On Never Being Enough
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post Season 3 Finale, slightly AU in that Addison didn't move to LA but that's the only difference. For a fleeting moment she thinks that maybe this would be a mission better left to Meredith or somebody who actually knows her, except Addison thinks that the only person who really knows her isn’t going to be around to pick up the pieces from this.
Characters: Addison, Cristina primarily. Guest starring Alex, brief mentions of Meredith, Derek, Mark, Izzie, Naomi and Burke. Central to the ending of the Addison/Derek relationship and the Burke/Cristina relationship.
Disclaimer: These characters are property of Shonda Rhimes/ABC and Grey's Anatomy. They do not belong to me. Reimbursement is not received for fictitious works.
For Niceole. ♥ you.
Every once in a while, she sees light reflect off of the brass doorknob just so and thinks that he’s outside turning it; that Derek is coming back to her, coming to tell her that things will be okay and that they’ll work it all out.
Every time, she’s disappointed. Every time, it fuels more tears, more sobbing and another piece of her heart breaks.
Soon there will be nothing left.
A realization washes over her after the eighteenth time she’s held her breath to see the front door open that it’s not going to open. Derek is gone, he’s not coming back and this is her life now. She doesn’t know if she brought it upon herself or if it’s his fault.
Assigning blame isn’t something she wants to do right now; it’s in her nature to find solutions instead. Fix things. Make the bad go away.
Addison will find a way to make it all better.
----
First the P falls to the floor, followed by the R. E through S tears in half and tatters, wraps around the edge of the paint scraper and holds on for dear life. Annoyed, the maintenance man peels the last piece of Preston Burke away from his tool and tosses it to the floor before erasing the rest of his memory in irritated strokes and jabs.
Cristina watches from across the hallway, her arms half wrapped around herself and her gaze uncontrollably fixed on the destruction.
She tries to swallow but her throat is too tight. She tries to breathe but her lungs won’t expand.
It’s not like she actually cares, she quit caring weeks ago. Except for some reason she cares and it pisses her off and kills her all at the same time and she just wants to yell at him. She wants to yell and curse and throw things at him, all of which would actually require him being here, which clearly isn’t going to happen.
Some remote part of her brain tells her that it could happen and she squelches the thought. She doesn’t know where these little bits of optimism keep popping up from but she can’t seem to stop them and she hates it.
Maybe one day she’ll regain control over her brain.
Addison watches her from a few feet away and she tries to decide how to approach the situation. Cristina reminds Addison of herself, maybe in a very primitive form. She’s a little more rough around the edges, a little less emotional but the same elements are there.
Even if she doesn’t really know her.
For a fleeting moment she thinks that maybe this would be a mission better left to Meredith or somebody who actually knows her, except Addison thinks that the only person who really knows her isn’t going to be around to pick up the pieces from this.
Just as she did with Mark, Cristina would act like everything was totally fine with Meredith. It’s what you do with the people you love. Addison and Cristina weren’t the type of people to burden them with problems, they were the type to say that everything is fine and just go on.
No questions asked.
No, Addison has to be the one to do this.
She clears her throat and walks towards the petite woman, pretending to flip through a chart and she stops.
“Dr. Yang,” her voice is stern and professional, almost demeaning, “Am I interrupting your daydreaming?”
Cristina looks up then, straightens her posture and would probably feel some sort of warmth in her cheeks at being caught staring at his old office except her heart is barely beating. Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet when she answers.
“I don’t do dreaming.”
Addison smiles curtly at the comment and flips the chart closed, “Yes, well, whether it was daydreaming or some form of catatonia, I have things that I need you to do and staring off into space is not one of them.”
“I thought-“ Cristina starts but is just as quickly cut off.
“I don’t have time for your thoughts, Dr. Yang. I have a C-Section at seven, total abdominal hysterectomy with a bilateral salpingectomy and oopherectomy at nine-thirty, an ovarian torsion to be corrected at noon, another Cesarean at two, a cervical biopsy with possible hysterectomy at four-thirty and a full NICU to attend to. Go prep the patient in room 4880 and meet me in OR 1 in no more than ten minutes,” Addison rattles off at her.
Cristina’s eyes seem to brighten for just a moment before she rushes off to do what she’s told without a moment’s notice.
Addison knows it’s because she thinks that she can lose herself in surgery. She knows that Cristina thinks she can work herself into the ground and that somehow it will make everything better.
She also knows that it’s not enough.
Work is never enough.
----
It’s late when Addison drags into her house. She’s not sure how late it is but she knows that it’s that ungodly late hour of night where even the bars are closed. Her feet hurt, her back aches and her shoulders are stiff. Even her fingers are cramping and Addison is certain that her fingers haven’t cramped since her first year of residency.
Mark is asleep on the couch, an unopened bottle of wine lying next to him (as well as several emptied bottles of beer) and infomercials that no doubt transitioned from a Yankees’ game humming low on the TV.
Addison thinks that she should feel great. Not once today did she think of Derek, think of Mark being in the place where Derek should be. It was about saving lives, it was about being a thriving surgeon, a real name to be reckoned with.
Who needs a husband and a family when you’ve got recognition and staying power?
