raised as she looked at the three seated members of the family dinner. Her eyes found Mark's first, then travelled to her sister and brother-in-law, the colour darkening when she realised that they were arguing. 

Her brow furrowed, seeing Addison's tensed figure, Derek (who appeared completely disassociated out of the fear of getting involved) and Mark's slight red flush to his face. She noticed how they all stared at her, a momentary suspension of the evening.

Mark averted his eyes to the table, shifting in his chair. He could hear the cogs turning in her brain. He could practically hear the thoughts whirring behind her eyes. He could almost pinpoint the moment she joined all of the dots.

"Oh," She said. 

It was a redundant oh, it caused dents to appear in all of their chests. She dragged out a breath, one that sounded far angrier than it did calm. And then she spoke:

"Okay."

She was glaring at her boyfriend and Addison could see the strain in Mark's body as he sat under the weight of it. 

He, very uncomfortably, picked up his wine glass and finished what was left in a bid to avoid talking. Beth seemed reluctant to retake her place at the table. She stood by her seat and just lingered, eyes zooming between each person— there were words on the tip of her tongue that threatened to slip.

"Beth," Addison said, still noticeably flustered. "Mark was just..."

"Mark was just what? Addie?"

Her voice was sharp. 

The man in question raised his head and shot Addison a glance. It was a bid to try and stop the conversation from progressing but Addison had never been one to cut some slack. Her attention dragged away from the brief alarm in Mark's eyes and onto her sister. 

She twisted the knife that Mark had already embedded.

"Telling us that you have a pill problem, apparently."

The look in Beth's eyes made even Addison almost squirm. 

Her gaze burned so brightly that Addison could almost smell the sizzle of Mark's skin. 

Even so, the eldest Montgomery didn't hesitate to twist the knife deeper. She even laughed. She let out a laugh that was so cold that it could've frozen over their food, hailed snow in the middle of a Manhattan restaurant. 

It was a laugh so blatant that Mark knew that she wasn't taking him seriously at all.

"So..." Addison said, "Do you?"

***

SEATTLE

Getting back to normality had never sounded like such an awful idea.

As the door opened to the office, there was a weird feeling that settled about— the room was the same, the furniture was the same, items had been removed and moved in the absence of the room's usual occupant, but it was the same. 

Almost the same. Just like stepping back in time. So similar but not the same. 

The office didn't smell stagnant, the windows had been left open, there was still, even, a doctors coat on the back of the door— the room felt the same, but the hospital itself felt so different.

Different?  Derek didn't want to think about why it felt different.

He sat at his desk for a long time that morning. The first day back and he was staring at everything as if it was completely foreign to him. 

He'd gotten too used to the two-month-long leave that he'd practically suffered through; long extended periods of He pressed his hands together, inhaled and then held it— when he exhaled, he let his tensions leave his body. 

His chest throbbed slightly, but he pushed it back to the back of his head. 

With the foundations of a carefree smile, he leant over and adjusted his nameplate.

Derek Shepherd, Chief of Surgery.

Meredith hadn't wanted him to go back to work, but he'd spent the last two months walking around her house while Richard Webber did his job. He'd spent so much time staring at medical journals, staring at the twenty-four-hour news cycle and staring holes into the ceiling that Meredith hadn't been able to deny his boredom.

 Derek didn't like just staring into the outside world, so maybe that's when Andrew Perkins had called him up, saying that he was ready for his trauma assessment he'd thrown himself into ticking boxes and answering questions.

People had been surprised when Derek had been cleared for work. Richard Webber had left him a long voicemail, telling him that he was happy to continue working for as long as Derek needed an interim cover— but Derek had breezily answered that he was perfectly fine. 

Two months had been long enough for him to go almost insane. He'd been bed-bound for a lot of it, waiting for his body to recover while his head raced ahead. He hadn't been able to fully express how badly he needed to hear someone say his name as if they needed something from him—

"Doctor Shepherd." 

A welcome breach in Derek's stream of thoughts, a smiling face in the doorway: Charlie Perkins was stood on the threshold, a large file box under one arm, the other extended as if to knock against the open door. Derek gave him a warm smile. 

"Good to see you back," He said. 

"Doctor Perkins," Derek acknowledged using the same tone, noticing the psychiatrist's new uniform. He chuckled, crossing through the room and placing the box on the Chief's desk. "It's good to be back— congratulations on the job."

"Thank you," Charlie said, grinning proudly as he looked down at his new doctor's coat. His name was already beside his lapel, sleeves already creased from the number of times he'd routinely rolled them up. "It's nice to be in a hospital that isn't on the verge of falling down because of an earthquake."

Derek found that funny; "Give it a week."

However, it wasn't really funny, if you really thought about it and Derek had been thinking about it a lot. 

He'd been thinking a lot about how the husband of one his patients had attempted to murder him and in the crossfire, they'd lost eighteen staff members and countless others had been injured. The thought of it was something he had avoided from lingering on too long— but now, Derek stared at the box Charlie had carried in, he'd been told that it was coming down from legal and that it was his first task to complete.

"So these are all the files of all of the staff affected by the shooting..." Charlie clapped a hand on the top of the lid, the box shuddering under his hand. "Seattle Pres just needs signatures to complete the finance forms. I've been helping them with getting all of their documents in order... I've been doing a lot of paperwork lately."

It was a big box. Charlie then went on to say that this was the first of three. Derek sat at his desk and stared at them. He knew how many people had been injured, how many people that they'd needed to send to other hospitals for treatment because their colleagues and place of work had been unable to help them. 

Slowly, he nodded, feeling his chest throb a bit.

"I know it's not fun," Charlie trailed off, fingers lingering on the box, "But, uh, Richard's already gone through two of these boxes and he thought he'd leave some of them to help you get back into the swing of things—"

"Are you kidding?" Derek said, putting on his best bright smile, "This beats being stuck in my house and watching tv repeats, at least I'm free, right? This is..." He refrained from sighing. "...as fun as my year's gonna get."

Derek had never liked paperwork, but it came with the job. Even when he hadn't been the Chief Surgery, he'd been constantly typing, writing and throwing his signature on whatever piece of paper people needed it to be on. 

The thought of going through over fifty medical files and histories to help legal assess damages for their insurance claim sounded like the most boring thing on the planet— but Derek was off of bed rest, he was back at work, that's all that mattered to him. To be completely honest, the only thing that he could imagine making his day feel worthwhile would've been a surgery... if he could only get his hands on a case....

"Yeah," Charlie said softly, "I think Beth's past that point..."

Derek's head raised quickly at the mention of his ex-sister-in-law.

"How is she?"

"Bored," Charlie sighed, rubbing his neck as he thought about his fiancée, "I bet you know what she's like... she'll never sit still even when she's recovering from... that whole thing."

Derek chuckled at the slight exasperation in Charlie's tone. There was clear frustration in him, one that Derek was very familiar with. 

He was also very familiar with the fact that Beth was incapable of not doing anything; Mark had once told him that he'd heard Beth reciting stats in her sleep. Her brain was like a car with no brakes, constantly hurtling forwards with no Plan B, no way or intention to halt. She was exactly like her siblings.

"I'm surprised she hasn't tried to get back to work yet," Derek said breezily. 

Even when Beth had been dismissed from ManWest, she'd immediately thrown herself back into whatever career she could find. She could do nothing, she was constantly trying to do everything.

"She's giving it her best effort," Charlie chuckled, shaking his head softly, "Right now she's on the phone giving my brother hell while trying to get back onto her service... with the whole department all over the place, I think she's got a good chance of getting in. They need all the help they can get after..."

His eyes drifted over towards the box on the table. Derek followed his gaze.

They were both thinking the same things. 

They were thinking about the people that the hospital had lost in the past two months. In a way, Derek appreciated Richard Webber's help; they'd had double the resignations than they'd had deaths. The hospital had been hit hard by everything and, as much as Derek was reluctant to admit, Richard had helped soften the blow.

"Katherine Wyatt was an extremely effective head of her department," Derek cleared his throat and smiled sadly. "The hospital isn't going to be the same without her. She practically built that department herself from the ground up."

"I went to her funeral," Charlie said quietly, "I thought that it was the least I could do... with her putting me down for this job and everything."

Derek's sad smile wavered. He'd sent a card to the family. He hadn't really known what to write it in it; he'd sent so many cards while he was recovering. Meredith had stood in the store and picked out eight condolence cards that didn't seem too... He'd sat on the phone with legal as he'd signed them. 

Nothing too personal... Nothing too impersonal... I'm sorry for your loss...

"Doctor Webber wanted me to mention about the recruitment, actually," Charlie leant over the desk and referred to a sheet of paper that Derek hadn't noticed previously. "They're trying to find someone to replace her but they haven't had any takers so far... The board wanted your opinion on some of the—"

He picked up the paper and sighed out of his nose, scanning the memo that had been left on his desk. Derek's eyes flickered between the typed letters and Charlie, who paused to check a text message on his phone. 

Derek let out a very long breath; he was doing that a lot lately, maybe it was just purely out of boredom. He'd thought that work was going to be a little bit more... exciting? Now it was just a mountain of paperwork and a room that reminded him of almost dying.

No one wanted to work here anymore, Derek had been told that by the Medical Director over the phone. They'd said that the hospital had some sort of misery around it. 

The press was calling it Seattle Grace Mercy Death. He'd seen it on the newspaper.

The board was hoping that it would clear up towards the end of the next intern cycle and that they'd have a fresh wave of interns to fill in the gaps— but then there were senior positions like Katherine's where there was just a gaping hole with nothing to—

"Do you want the job?" Derek asked, looking up at the psychiatrist in front of him.

The surprise on Charlie's face made him chuckle. It didn't seem such a bad idea as Derek said it. He disregarded Charlie's reaction, the brief look of alarm that bloomed in the psychiatrist's eyes.

"I'm serious," He continued, flickering through the memo almost boredly, "you seem like you've got everything handled here— I can put in a good word with the board and you could get Richard to vouch for you. They'd probably pick you in a heartbeat. Nice job too..."

He could imagine Charlie being a good Head of Psychiatry. 

It seemed as though, with him and his brother arriving at the hospital, things had been far better than he'd expected them to be. It was a bit depressing really— his last thought when he'd been bleeding out on the floor outside his office had been that the hospital might not be able to recover from this disaster. 

Yet, here Charlie was, admin all sorted and files in check quicker than his own secretary had even dreamed of completing them.

There was a brief pause in which Charlie just stared at him with raised eyebrows.

"I appreciate the offer," He said, smiling almost in concern, "But I've only been here for a few weeks—"

"Call us desperate," Derek joked.

Charlie didn't laugh. "Like I said... Thank you but I'm under-qualified for the role. These past weeks have been enough for me to remember how different a hospital is to what I'm used to— I'm sure there's other staff here that would be much better at running a department than I would be."

Derek just shrugged.

"I figured it wouldn't be that easy," He continued to stare at the letters on the memo but didn't particularly find it within him to register them, "Is there any chance that your brother is looking for something a bit permanent..."

This time, Charlie let out a breathy laugh.

"He loves his job too much," Charlie answered, "People have been trying to pin him down for years."

"Like you, huh?" Derek teased from over the top of the boxes. 

He slapped the memo back on the desk and tried to distract himself from the still healing spot on his chest. Sometimes he became a little too aware of it, sometimes his shirt brushed against his skin and it's all he could think about. He clenched a fist and shifted in his chair.

The youngest Perkins brother just shrugged. "I go where I need to go."

"Good thing too."

Derek liked Charlie. 

The guy stood on the other side of his desk seemed genuinely nice, genuinely enthusiastic and just... genuine. He couldn't put his finger on what it was about the man but he just liked Charlie. He was likeable. Maybe that's why Derek had offered him a job five minutes into his first shift back after he'd been shot— or maybe Derek was just having a mental break? 

Either way, Derek was optimistic about how his day was going to go.

Charlie left him to his box of files and memos. However, before he left, Derek stopped him, giving him a sharp smile ("I"m serious about that offer, if you change your mind... let me know. You'd be invaluable to this hospital's board."). Just like before, Charlie just seemed to pause, think of a reply and then immediately think against it. 

He nodded in Derek's direction in a very polite way and then left Derek alone to stare at the mountain of paperwork in front of him.

For a split second, Derek really regretted turning up to work.

There was so many things to do, so many boxes to tick, lines to sign— He got to his feet (with tenderness that had been present since Cristina Yang had cracked open his chest with a gun to her head) and took off the lid, staring down at the mass amount of people who had been affected by the mass-shooting. 