A soft snore floats from Mark’s form lumped on the couch and she slumps down next to him. She has this niggling feeling to tell him about her day and how absolutely amazing she is but then it would just lead to him touching her and wanting to kiss her and she doesn’t want to be kissed or touched.
Not by him.
Not tonight.
She thinks about Derek then, wonders if he would care about how she had conquered 20 hours straight in the OR. She wonders if he would have disrupted her with some story about how he operated on an inoperable brain tumor or informed her that she couldn’t be the right hand of God because he was. She wonders if he would have kissed her or touched her like Mark would.
The thoughts start to come on full force and she has no way of stopping them. She’s exhausted, worn to the very core and her defenses are gone. Her hands come up to fold over her mouth to stifle the unbidden sob that comes at her with the final thought that she’ll never know what Derek would have done because he’s not here.
He’s gone.
Addison climbs the stairs with tear-blurred vision and makes just inside their bedroom before she slumps to the floor. The tears overwhelm her and she just can’t fight them. She can’t fight the voice telling her that it’s not their bedroom anymore, not their bed.
She’s just too tired to fight.
--
Cristina is on a high and a low all at the same time. She’s exhilarated from all of the surgeries but at the same time she’s pretty sure that she can’t feel her toes and that she lost blood flow sometime after what was supposed to be lunch time. Her stomach rumbles and she slides her hand over the flat plane, thinking about what Burke made for dinner.
She freezes in her steps and closes her eyes, takes a deep breath to cleanse the horrifying thought from her mind and then keeps walking.
The logical explanation is that she’s exhausted. It’s been months since she has spent that much time in the OR and she’s never been allowed to do as much as Addison let her assist with. Exhaustion easily explains it and it was a welcome distraction, it’s not like she was thinking about it.
The slip-up was just that, a slip-up.
She thinks errantly that the only thing she has to do is convince the other attendings to let her work twenty hour days non-stop and that she’ll be just fine. Surgery is easily the cure for everything and it’s way more dependable than other people because somebody will always get hurt or do something stupid.
Other people will always be stupid and do something to hurt you.
Nearing the locker room, she settles on the carton of leftover Chinese in the refrigerator. She’s not really sure how old it is but it tasted fine yesterday morning and there wasn’t anything weird growing on it. Her pager goes off and she looks down to see it’s from Addison.
Part of her groans softly, her mouth having started to water at the thought of cold lo-mein and beer. The other part of her tells that part of her body to shut up and that it’s probably another surgery, which is what she needs.
Food isn’t really that much of a necessity.
Addison is standing in the very place that Cristina was twenty-one hours ago, a bag of carryout in her hand. Her eyes trace over the adhesive that, if you squint, still spells out Preston’s name and she feels sadness tug at her insides.
Nobody will miss him like Cristina does but he’ll still be missed.
When Cristina rounds the corner, she’s so exhausted that she walks right past Addison and toward the nurses’ station. Addison calls after her, Cristina’s name echoing off of the walls of the dimmed corridors.
Cristina turns then, looks in the direction from which her name is being called but it takes a minute for her eyes to focus. She really is exhausted. After she feels like she’s at least slightly oriented to her surroundings she approaches Addison, ignoring the nagging reminder from her stomach that she’s hungry.
Whatever food is in the bag that Addison is holding is going to kill her. Alternately, she may kill Addison and steal her food.
“Here,” Addison offers, holding the bag out. “I figured that you’d be hungry.”
Normally, Cristina would question this and tell her that she’s fine but her stomach is doing all the talking now and so she takes the bag almost too quickly. “Is this some sort of trick?” She asks while peering into the bag.
“No. No trick.”
“A bribe?”
Addison smirks and shakes her head slightly, “No. I just know. What it’s like to be where you’re at.”
“Yeah,” Cristina answers sarcastically, pulling a roll out of the bag, “You work here too.”
All it takes is Addison saying her name softly, almost in a chiding manner but not quite and Cristina looks up. There’s this rush of something that hits her and her defenses won’t come up quickly enough. Her fingers curl around the bag in her hand and she looks away.
The ghost of Burke’s name is the first thing her eyes fixate on.
“I’m just saying that I know what it’s like,” Addison says, “If you need somebody to talk to. Really talk to.”
The chance for a denial laced reply is blocked by the simple act of walking away. Addison doesn’t turn back to look at her or offer any other form of solace. She cannot give what is not wanted and she knows Cristina enough to know that it may take her a while to come around, to even consider opening up just slightly.
Addison also knows that if Cristina is anything like she was, suddenly that bag of food in her hand won’t be so appealing.
---
“What the hell is your problem?” Mark snaps at her.
A wine glass shatters to the floor when Addison spins to look at him, her voice is venom filled and her crystal eyes are laced with contempt. “My problem?” she scoffs, “What the hell is my problem? You’re the one invading every corner of my house. Your empty beer bottles are taking up all the space in the trashcan and I’ve watched more baseball in a week than I’ve wanted to ever see in my lifetime and you…you are everywhere. Why the hell are you everywhere?”
Mark recoils at her words, narrows his eyes. “You’re the one who asked me to be here.”
“No,” Addison spits, recounting her version for him, “You’re the one who came in and screwed this all up. You’re the one that had to push your way into my life and push him out. This was just some big thing with Derek. It was a game.”