It left a tart taste in his mouth, the sort of feeling you'd get when vomit creeps into the back of your throat. There was a list attached to the inside, he tore it off and scanned it briefly. This time the letters stuck with him.

He hadn't really given it much thought before. How weird it was for someone's whole life to be printed onto a paper file. Suddenly, you weren't a human but a series of summarised entries, a list of dates, medications and consultation notes. 

And there was a whole box of lives in front of him, a whole box full of people who were people's friends, lovers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters— Derek felt very overwhelmed for a moment. 

He sat back in the chair and pulled the box closer to him, resting back until his chest stopped aching.

Absently, he began searching through the box, began signing and completing things. The instructions on the memo said to look over the incident reports that had been made, each one stapled to the front of each file. 

He began working through the list, ticking off the ones he completed and setting them aside for legal to pick up and finalise. With each file he felt his chest grow a little tighter, his heart sink a little lower— he worked down the alphabetised list until his eyes felt sore and his fingers ached. Here he was, working through a list of the injured and deceased. 

Each name of this list represented a file in this box, a person who had either died or put their lives before others:

Louis Kaur... Vivianne Kirk.... Yvonne Kyle... Ryan Martin... Neil McCartney— Elizabeth Montgomery.

Dead, Alive, Dead, Dead, Dead, Alive--

Derek stared at her name for a while.

Beth. 

Beth's whole life was in a file in this box. Beth's whole life was condensed into some letters on a page: a handful of scans and a couple of doctors notes. 

Derek had never met someone so intricate and complex and yet here she was, simplified into a legal document. He wondered how detailed it was, whether it reflected the sort of person he knew. 

Would he recognise Beth from her biology? Was that something that was even possible?— Derek pressed a hand to his head and massaged his forehead; somehow, thinking, today, was giving him a headache.

He held her medical file in his hands and stared at it. He stared at it just as he'd stared at this room. It felt alien to him.

Elizabeth Theodora Forbes-Montgomery. She hated her name. She said that saying the whole thing was exhausting. She didn't use her mother's name as Addison did, she opted to drop it completely because the double-barrel made her feel exhausted. She found the name Elizabeth exhausting too— It was Beth. Not Betty, not Lizzie, not Elizabeth.

Beth. 

Derek could remember her once telling him that the only part of her name she liked was her middle name. Theodora. She was named after her grandmother and she'd worshipped that woman. He could remember how crushed she'd been when Theodora had died. 

She'd been so much more upset than Addison and Archer had been. Her sister had just sighed, squeezed Derek's arm and explained that Theodora Montgomery just seemed to take a shine to Beth more than the others. 

Maybe it was her namesake or the fact that Beth had been the youngest, the most eager to be loved and liked— either way, Beth had been a different person when her grandmother died.

He tore his attention to the report; it was graphic. All of the reports were very detailed but Beth's caused him to falter. He'd read things far more egregious but this— he breezed through an account given by his wife's sister. 

Beth had put herself in between Gary Clark and Lexie Grey, she'd gotten shot as she helped Lexie escape the same fate as Derek. One gunshot wound to the chest, extensive bloodloss, pericardial effusion that had lead to a collapsed lung, heart failure— 

Shit, she'd had it so much worse than Derek had, no wonder she'd been off of work longer than he had been. She'd had to go through an eight hour surgery to correct everything, four different blood transfusions and a ventilator.

On paper, it was a miracle that Beth had survived.

The incident report was pushed aside; he signed at the bottom and tried his best to not think about how he'd felt when he'd heard that Beth had been caught in the crossfire. He'd felt awful. He'd felt responsible. He'd always felt that, as her sister's ex-husband, he was somewhat responsible for her— 

Archer had said it to him when he'd left Seattle after Derek had saved his life. He'd turned to him, looked him in the eye and said those words with such seriousness that it'd raised hairs on the back of his arms;

"Look after her," Archer had looked so deeply concerned about her that it had stirred something within him, "Keep an eye on Beth. You know what she's like, she thinks she's like... bulletproof or something."

Oh, the irony.

He started scanning the information on the top of her chart about the surgery; Teddy Altman at Seattle Pres with.... 

The words echoed around the back of his head like background music. 

Derek had distracted himself; now he was thinking about how Archer had left Seattle and hadn't visited him. Was Archer pissed at him? Was Addie? Honestly, Derek figured that most people were angry at him. They had good reason too. He was convinced that this whole mess had been completely his fault—

Wait. 

What was that?

He'd been staring at the paramedic's report without reading it. His eyes had practically glared into a different dimension, but a specific detail had pulled him back to reality. The medic's report detailed Beth's condition on arriving into the ambulance; a pair of eyes on a diagram gazed at him, a human-shaped outline with a cross over the gunshot's point of entry. 

The words alongside it detailed her torso, the marks on her skin—

A scar. 

Derek blinked at that. The report detailed a scar. One across her lower abdomen. He was caught off-guard by it. A scar. 

A scar?  He didn't remember Beth having any scars— of course, he supposed that he just might not have ever heard about it, but— a scar? 

What did they mean a scar?

Beth wasn't the secretive type. In fact, he fondly placed her in the over-sharer category. 

Back in New York she'd talked him through every single event of her childhood. She'd fallen off of bikes and out of trees— all of them, she'd been extremely proud that she'd never scarred, despite all of the trauma she'd put her body through. 

Mark had joined her in that as well, seeing as his whole career was a constant battle with the human bodies natural instinct to scar over things. Beth had been very insistent that she didn't scar easily—

Derek stared at it's placement, his head running wild with thoughts.

Maybe he was wrong, maybe Beth was the secretive type.

Immediately, he flipped through her folder. 

His suspicions had been correct; her file was noticeably thick and her summary documented ten years of rehabilitation clinics and medication prescriptions. He tried his best to not look too closely to those things, instead, just paying attention to surgical entires— he scanned all the way down until she was a small child. 

He wanted to see something... He wanted it to be an appendix removal or... just something, but there was nothing there. The only surgery listed was a breast augmentation from a Harper Avery Foundation hospital in Canada.

That, in itself, caught him off-guard too. 

In a hospital? He didn't have any qualms with people having cosmetic surgery but... in a hospital? He would've assumed that Beth would've known to go to a private clinic; after all, she'd dated a plastic surgeon for five years, one that had constantly complained about being mistaken for a cosmetic surgeon. 

They didn't do surgeries like that in a hospital setting— Derek's thoughts were going round and round in circles. It didn't make sense— things weren't making sense— He blinked at the page, almost willing it to spill its deepest secrets.