Her words shake him to the core and he straightens his posture. His lips twist into a sneer as he chucks another empty beer bottle into the trash and then turns to look at her, “If this is a game, then I forfeit because the prize isn’t worth it.”
Addison’s eyes close and she holds her breath, waiting for the front door to slam shut. She knows the noise too well because it’s the same noise that has reverberated through her head for the past three weeks over and over again. When it closes quietly, she turns to look at it with tear stricken eyes and then takes in her empty surroundings.
At least now they match how she feels.
---
“Do you have to breathe so loudly?” Cristina mutters as she scribbles something down into a chart, “Or is it so difficult for you to remember inhale comes before exhale that you can’t control the volume?”
“Do you have to breathe?” Alex retorts, tossing his sandwich down. Somehow he’s become the victim of Cristina’s wrath today but he’s not going to sit back and take it like everybody else has.
“Alex, stop.” George chides.
“I’m not going to stop, I’m going to kick her ass.”
This earns a frustrated recital of his name from the table’s three other occupants and Meredith shoots him a glance to tell him to shut the hell up.
“Besides,” Izzie says, picking apart a cookie to get the chocolate chunks inside, “you’re not supposed to hit girls.”
“Good thing that Yang doesn’t qualify as a girl.” Alex sneers, sitting back down and picking up his sandwich. Tuna salad smears over his fingers and he lifts it to his lips, licking the food from his finger instead.
“Screw you, evil spawn.” Cristina mutters, making another note.
“You know what I think?” Alex announces to the entire table, more than addressing Cristina. “I think Burke was smart to get the hell away when he did. Nobody should have to put up with your shit for a lifetime.”
The color drains from Meredith’s face and Izzie’s mouth is frozen in a perfectly shaped ‘o’. George simply gets up and walks away because he doesn’t think that the reaction will be pretty.
Cristina’s pen slows to a stop and her grip tightens on it slightly but she doesn’t react otherwise. The petulant voices in her head add that to the list of reasons that he decided to skip town. There are no witty retorts playing at the end of her razor sharp tongue and no explanation to give those waiting with baited breath for her to say something.
“Dr. Karev,” Addison’s voice interjects, his name said in a pointed tone that’s reminiscent of the tone his high school principal used whenever he was being called out for doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. “Come with me.”
Alex glares at the three girls before he shoves his tray away and follows Addison through the cafeteria. He doesn’t know what he’s done now but he’s really tired of Addison busting his chops and if he didn’t know any better he would be sure that it had to do something with the whole barbeques and grilling and having a relationship thing that he didn’t want to have with her.
As a matter of fact, Alex was positive that it had to be that.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Karev?” Addison asks in a near hiss.
“I didn’t do anything!” Alex counters and is once again reminded of his teenage years.
“Announcing to the entire cafeteria that it was a good thing that Dr. Burke got away when he could?” Addison snaps at him, “Did you not learn anything about being sensitive while you were stuck on my service or do you need a refresher course?”
“Look, I’m not the bitch whisperer. No amount of time on your service is going to make that tolerable.”
Addison resists the urge to slap him. Instead, she pulls her glasses from her face just so he can see exactly how much she is glaring at him. “She’s hurt, Karev. Out of all of her friends, I would expect you to understand that the most.”
Alex knows that Addison is referencing Ava. Rebecca. Whatever her name is. Alex isn’t going to let it bother him because he’s fine and he doesn’t care about it, “Like I said,” he mutters, straightening out his lab jacket, “I’m not the bitch whisperer and I’m don’t care.”
He walks away before Addison can say anything else because he doesn’t care to discuss what he has or hasn’t lost. Honestly, he knows why Cristina is upset but he doesn’t excuse her behavior. If he can’t act out on his emotions, why the hell should she?
Feeling as if she’s at a loss, Addison looks back at the table. Cristina is sitting there alone now, her pen moving only slightly and she sees her heave a heavy sigh. She wants to reach out to her, to say things and hope that maybe she’ll understand why she’s saying them but she doesn’t expect Cristina to be receptive to it.
Not yet.
---
Addison is in an alcohol induced haze, the lights behind the bar sparkling through her bleary vision and reminding her of a nighttime sky littered with stars. Her nose is numb and she can’t really form words without really concentrating and she can’t feel the ache in her heart because there’s a churning in her stomach that accompanies drinking the amount of alcohol that she has.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
An undignified snort escapes her and Addison drunkenly wonders when she started making those kind of noises. Busy and The Captain would be horrified to see their daughter in this state, wouldn’t they?
They’d be even more horrified to know that their daughter was soon to be a divorcee.
She’d be shunned from family events for at least the next five years, though society never forgets. There would always be hushed whispers and pointed fingers. No matter how hard she’d worked in her life, she’d still be a disappointment to her mother and father simply because she couldn’t suffer through an unhappy marriage like they could.
“Talking about it would be easier,” Naomi prods, “You can’t just hold onto it, Addison. You have to let it out at some point.”
This earns a more profound reaction from Addison. She turns then, looks at Naomi and she’s thankful for the alcohol that’s keeping her numb. “I let go of it,” she states (or slurs) matter-of-factly, “I let go of it every night. In my cold empty bed, into my pillow that’s stained with runny mascara that claims to be waterproof, letting go of it is not the problem.”
Naomi frowns slightly at her explanation and before she can say anything, Addison sloppily places a hand over Naomi’s mouth to finish her statement.
“The problem, Naomi, is that every morning when I wake up, I swear that I feel his weight on the other side of the bed. And the sun comes in through the window just so that it warms up that side of the bed. So I can feel him there with me and the five seconds between waking up and opening my eyes is normal, everything is back to normal because he’s there and no matter what happened the night before I’m not in this alone. And then, then I open my eyes and I realize that he’s not there. I lose it all over again. Every day I lose him, Naomi. That’s the problem.”
Addison blindly reaches for her glass then and throws it back, straining for the droplets of alcohol still residing on the ice. She needs the alcohol to burn the back of her throat so she doesn’t feel the tears stinging in her eyes and the ache overtaking her heart.
So much for being numb.
---
Cristina throws back another glassful of some sort of concoction that Joe calls a mind-eraser. It’s never really done anything to erase anything. Really, the only thing it’s ever done is intensify all of it. She makes a sour face as it sears through her stomach and she puts her hand over her abdomen and fights back bile rising in her throat.
For a brief moment she wonders if always being on the verge of vomiting is really worth trying to forget him.
The nausea subsides quickly and she decides that it is.
She watches from the corner as her friends come in and she scoots farther into her booth, trying to disappear. Cristina doesn’t really recall a period in her life where she actually wanted to disappear and she tries to figure out how she gets out of that place.
Being invisible for the rest of her life doesn’t sound appealing to her at all.
The instant that Alex joins her, she wishes that she could take back that thought. Cristina starts to wave to Joe for another drink but drops her hand when Alex pushes one to her, “What the hell is this?”
“It’s called beer. Shut up and drink it.”
“Did you spit in it?”
Alex sneers at her and lifts his own, “Even if I did, you’re too fucking gone to notice.”
Cristina accepts this reasoning and raises the bottle to her lips. The second it lands on top of the mind-whatever, she knows that she’ll pay for it sooner rather than later but she doesn’t care. Vomiting is better than crying any day.
“Look,” Alex starts, putting his beer aside, “I know that it sucks. You can roll your eyes or make those weird noises that you make but I know that it sucks. Maybe Ava wasn’t the same-“
“I don’t think about it. I don’t know why you think that I even care,” Cristina says, waving her hand dismissively.
“Because you’re half a person, that’s why I know you care. You sulk around the hospital and you’re more of a bitch than normal. The only person who doesn’t know that you care is you. Just shut the fuck up and let me finish,” He cuts her off, already wondering why the hell he even tried to say anything.
She doesn’t answer to that, only looks at him expectantly like he can tell her something about her life that she doesn’t already know.
She’s tired of people trying to pretend that they care.
“It sucks but this thing you’re doing? The sulking and the bitching and the working and the drinking is not why he left. He left because he wanted you to be happy. Or at least Meredith says that’s what his lame excuse was.”
Cristina looks down then, her curls falling in dark tendrils to hide her expression from him. She picks at the hem of her shirt beneath the table and wiggles her toes back and forth as if focusing her energy into movement will be enough to divert her emotions from surfacing.
“I don’t care,” she finally says again and her voice is weak, almost broken.
Alex doesn’t have the patience for it, to deal with her denial and his so he leaves her sitting alone in the corner with a muttered whatever tossed over his shoulder. He tried to be a human being and it clearly doesn’t work with her.
Not that he ever thought that it would.
After she’s sure that he’s gone, Cristina raises her eyes to look in his direction and feels dampness at the corner of her eye but refuses to wipe it away. Wiping it away acknowledges that it’s showing some form of emotion for him, for everything that’s happened and she’s not that weak.
She doesn’t care.
---
Addison remembers looking at the woman Derek had been spending his time with and thinking what the hell was so great about her. She remembers the way that he no longer looked like a high-class, uptight, sophisticated neurosurgeon but rather some lumberjack form of Russell Crowe.
She smiles briefly and then it fades when she remembers how seeing him again caused her stomach to flutter the same way it did when they first met.
Derek clearly didn’t share the sentiment.
She remembers how she battled for just another chance to make it up to him. Addison remembers the struggle to just get him to speak to her without tossing in some form of insult, without cutting her with his words.
At one point, she couldn’t decide if the pain of his insults was worse than actually being without him.
There was love though, she loved him. He still gave her that feeling, she still longed to be in his arms and to kiss him and to share his bed. Addison knew at the time that it had to mean something that she still had those feelings.
Addison stands at the top of the stairs, watching Derek with the new love of his life now and sees the way that he looks at Meredith. He never looked at her like that, not one day in their marriage does she remember him looking at her so lovingly.
Like a well cherished possession, maybe, but never with that passionate intensity.
A soft sigh leaves her lips and her shoulders sag softly when she realizes that even if he didn’t look at her like that, even if she knew that he didn’t love her the way that he loves Meredith, she would still give him another chance and another one after that. She knows that she will never compare to the wiry haired woman before her and though she will never understood why, it doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t try.
For some reason, she still loves Derek and she will never stop.
---
Cristina stands in front of the bulletin board and she looks at his picture. There are words on the article and she’s read them once but she doesn’t want to acknowledge them right now. It’s too much to think about the implications and the second wave of hurt that only adds to the tide she’s already drowning under.