As if responding to his silent begging, another detail jumped out at him— the surgery was listed for the 3rd of April 2006 and it said that two weeks later she was sectioned in a rehabilitation clinic for detox. 

Detox. Derek knew that they would have never, never allowed Beth into that surgery if she was using. She would've never made it past the preliminary checks, she would have never even gotten into the OR—

Slowly, Derek leant over towards his office landline. 

He pressed each button with an almost dizzy bewilderment as if he couldn't exactly distinguish the swirling thoughts in his head from the reality around him. He listened to the dial tone, listened as someone answer.

("Is this Doctor Altman? Teddy Hi, It's Derek Shepherd. Yes, I'm doing well, thank you— I'm completing the incident claim forms and I had some questions about one of your patients. I've got a claim written down here— Yes. Of course. No worries, it's just an observation, I don't think you'll need any charts. It's for Elizabeth Montgomery. Yes, from Psych— I was just wondering whether you could confirm that her breast implants were unaffected by your surgery?")

He wasn't exactly sure what answer he wanted, but Teddy's confusion ("What implants? Her chest was clear? We assumed that she'd had corrective surgery.") caused him to grind his teeth and run a hand through his hair. When she hung up, ("Okay, I'll sign it off as a false claim. Thank you for your time") leaving him alone on the line, Derek couldn't help but feel his disorientation ground itself into suspicion.

There was no corrective surgery on Beth's record, but he figured that maybe her medical record wasn't as honest as it appeared.

What did you do, Beth?

He really hoped that his guess was wrong.

He wasn't dumb. 

He knew exactly what a scar meant. 

He knew exactly what a fake surgery looked like-- Beth had always been petty but this petty? 

He opened his mouth and then closed it again-- 

A scar? A fucking scar? 

Derek didn't know what to think.

What did you do, Beth?

He stared at the medical file as if it was alien to him. The picture the words and numbers painted to him made his stomach roll and his body fill with dread— it reminded him of how he'd felt with Gary Clark's gun pointed at him. He felt numb with the realisation that Beth had been hiding something big all along—

What the fuck did you do?

***

LOS ANGELES

ADDISON AND ARCHER had had very different reactions to their sister's near-death experience.

When Archer had received the phone call, he hadn't known what to do. 

Maybe that was the sort of message that Beth had received from Addison when he'd been hospitalised; a very shaken Addison, a very horrified Addison that couldn't seem to process her own words even as she said them.

Beth was hurt.

He'd gotten accustomed to hearing that sort of stuff back in New York. Sometimes, Addison would just phone him up for the luxury of being able to complain about it to a fresh set of ears. 

Oh, Beth got really drunk and fell over in an alleyway again, she split her head open. Oh, Beth broke up with Mark and she's really upset about it— 

But this was different.

Addison had phoned him immediately. She'd gotten caught up in some altercation at work and Mark, (Mark! That! Bastard!) had phoned her to tell her that things didn't look great. He framed it as if Beth was on her death bed. 

She'd been shot (Shot? Archer couldn't believe it, She'd survived a lot worse than Seattle and this was the one thing that was going to snuff her out) and she'd just been pushed into heart surgery to reverse the damage. 

Things weren't looking good— Archer got all of his information through a very tearful and stressed phone call in which Addison seemed to trip over her syllables and her punctuation.

That called for a plane ticket out to Washington State and a moment of intense terror. He'd debated with Addison whether or not to phone their parents; he had the argument in the back of a car on the way to LAX. He'd been against it, Addison had been very for it. 

Her argument was that it was their parents— his had been that exactly in response, it was their parents. 

Flying their parents to Seattle was the equivalent of kicking her while she was down.

Eventually, they both agreed against it.

So Archer had dropped everything, handed off all of his patients and flown out as quickly as he could. He'd cleared his schedule, returning the favour for when his sister had done the exact same. 

He'd arrived while she was still in surgery and took initiative to text regular updates to Addison back in LA. He'd even checked on Derek for her, grimacing when he realised that he might lose his sister over his ex-brother-in-law. Archer had been there, he'd been present.

Addison, on the other hand, had been two months late to Beth's death.

Her excuse was that she suddenly became very busy, which admittedly, she was. It seemed as though, in the span of two days, the whole of California decided to go into labour at the same time. 

Addison was completely swept off of her feet with patients, practically setting up camp at the local hospital where she was constantly being thrown into surgery. She'd had to rebook her ticket out to Seattle three times, constantly pushing it further and further back.

Once, amongst all of the chaos, she'd had a window. It was a week after Beth had been shot and the world was still spinning and all over the place— and Addison could've gone. She had time, she had a clear schedule and Naomi had threatened to pack for her.

("It's Beth," Naomi had said, marching around Addison's bedroom as the elder sister leant heavily against the doorframe, "It's your sister— you need to go see her. She needs her sister—") 

But, Addison had hesitated. She'd drank half a bottle of wine, stared at her airplane ticket and thought about it long and hard—

She didn't leave for Seattle that night. Instead, she'd phoned up her secretary and decided to take on the patients that Naomi had persuaded her to push aside. 

The next day, when Naomi had walked into the clinic and found Addison prepping for her next patient, there'd been a very tense pause. 

Naomi had stopped, stared at the Montgomery who was definitely not even supposed to be in the state— Addison had stared back, sighed and looked away.

She'd kept up to date with what was going on. Archer had been out there for two months, working in the neurology department to cover some of the work that had backed up due to the chaos. He'd wanted to be with Beth while she recovered, he'd stayed around and helped as much as he could. Eventually, he'd made the decision to return. 

As soon as Archer arrived back in LA he cornered Addison and bluntly asked her what the hell was going on—

Addison heaved a sigh. 

It was a late evening and she massaged her temple and just sunk her head into her hands as she finished paperwork. She wasn't been able to find a verbal reply. She just sunk into an uncomfortable silence and let it all do the talking for her. Archer caught on immediately.

"You didn't..." 

He sounded disappointed. 

Addie bristled at that.

"What?" She'd replied bluntly, getting up from her desk and grimacing at the look in his eye. 

He was frowning at her, it felt fatherly and stern and for once in her life, Addison felt very aware of the age gap between them. Archer stood in front of her, suitcase beside him and hands on his hips. He'd come straight from the airport, Uber'd his way and turned up at her apartment door.

 "What did I do, Arch?" She sounded tired.

"You've meddled."

Archer knew both of his siblings very well. 

He that expression on Addison's face. It felt shameful, it added a heavy weight to his chest, one that lifted with a very hefty exhale. Addison looked away, silently answering his question. 

A muscle clenched in his jaw, a breath escaped his lips— 

If Addison was tired, Archer was exhausted.

He knew that something had happened; the look on Beth's face when Archer told her that Addison wasn't coming, Addison's exasperation over all of the phone calls that hadn't gone through, the tension around both Beth and Mark whenever Addison's name was mentioned. 

Sometimes, Archer found his sisters more than exhausting. Over the past ten years, he'd gotten used to walking through a no man's land between the two of them, toeing the line of impartiality and having to hold a constant white flag.

But Archer was exhausted. He was tired. He'd sat through the flight from Seattle with a lot of thoughts in his head and a lot of words on the tip of his tongue. He'd grown tired of being in between them constantly, he'd grown tired of having to be impartial. 

So he leant against the couch, rubbed a hand across his face and tried his best to hold back a frustrated groan.

"No wonder Beth doesn't want anything to do with either of us," Archer said it quietly. 

He almost murmured it under his breath. It was a lament of sorts, a sad iteration of the sadness he felt whenever he thought about how long he'd been separated from his sister. Even with the softness of his voice, Addison still picked up on it.

"Oh no, she loves you," Addison said dryly, her tone clipped. 

It was a mirror image to Archer's soft declaration; he raised his head to stare at her incredulously, caught off-guard by the noticeable bitterness in her tone. 

"It's me. That's the problem. She wants nothing to do with me—" Addison said it so bluntly. 

It didn't settle right with the eldest Montgomery sibling. He blinked at her. He watched as she grimaced and bitterly chuckled at the thought of their sister. The way she said it, Archer couldn't believe it— it was as if she resented the lack of contact between them all. 

Inwardly, Archer wondered what the hell Addison was thinking. 

He blinked at her again. 

His head spun. He thought about everything he'd witnessed over the past month, everything that had happened in Seattle. He thought about the initial plane journey he'd had over to Seattle.

Archer had ran through that airport, got on that plane and, as he stared down at the city that disappeared beneath the clouds, he wondered what he'd do if Beth was dead by the time he landed. It'd been a 'running through the airport' sort of catastrophe— there weren't many people in the universe that he'd do that for. 

Beth had once told him that there was two types of loves: love and then 'running through the airport' sort of love, whether it was to catch a flight or stop someone in their tracks. Archer had told her that she watched too many movies, that that was not a thing.

Spoiler alert: He'd been wrong. 

Now, he figured that running after someone with nothing but illogical, almost biological drive and desperation was the strongest love possible.

Addison didn't seem to be in a rush at all. Instead, she was sat there, after pushing back her trip four times. She watched as her brother let out a laugh, shed his skin of peacekeeper and looked at her with raised eyebrows.

"I don't blame her."

Now that caught Addison off-guard. 

She'd frozen in her steps, head cocked to the side as she processed what he'd said. Her mouth opened and then closed, a continuous cycle as she realised what was happening— her brow furrowed and she shook her head. 

He watched her brain tick over, he watched the thoughts as they rumbled their way through her consciousness. Shock was plastered over her face. She definitely hadn't expected him to say that.

"Excuse me?"

"Addie," Archer began, rubbing his mouth and trying his best not to get angry, "You're right. You are the problem."

The weight of having to be the cool older brother was something that Archer hadn't carried lightly. It'd been soul-crushing, having to support everything while he watched Addison torch Beth's whole life.

 As Addison stared at him, he felt it more than he ever had before. It was a crushing weight. It was fucking awful, to be honest— he watched Addison's resolve crumble very slowly and had to bite back the regret that threatened to rear its head.

"Don't," Addison's reply was tight. She held up a hand. "Just... Don't."

"Don't what?" Archer said. "Don't defend her?" Addison didn't respond in the time that he gave her so he pressed onwards. "Beth doesn't need anyone to fight her battles for her, but this time I think she might need a little bit help.... seeing as she almost died and everything..."

Addison pursed her lips.

"You should've seen the look on her face when I told her that you weren't there," Archer could remember it vividly. "I've spent the last twenty years telling Beth that you want the best for her, just like our parents— but honestly, when I saw the relief on her face I... I didn't know what to think—"

"Archie," Addison took the chance to intervene. Her expression was tight, jaw clenched. "No offence but you have no idea what you're talking about—"

He just laughed. "I know exactly what I'm talking about. I might not get involved in all of this—" He waved an indifferent hand into empty space, gesturing to all of the ups and downs they'd had in their family life. "But I've watched it all. I've heard both sides of all of your arguments for the thirty-something years."

"Arch—"

"I've spent all of this time being neutral, being Switzerland in this nuclear war," He said each word with intent, with his eyes smouldering and his temper buzzing. "I've spent all of this time just... enabling you to meddle with Beth's life. I'm done, okay? I don't want to put her through this anymore."

Addison recoiled slightly; Archer had always been the dormant volcano, his temper clipped into place behind his steely facade.

The lava had made an appearance and now it was burning circles into her carpet.

He wanted it to end. He was done with watching Addison and Derek putting Beth through hell. There was a reason why he hated his ex-brother-in-law with passion; Addison and Derek had been perfect for each other. 

He hadn't felt bad when he had found out about Derek's surgery; the only thought that he'd had was how angry he'd be if Beth died and Derek survived. 

Of course, he was grateful that Derek had saved his life not even six months ago— but he still thought that Derek was one of the biggest assholes he'd ever met... And he'd met Mark.

"So tell, what did you do?" Archer cleared his throat, "Why does Beth just... What did you do now?"

Addison didn't want to respond.

Of course, she'd done something. She was always doing something.

She didn't want to feel the sort of shame that Archer was thrusting onto her. It was the same feeling that had plagued her for the last five years, the same sting at the back of her eyes that persisted when she thought about Mark. 

It was the weight at the back of her throat when she thought about how her sister's relationship had fallen apart solely because of her and Derek— it wasn't just the affair, she wasn't stupid, she'd been poisoning the two of them for years, long before Addison had started falling in love with Mark.

With a long breath, she let her shoulders fall.