It’s supposed to be a professional picture but even when he was being professional, there was this small smile to his lips that she could discern. Maybe it was because they tried being professional at work and keeping their distance and she started interpreting that small smile as something else. His eyes, in grainy black and white ink, still penetrate her. They pull at her being, they whisper things in her ear and she can still clearly hear the sound of his voice in her head.
She shivers slightly at the things that she remembers him saying while wearing that very expression.
Her throat constricts slightly and Cristina knows that she cares and she hates how much she cares. She hates how much she hates him and loves him all at the same time. She hates how she feels like the only person in the hospital who can see her isn’t really a person but a picture on an article.
The picture is an old one, Cristina knows this for sure. She remembers teasing him for looking like a dork in it and the ensuing evening afterwards. She wonders if they had taken a new picture if his shoulders would be as broad or if there would be a certain sag to them. She wonders if the light in his eyes would be dulled like hers is.
She wonders if he cares like she does.
“It won’t be enough for him,” Addison comments from behind Cristina.
Cristina straightens out and looks at the ad next to the picture, seeking a roommate and then she looks back towards the article, “What? What are you talking about?”
Addison smiles sadly and shakes her head, “The Harper Avery. It won’t be enough. Not for Preston. The accolades, the surgery, the working, the coping- none of it is ever enough. It’s not enough for him and it’s not enough for you.”
“I don’t’ know what you’re talking about,” Cristina mutters, turning away from her.
It’s bold but Addison reaches out and manages to snag the back of her arm by the rough material of her lab coat, “You know what I’m talking about.”
Cristina looks back at her, eyes shimmering. Of course she knows what she’s talking about. She’s not stupid and she’s not blind. Every time Addison has been there, working her into the ground or putting her on scut for days at a time, she’s noticed. She’s seen Addison tearing into Alex for his mini-tirade and then for chiding him for giving up so easily at Joe’s.
She most definitely knows, she just doesn’t care. Or she doesn’t want to. She’s not really sure this time because she’s tired and everything is blurry and Burke is sitting right there staring at her trying to fight it all back and if he were really here, he would know that she cared.
He would know that she’s been doing everything that he has and none of it has been enough.
“I tried,” Cristina finally says, not looking at Addison but at the grainy photograph. “I tried for him. I hid things and I made concessions and I did everything that I could. It wasn’t enough.”
Addison smiles sadly, looking at the back of her head. “It’s never enough. I tried for Derek. I made concessions, let go of dreams, tried to be something I couldn’t-“
“Shepherd is an ass,” she interjects.
“I’d give him another chance in a second,” Addison admits. “You’d give him a chance. It’s what we do. We can’t fail. We have to get it right. If we’re not enough, we pick up and we try again. Failure is not an option.”
Cristina looks at her, uncomfortable with how Addison understands exactly what it is that’s going through her mind.
“I still love Derek,” she continues, “I see him with Meredith and I wonder what I could have done differently to make it work. Even after all this time. It’s a constant analysis of what you did wrong. What they did doesn’t even come into account.”
“I want it to stop,” Cristina remarks idly, “I don’t want to care.”
“It won’t. You always will.”
Disappointment and frustration traces Cristina’s features subtly and she glances down at the ground, “The thing is I keep going back and thinking about what I did wrong, where I screwed up and I can’t figure it out. I can’t pinpoint it to one exact thing. There are little things but I keep trying to put it together and it doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. One minute he’s there and I’m in this dress and I’m trying to remember vows and trying to make him go back up the aisle and the next he’s gone and I can’t make it…make sense.”
“There’s only one person who can offer you that explanation,” Addison says softly, “and I’m not that person.”
Cristina looks back at the picture and then down to the floor knowing that she’ll never get that explanation. “So what? Don’t forget but don’t think about it and hope it’s enough?”
“It won’t ever be enough.”
“Then what?”
Addison shakes her head, “I wish I could tell you what’s enough. I’m still trying to figure that part out. But I can tell you that you have to try, even if you don’t know what you’re trying for. You can’t just give up and fade away.”
With a soft sigh, Cristina looks up at the article again and pulls it down from the bulletin board. Her eyes trace over the words Harper Avery and the lack of her name stings once again, except this time frustration and anger mingle with it.
Finally, she speaks as she drops the article into the trash. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all you can do.”
The young woman seems to be content with this amount of acceptance from her superior and starts to walk away when Addison calls after her again.
“I know that I’m not really a friend and that Meredith maybe considers me the enemy,” Addison offers in an awkward tone, “but I do know what it’s like. I know more than Meredith does, more than Alex does. I know that you’re a person who doesn’t talk Cristina but if you ever feel like you do want to- talk, I mean. I can listen.”
She leaves out the part about how it would be nice to simply talk back to somebody who understands exactly where she’s coming from, doubting that Cristina has any free available emotions to appeal to right now, if she were the type of person to respond to an emotional appeal.
Cristina doesn’t really respond to the positive or the negative, only thanks her and walks away.
Addison would like to think that maybe she’s helped her just a little bit through all of this, even if it isn’t some sort of magical redemption, even if she doesn’t have all of the answers. As much as Addison wants to make it all go away, make it all better, she knows that her obscure amount of advice really isn’t enough.