"I've been talking to Mark—"

"Really? Mark? Addison—" Archer sounded shocked. He sounded disgusted. "What? Are you guys together again or—"

"No," Addison said, rubbing her jaw with a shaky hand. "I wanted to keep up to date with everything that Beth was doing. Just with all of the... with all of the things that were going on— and I told him that maybe he should just apologise— I helped him with getting things on good terms with Beth and I just—"

"It's been five years," He interjected, feeling the need to vocalise that fact. "Addie— it's been five years. Just leave them alone, please—"

"I know," Addison said briskly, "I know it's been five years. I wanted to help—"

"By what?" Archer questioned, his patience thinning. "Getting involved?"

"I just—"

"Are you forgetting that you getting in between Mark and Beth was the reason she's not with us?" Archer saw the shift in her face, the tension in her body as she turned away from him. "Are you really forgetting that it was because of your affair that everything went to shit in the first place?"

It was as if he'd broken a seal. He was talking and talking and he couldn't stop. He needed Addison to hear this before he thought the better of it and he started bottling it up again.

Addison didn't know how to respond. 

Archer rarely ever swore. He was the calm one, the one who never raised his voice or spoke out of turn. He'd been their mother's golden child, the one that had fit the mould perfectly— and there he was, staring at Addison with sad, round eyes and venom bubbling up behind his lips.

"It's Beth, Addie," Archer didn't know how to stop talking. Nearly two decades of frustration was spilling out of him, causing her eyes to sting. She blinked, looking away and swallowing uncomfortably. "She's hurt. I know you said she accepted your apology— but we both know she did that for me. Beth can't have these conversations, she can't talk about this shit because it's Beth. She avoids everything—"

"I was trying to help," Addison tried again.

Archer shook his head. "Stop. Stop trying to help."

"I wanted to—"

"This isn't about what you want, Addie," He sounded angry. 

Addison had never heard him so angry before. Again, it made her feel small, she felt like a kid being disciplined, being put in their place by their parent. In a way, Archer had been a better parent figure than the ones they already had. 

"This is about Beth," He said pointedly, "You need to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about our sister."

Our. 

Huh. 

Addison felt as though it was rich coming from Archer. This concerned brother was the same guy who had taken off in the middle of the tough times in New York. 

While Addison tried her best to get Beth into rehab, stop her from drowning herself in work, Archer had gone back to Connecticut to try and save their father's old clinic in their hometown. He hadn't raced back to help Addison put Beth back together— he didn't know how badly Beth had needed their help.

"That's funny," Addison said, her voice caught at the back of her throat. "Because sometimes, Beth is all I can think about. I think about the fact that I fucked her over every single day, Archie— sometimes, I feel so awful about everything that—"

"Don't," Archer interrupted. "You don't have to—"

"Don't what, exactly?" Addison repeated her word from earlier, but this time she felt angrier. Her fists clenched as she felt her temper flare. "Am I not allowed to speak now, is this what's going on—"

"Stop making yourself the victim."

Her mouth fell open.

"What?"

"This is about Beth," Archer didn't know how many times he could say those words without tearing his already thinning hair out. "She doesn't need your empty apologies or your remorse— feeling awful about what happened isn't going to achieve anything. It's just making everyone feel bad about being angry at you. It's gaslighting, all over again, and it needs to stop."

Addison just stared at him.

Victim. Addison didn't think that Archer understood what had happened. New York had been a catastrophe for people other than just Beth.

Sometimes, Addison felt like she'd left half of herself in that city— it was a shame too, that it stood for something that was so monumentally awful for all of them. The same time that Archer was telling her to stop talking about was the time that she'd lost her marriage, lost all of her social standing and had been turned out onto the streets by the people around her. 

She'd had to sit in a bed in Manhattan and watch her world crumble around her, with only her sister's ex-boyfriend for comfort— and then there'd been the aborted pregnancy. She felt as though she had the full right to be a victim of the consequences of her own actions.

Addison just continued her empty stare.

"You need to take responsibility for your affair," Archer continued, despite the fact that he could tell Addison was not happy. His chest heaved slightly with the effort of vocalise every thought that had flickered across his head in the last ten hours. "You were an adult. You knew what you were getting into when you decided to go after Mark in the first place. You don't have a right to feel awful."

"You weren't there... Arch," She muttered, trying to hold onto her pride as tightly as she could. "You don't understand—"

"Connecticut might feel like a lifetime away, but it wasn't," Archer denied, shaking his head in almost disappointment. He couldn't believe the Addison that was stood beside him. It was the Addison that had been teeming under the surface for the last twenty years. "Don't act like I wasn't there—"

"You didn't see her at her worst," Addison felt her chest tighten. "It was bad, Beth was gone—"

"And you deserve the sympathy of that situation over her?" This time, Archer just seemed curious. His eyebrows raised and Addison immediately denied that that was what she'd intended to say. "Really? That's what it sounds like— you know, everyone needs to stop holding her past against her and just let her move on with her life."

"Like it's that easy?" Addison said, almost laughing as she thought about it. "You remember how many times she relapsed, right? She's just like—"

"Don't compare her to our father."

She wished that he'd stop saying 'don't', it felt counterproductive. 

Archer was speaking so much, clearly sharing what was on his mind and he kept stopping Addison from sharing what was on hers. She was sure that if Beth had been here, that the psychiatrist would've reprimanded him. 

Their conversation was being mottled and twisted into something that made Addison want to leave the room immediately instead of following in through.

"I wasn't..." Addison denied, despite that they both knew that she would've. Her eyes flickered down to the floor. "But sometimes I do wonder whether it's genetic, like Beth's destined to follow his path—"

This time, Archer openly laughed. "Isn't it funny how you're the one that cheated? Not her." Addison's blood ran cold. "Did you inherit his gene as a cheating scumbag? Or was that just a choice you made?"

It stalled her completely. 

She felt frozen to the spot. 

She wondered whether this was what Beth had felt like when Derek had phoned her, when Derek had told her what Addison and Mark had done.

"Don't compare Beth to him," Archer repeated, his voice noticeably raw. He could see that his last comment had hit deep. He allowed himself to feel bad about it— he was sure that after a couple of days he'd apologise. But for now, it was an honest take. "If she heard that you'd even... thought about... she'd be so upset. You know she would be."

Addison didn't respond.

"Beth was nothing but faithful to Mark," He felt his own heart squeeze with the memory of how happy his sister had been during the good times of her relationship. "She cared about him so much and neither of us was blind to how much he cared about her in return. Her addictions... they weren't genetic, they were because Beth couldn't cope with what was expected of her. She tried so hard for all of us— and we kept pushing her to be better, to bring up the rear— that wasn't fair."