Nothing ever is.
Summary: Post Season 3 Finale, slightly AU in that Addison didn't move to LA but that's the only difference. For a fleeting moment she thinks that maybe this would be a mission better left to Meredith or somebody who actually knows her, except Addison thinks that the only person who really knows her isn’t going to be around to pick up the pieces from this.
Characters: Addison, Cristina primarily. Guest starring Alex, brief mentions of Meredith, Derek, Mark, Izzie, Naomi and Burke. Central to the ending of the Addison/Derek relationship and the Burke/Cristina relationship.
Disclaimer: These characters are property of Shonda Rhimes/ABC and Grey's Anatomy. They do not belong to me. Reimbursement is not received for fictitious works.
For Niceole. ♥ you.
Every once in a while, she sees light reflect off of the brass doorknob just so and thinks that he’s outside turning it; that Derek is coming back to her, coming to tell her that things will be okay and that they’ll work it all out.
Every time, she’s disappointed. Every time, it fuels more tears, more sobbing and another piece of her heart breaks.
Soon there will be nothing left.
A realization washes over her after the eighteenth time she’s held her breath to see the front door open that it’s not going to open. Derek is gone, he’s not coming back and this is her life now. She doesn’t know if she brought it upon herself or if it’s his fault.
Assigning blame isn’t something she wants to do right now; it’s in her nature to find solutions instead. Fix things. Make the bad go away.
Addison will find a way to make it all better.
----
First the P falls to the floor, followed by the R. E through S tears in half and tatters, wraps around the edge of the paint scraper and holds on for dear life. Annoyed, the maintenance man peels the last piece of Preston Burke away from his tool and tosses it to the floor before erasing the rest of his memory in irritated strokes and jabs.
Cristina watches from across the hallway, her arms half wrapped around herself and her gaze uncontrollably fixed on the destruction.
She tries to swallow but her throat is too tight. She tries to breathe but her lungs won’t expand.
It’s not like she actually cares, she quit caring weeks ago. Except for some reason she cares and it pisses her off and kills her all at the same time and she just wants to yell at him. She wants to yell and curse and throw things at him, all of which would actually require him being here, which clearly isn’t going to happen.
Some remote part of her brain tells her that it could happen and she squelches the thought. She doesn’t know where these little bits of optimism keep popping up from but she can’t seem to stop them and she hates it.
Maybe one day she’ll regain control over her brain.
Addison watches her from a few feet away and she tries to decide how to approach the situation. Cristina reminds Addison of herself, maybe in a very primitive form. She’s a little more rough around the edges, a little less emotional but the same elements are there.
Even if she doesn’t really know her.
For a fleeting moment she thinks that maybe this would be a mission better left to Meredith or somebody who actually knows her, except Addison thinks that the only person who really knows her isn’t going to be around to pick up the pieces from this.
Just as she did with Mark, Cristina would act like everything was totally fine with Meredith. It’s what you do with the people you love. Addison and Cristina weren’t the type of people to burden them with problems, they were the type to say that everything is fine and just go on.
No questions asked.
No, Addison has to be the one to do this.
She clears her throat and walks towards the petite woman, pretending to flip through a chart and she stops.
“Dr. Yang,” her voice is stern and professional, almost demeaning, “Am I interrupting your daydreaming?”
Cristina looks up then, straightens her posture and would probably feel some sort of warmth in her cheeks at being caught staring at his old office except her heart is barely beating. Her voice is uncharacteristically quiet when she answers.
“I don’t do dreaming.”
Addison smiles curtly at the comment and flips the chart closed, “Yes, well, whether it was daydreaming or some form of catatonia, I have things that I need you to do and staring off into space is not one of them.”
“I thought-“ Cristina starts but is just as quickly cut off.
“I don’t have time for your thoughts, Dr. Yang. I have a C-Section at seven, total abdominal hysterectomy with a bilateral salpingectomy and oopherectomy at nine-thirty, an ovarian torsion to be corrected at noon, another Cesarean at two, a cervical biopsy with possible hysterectomy at four-thirty and a full NICU to attend to. Go prep the patient in room 4880 and meet me in OR 1 in no more than ten minutes,” Addison rattles off at her.
Cristina’s eyes seem to brighten for just a moment before she rushes off to do what she’s told without a moment’s notice.
Addison knows it’s because she thinks that she can lose herself in surgery. She knows that Cristina thinks she can work herself into the ground and that somehow it will make everything better.
She also knows that it’s not enough.
Work is never enough.
----
It’s late when Addison drags into her house. She’s not sure how late it is but she knows that it’s that ungodly late hour of night where even the bars are closed. Her feet hurt, her back aches and her shoulders are stiff. Even her fingers are cramping and Addison is certain that her fingers haven’t cramped since her first year of residency.
Mark is asleep on the couch, an unopened bottle of wine lying next to him (as well as several emptied bottles of beer) and infomercials that no doubt transitioned from a Yankees’ game humming low on the TV.
Addison thinks that she should feel great. Not once today did she think of Derek, think of Mark being in the place where Derek should be. It was about saving lives, it was about being a thriving surgeon, a real name to be reckoned with.
Who needs a husband and a family when you’ve got recognition and staying power?