The guilt Archer felt over it was insurmountable, but he'd spent years reminding himself that Beth didn't need his remorse. It was the shittiest consolidation he could've given her; as if he'd run over her dog and given her a 'sorry' balloon for consolation.

"We didn't push her to do anything," Addison denied, shaking her head. She truly believed that she'd done nothing but looked out for her sister; the affair had been the one thing she regretted, the one time where she'd become too self-involved. "It was Beth's choice to get wrapped up in alcohol and drugs— it was Beth's choice to get involved with Amelia. I was Beth's choice to date Mark— she's an adult, Arch. We didn't force her to do anything—"

Archer just blinked at her. "Addison, our parents have used us for years. Forced us into doing things we don't want. I think you're forgetting that Beth didn't have to be a part of your social life back in Manhattan. She did it because you wanted her to."

"Really?" Addison said dryly. "You're blaming me for her addictions? My dinner parties and socials made her turn to opioids and amphetamines?"

He let out a long breath.

"I'm saying it didn't help," He couldn't understand why Addison had to be so difficult about this. "Beth should be held responsible for her actions, but we should also keep in mind that the pressure she was under... it's been five years and nothing has changed. We've never done anything to truly right our wrongs back in New York. I feel bad too, but I don't feel the need to constantly mention it—"

"Beth doesn't want your apology," Addison exhaled sharply, massaging her forehead once again. "She only hates me, not you. It's always been like that—"

"Addison, you slept with her boyfriend," Archer stared at her. He felt as though he was arguing with a brick wall. "The love of her life at the time–– You do realise that, right?"

She looked away.

"You gaslighted the hell out of her and slept with Mark behind her back... all while telling her that she was just being paranoid, telling her that maybe it was the withdrawal," Archer said tightly, "You took advantage of her, of Mark— You sent her to rehab for two months and while she was getting sober... you stole Mark. You replaced her— do you hear how fucked that sounds?"

Addison flinched.

It felt so raw. 

Archer spoke with determination with intervals of pure exhaustion. He was talking to someone who was refusing to take responsibility for her role in what had been the most stressful and catastrophic time in their lives. 

As a result of all of this, Addison had lost everyone she cared about; she'd detonated a suicide vest and she'd been the only one who'd came out alive. The only question was, had she cared about any of them in the first place?

More and more, Addison continued to remind Archer of their mother.

Addison had looked at the fractures of Mark and Beth's relationship and seen an opportunity to insert herself in. She'd looked at the split down the middle and instead of fixing things, (like a doctor should) she'd widened it. She'd placed herself into Beth's position, making sure to redirect all of Mark's (wandering like a lost animal) attention onto herself. 

She'd completely disregarded the consequences of what would happen— she'd been so self-involved with her own loneliness, the vacancy in each other's beds and she'd seen Mark as a Derek replacement. Derek and Beth hadn't had a chance.

Archer couldn't say much about Mark. 

He knew that once upon a time, the infamous sleaze had cared about Beth. It'd been enough for him to not get involved; Mark had loved Beth, Archer didn't deny that.  When it was good, it had been good. They'd complimented each other. They'd been the strongest couple as Addison and Derek started to crumble. 

But then the whole Addison situation baffled him. How quickly it had all turned was something that Archer could never understand; the cheating, the constant breaking up and getting back together that Beth and Mark had put up with other the years, it'd been dizzying. He didn't know whether Mark had cared about Beth at the end and to be honest, he didn't know whether he particularly cared. Either way, Mark had done one hell of a number on Archer's little sister.

One day, Archer was going to land a very nice punch in the middle of Mark's face and he was going to break that assholes nose, just like he'd promised.

"I'm going back to Seattle."

Addison had been deep in a pit of self-pity. 

She'd swirled there for a long moment but Archer's words were enough for her to raise her head and stare at him, taken aback. 

Going back? Archer had only just arrived— his suitcase was still next to him and he was still visibly exhausted from the journey. He ran a hand through his hair and turned on his heel, he seemed to ponder over something for a few moments. 

When he came to a conclusion he faced her again, fire blazing in his eyes.

"You're coming with me."

No. She thought. I can't.

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Look, you spout all of this... crap about how Beth nearly died back in New York and how you were there to help her," He let out a breath that he didn't even know that he was holding, "Addie, Beth nearly died two months ago. She was shot— she lost so much blood that she left a Jackson Pollock painting behind— Beth didn't need your help with Mark, but she did need when she went through open-heart surgery and recovery without any heavy-duty pain medication."

Addison was suddenly consumed with the same emotions that she'd felt every time her flight cropped up. It'd been a repetitive cycle over the last couple of weeks. 

She'd gotten close to her departure date, drank a bottle of wine and then cancelled it and filled her schedule so high that she hadn't had time to breathe (Oh, sorry, I've got quintuplets that are just begging to get out of... Would've loved to have made it but there's this pesky C-section that just...) It was the same feeling that filled her now, that had caused her to turn against Naomi's advice and bury her head under the sand instead.

Beth knew.

Mark had told her that Beth knew how much of a hypocrite Addison was.

Mark had told her that he'd let it slip that she'd coerced him into an apology, into a truce to settle the waters. Addison really had just wanted to help. Beth had hated that. She'd stopped answering Addison's calls.

Mark had also let it slip that Addison had slept with him when he'd come to LA, seeking her help. They'd had sex while Beth sat back in Seattle, believing Addison's words about how her sister would never do anything malicious with the intention of hurting her— for the first time since the fallout of New York, Addison hadn't thought about Beth. 

She'd thought about herself.

Addison had never told anyone this before: the thought of Beth hating her terrified her.

For so long, Beth had been her little sister, the person who had looked up to Addison, looked to her for guidance. Beth had been so much younger than Addison, there was such a sizeable age gap between them. 

They'd both struggled to navigate it— eight years wasn't easy, Addison hadn't been able to play with Beth as reckless children, by the time Beth was talking, Addison was already wrapped up in their mother's socialite, rigid fantasy. And yet, Beth had still considered Addison to be her role model. 

Addison supposed that Archer wasn't wrong: she'd modelled Beth after herself, dressed her up like one of her china dolls and often treated her younger sister as a commodity rather than a sibling.

She'd loved the unconditional adoration; but like the fragility of one of those dolls, Addison had shattered the unconditional love of a younger sibling. 

How could she be surprised? Addison had given Beth thousands of reasons to hate her.

Addison thought about all of this as Archer stood there in the centre of the room. By then, she'd slipped back into her desk, slumped so far down that her neck already throbbed from the position. She stared at the knots in the wood and thought about how humiliating it would be to turn up in Seattle— it was almost as poisonous as New York was, she didn't understand how Beth was still there. 

Seattle represented her failed attempts at damage control and it represented how she was the only person who hadn't survived New York.

Derek was fine now. Married, Addison had last heard, to his mistress, to the woman he'd left her for. Beth was fine too (albeit the near-death experience), she was with Charlie and living peacefully in sobriety with Mark next door. And Mark— last Addison had heard, he was surviving by not much, but at least he hadn't fled Seattle as shamefully as she had.

They were all doing so well. They were doing so well together.

Meanwhile, Addison was alone.

Well.

Sometimes, she forgot that Amy had come from New York too. 

To her, Amy seemed indestructible; in the nuclear war, she seemed to be some sort of cockroach, capable of surviving every hit that was sent her way. Amy was with Addison but they'd never considered each other friends— Amy was here because Amy couldn't be in Seattle. Reuniting Beth with her old best friend was a chemical reaction that Addison was sure not even Amy could survive. Addison did not consider Amy anything but an empty shell who was slowly hollowing herself because she hadn't made the same call to reform herself as Beth had.

It was all her fault, Addison knew that. 

It took two to tango but Mark had only been half alive when they'd started their affair and practically dead by the end. Addison was alone, now being ostracised by her own brother because she was too ashamed to cry by the hospital bed of her ailing sister—

"Okay."

Time resumed with that word.

Archer looked up from his hands; he'd been balling them down, deep into his pockets, trying to distract himself from the slow throb of his heart. He caught the way Addison's jaw clenched and her nostrils flared— at first he thought he'd misheard her. 

But then she nodded very slowly, the movement a little too mechanical to be anything but deeply ingrained into her subconscious.

"I'll go."

He nodded in return, mostly because he didn't want to say anything. For a moment, Archer was worried that if he was to say anything, she'd regret her decision and back out immediately. Her and Beth were more alike than they thought; both of them were stubborn and he'd expected much more of a fight. 

He'd expected to drag Addison onto that plane himself (well, maybe with his ex-girlfriend as backup) and maybe even fly the damn plane himself— in all honesty, Addison agreeing to coming to Seattle had been where his planning had stopped. He hadn't thought about what was going to come next.

"Good," Archer said tiredly, once he was sure that enough time had passed since Addison's agreement. "The flight is tomorrow at midday, you should pack enough for a few days— maybe more if you want."

And then he felt the need to say more.

"I need you to promise me, Addie," Her sad eyes lifted to watch as he lingered in the doorway. He'd trailed his suitcase behind him, intending to leave, but hesitated before he made it out of her apartment. "Don't meddle with Beth's life. I'm bringing you to Seattle because this is your opportunity to just... just be there for her."

He sighed.

"Beth is fine on her own— if anything, her going off to Canada proves that— she doesn't need your help, she doesn't need either of us," Archer swallowed, feeling the exhaustion sink deep into his pore, rattle at his bones. "But I know she appreciates us being there. It must've been so lonely for her to be so far away from her family for such a long time. She has a support system, she has Charlie and his family— but I know she appreciates her family being there if she ever needs us."

Addison could feel the weight behind his words. The very subtle beg. She felt her heart squeeze very tightly, as if Beth herself was in the room— she could imagine Beth thrusting her hand into her chest and ripping her heart straight from her chest. 

She could also imagine the same pleading buried in her sisters eyes. 

She parted her lips and then, very slowly she nodded.

"I'll promise."

It was a promise she intended to keep.

Or at least, it was at the time.

That was the funny thing about Addison's life. Whenever she fixed one hole, another one seemed to appear in front of her and drag her in.

As soon as Archer left, telling her that the taxi would be outside in the morning, Addison felt the world come crushing back onto her— she closed the door and stood against it for a long time, just listening to her heart as it raced in her chest. The vibration raced through her body— thump, thump, thump— filling her ears with what she could only describe as a biological chaos. She felt dizzy, overwhelmed by the conversation she'd just had. It had been so so much—

She really didn't want to go to Seattle.

It was only when she picked up her phone to tell Archer this, that she noticed a second vibration. Her phone spurred to life in her palm, lighting up with a caller that she definitely hadn't expected. 

Thus began her second hole, a gaping pit that started to form at her feet, promising to capsize her and pull her relationship with Beth six feet under for good.

"Derek?" 

Addison's confusion was laced with the strain of the last conversation she'd just had. She squinted across her empty apartment, a voice at the back of her mind telling her to get ready for a weekend in a hotel in Seattle. 

"I can't say I expected to hear from you—"

"Addie."

Derek sounded strained too. 

She checked her phone and saw the time— it was late, later than she'd realised. Archer had eaten up her evening. She wasn't sure when the business calls in surgery had a cut-off time but she felt as though 11pm was a little too late for a surgical request. 

Her heart thumped a little harder.

"Are you okay?" She asked warily. 

It was the old ghost of a wife's concern— of course, she'd heard that Derek had been shot too. She hadn't allowed herself to feel stressed over that. She couldn't think about Derek for too long otherwise she felt a migraine beginning.

"I need to talk to you about something."

"Right," Addison heaved a breath, suddenly feeling uneasy at his unsteady tone, "About what?"

It was because of the distance between them that Addison reasoned that there was nothing Derek could say that would throw her off balance.

But then he started speaking.

"Beth," Derek said, making her frowned into the darkness of her lonely home, "I think she did something bad— Addie, I need your help."

Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth.

Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad. Bad.

Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help. Help.

If Addison had paid close attention, she would've heard the ground splintering under her feet as Derek gouged out a hole that she would have a very hard time getting out of. 

Within five minutes, Addison had broken her promise to her brother. A switch flipped and her brain came into motion. The three words swum around her head endlessly 

(Beth. Bad. Help.)

Five minutes, that's all it had taken. 

It must've been a new World Record. 

Within five minutes, she let Derek's panicked breath, the sound of him clutching the receiver tightly and his unruly voice, sink deep into her brain and then she decided to jump headfirst into the abyss.

"What do you need?"