A soft snore floats from Mark’s form lumped on the couch and she slumps down next to him. She has this niggling feeling to tell him about her day and how absolutely amazing she is but then it would just lead to him touching her and wanting to kiss her and she doesn’t want to be kissed or touched.
Not by him.
Not tonight.
She thinks about Derek then, wonders if he would care about how she had conquered 20 hours straight in the OR. She wonders if he would have disrupted her with some story about how he operated on an inoperable brain tumor or informed her that she couldn’t be the right hand of God because he was. She wonders if he would have kissed her or touched her like Mark would.
The thoughts start to come on full force and she has no way of stopping them. She’s exhausted, worn to the very core and her defenses are gone. Her hands come up to fold over her mouth to stifle the unbidden sob that comes at her with the final thought that she’ll never know what Derek would have done because he’s not here.
He’s gone.
Addison climbs the stairs with tear-blurred vision and makes just inside their bedroom before she slumps to the floor. The tears overwhelm her and she just can’t fight them. She can’t fight the voice telling her that it’s not their bedroom anymore, not their bed.
She’s just too tired to fight.
--
Cristina is on a high and a low all at the same time. She’s exhilarated from all of the surgeries but at the same time she’s pretty sure that she can’t feel her toes and that she lost blood flow sometime after what was supposed to be lunch time. Her stomach rumbles and she slides her hand over the flat plane, thinking about what Burke made for dinner.
She freezes in her steps and closes her eyes, takes a deep breath to cleanse the horrifying thought from her mind and then keeps walking.
The logical explanation is that she’s exhausted. It’s been months since she has spent that much time in the OR and she’s never been allowed to do as much as Addison let her assist with. Exhaustion easily explains it and it was a welcome distraction, it’s not like she was thinking about it.
The slip-up was just that, a slip-up.
She thinks errantly that the only thing she has to do is convince the other attendings to let her work twenty hour days non-stop and that she’ll be just fine. Surgery is easily the cure for everything and it’s way more dependable than other people because somebody will always get hurt or do something stupid.
Other people will always be stupid and do something to hurt you.
Nearing the locker room, she settles on the carton of leftover Chinese in the refrigerator. She’s not really sure how old it is but it tasted fine yesterday morning and there wasn’t anything weird growing on it. Her pager goes off and she looks down to see it’s from Addison.
Part of her groans softly, her mouth having started to water at the thought of cold lo-mein and beer. The other part of her tells that part of her body to shut up and that it’s probably another surgery, which is what she needs.
Food isn’t really that much of a necessity.
Addison is standing in the very place that Cristina was twenty-one hours ago, a bag of carryout in her hand. Her eyes trace over the adhesive that, if you squint, still spells out Preston’s name and she feels sadness tug at her insides.
Nobody will miss him like Cristina does but he’ll still be missed.
When Cristina rounds the corner, she’s so exhausted that she walks right past Addison and toward the nurses’ station. Addison calls after her, Cristina’s name echoing off of the walls of the dimmed corridors.
Cristina turns then, looks in the direction from which her name is being called but it takes a minute for her eyes to focus. She really is exhausted. After she feels like she’s at least slightly oriented to her surroundings she approaches Addison, ignoring the nagging reminder from her stomach that she’s hungry.
Whatever food is in the bag that Addison is holding is going to kill her. Alternately, she may kill Addison and steal her food.
“Here,” Addison offers, holding the bag out. “I figured that you’d be hungry.”
Normally, Cristina would question this and tell her that she’s fine but her stomach is doing all the talking now and so she takes the bag almost too quickly. “Is this some sort of trick?” She asks while peering into the bag.
“No. No trick.”
“A bribe?”
Addison smirks and shakes her head slightly, “No. I just know. What it’s like to be where you’re at.”
“Yeah,” Cristina answers sarcastically, pulling a roll out of the bag, “You work here too.”
All it takes is Addison saying her name softly, almost in a chiding manner but not quite and Cristina looks up. There’s this rush of something that hits her and her defenses won’t come up quickly enough. Her fingers curl around the bag in her hand and she looks away.
The ghost of Burke’s name is the first thing her eyes fixate on.
“I’m just saying that I know what it’s like,” Addison says, “If you need somebody to talk to. Really talk to.”
The chance for a denial laced reply is blocked by the simple act of walking away. Addison doesn’t turn back to look at her or offer any other form of solace. She cannot give what is not wanted and she knows Cristina enough to know that it may take her a while to come around, to even consider opening up just slightly.
Addison also knows that if Cristina is anything like she was, suddenly that bag of food in her hand won’t be so appealing.
---
“What the hell is your problem?” Mark snaps at her.
A wine glass shatters to the floor when Addison spins to look at him, her voice is venom filled and her crystal eyes are laced with contempt. “My problem?” she scoffs, “What the hell is my problem? You’re the one invading every corner of my house. Your empty beer bottles are taking up all the space in the trashcan and I’ve watched more baseball in a week than I’ve wanted to ever see in my lifetime and you…you are everywhere. Why the hell are you everywhere?”
Mark recoils at her words, narrows his eyes. “You’re the one who asked me to be here.”
“No,” Addison spits, recounting her version for him, “You’re the one who came in and screwed this all up. You’re the one that had to push your way into my life and push him out. This was just some big thing with Derek. It was a game.”
Her words shake him to the core and he straightens his posture. His lips twist into a sneer as he chucks another empty beer bottle into the trash and then turns to look at her, “If this is a game, then I forfeit because the prize isn’t worth it.”
Addison’s eyes close and she holds her breath, waiting for the front door to slam shut. She knows the noise too well because it’s the same noise that has reverberated through her head for the past three weeks over and over again. When it closes quietly, she turns to look at it with tear stricken eyes and then takes in her empty surroundings.
At least now they match how she feels.
---
“Do you have to breathe so loudly?” Cristina mutters as she scribbles something down into a chart, “Or is it so difficult for you to remember inhale comes before exhale that you can’t control the volume?”
“Do you have to breathe?” Alex retorts, tossing his sandwich down. Somehow he’s become the victim of Cristina’s wrath today but he’s not going to sit back and take it like everybody else has.
“Alex, stop.” George chides.
“I’m not going to stop, I’m going to kick her ass.”
This earns a frustrated recital of his name from the table’s three other occupants and Meredith shoots him a glance to tell him to shut the hell up.
“Besides,” Izzie says, picking apart a cookie to get the chocolate chunks inside, “you’re not supposed to hit girls.”
“Good thing that Yang doesn’t qualify as a girl.” Alex sneers, sitting back down and picking up his sandwich. Tuna salad smears over his fingers and he lifts it to his lips, licking the food from his finger instead.
“Screw you, evil spawn.” Cristina mutters, making another note.
“You know what I think?” Alex announces to the entire table, more than addressing Cristina. “I think Burke was smart to get the hell away when he did. Nobody should have to put up with your shit for a lifetime.”
The color drains from Meredith’s face and Izzie’s mouth is frozen in a perfectly shaped ‘o’. George simply gets up and walks away because he doesn’t think that the reaction will be pretty.
Cristina’s pen slows to a stop and her grip tightens on it slightly but she doesn’t react otherwise. The petulant voices in her head add that to the list of reasons that he decided to skip town. There are no witty retorts playing at the end of her razor sharp tongue and no explanation to give those waiting with baited breath for her to say something.
“Dr. Karev,” Addison’s voice interjects, his name said in a pointed tone that’s reminiscent of the tone his high school principal used whenever he was being called out for doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. “Come with me.”
Alex glares at the three girls before he shoves his tray away and follows Addison through the cafeteria. He doesn’t know what he’s done now but he’s really tired of Addison busting his chops and if he didn’t know any better he would be sure that it had to do something with the whole barbeques and grilling and having a relationship thing that he didn’t want to have with her.
As a matter of fact, Alex was positive that it had to be that.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Karev?” Addison asks in a near hiss.
“I didn’t do anything!” Alex counters and is once again reminded of his teenage years.
“Announcing to the entire cafeteria that it was a good thing that Dr. Burke got away when he could?” Addison snaps at him, “Did you not learn anything about being sensitive while you were stuck on my service or do you need a refresher course?”
“Look, I’m not the bitch whisperer. No amount of time on your service is going to make that tolerable.”
Addison resists the urge to slap him. Instead, she pulls her glasses from her face just so he can see exactly how much she is glaring at him. “She’s hurt, Karev. Out of all of her friends, I would expect you to understand that the most.”
Alex knows that Addison is referencing Ava. Rebecca. Whatever her name is. Alex isn’t going to let it bother him because he’s fine and he doesn’t care about it, “Like I said,” he mutters, straightening out his lab jacket, “I’m not the bitch whisperer and I’m don’t care.”
He walks away before Addison can say anything else because he doesn’t care to discuss what he has or hasn’t lost. Honestly, he knows why Cristina is upset but he doesn’t excuse her behavior. If he can’t act out on his emotions, why the hell should she?
Feeling as if she’s at a loss, Addison looks back at the table. Cristina is sitting there alone now, her pen moving only slightly and she sees her heave a heavy sigh. She wants to reach out to her, to say things and hope that maybe she’ll understand why she’s saying them but she doesn’t expect Cristina to be receptive to it.
Not yet.
---
Addison is in an alcohol induced haze, the lights behind the bar sparkling through her bleary vision and reminding her of a nighttime sky littered with stars. Her nose is numb and she can’t really form words without really concentrating and she can’t feel the ache in her heart because there’s a churning in her stomach that accompanies drinking the amount of alcohol that she has.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
An undignified snort escapes her and Addison drunkenly wonders when she started making those kind of noises. Busy and The Captain would be horrified to see their daughter in this state, wouldn’t they?
They’d be even more horrified to know that their daughter was soon to be a divorcee.
She’d be shunned from family events for at least the next five years, though society never forgets. There would always be hushed whispers and pointed fingers. No matter how hard she’d worked in her life, she’d still be a disappointment to her mother and father simply because she couldn’t suffer through an unhappy marriage like they could.
“Talking about it would be easier,” Naomi prods, “You can’t just hold onto it, Addison. You have to let it out at some point.”
This earns a more profound reaction from Addison. She turns then, looks at Naomi and she’s thankful for the alcohol that’s keeping her numb. “I let go of it,” she states (or slurs) matter-of-factly, “I let go of it every night. In my cold empty bed, into my pillow that’s stained with runny mascara that claims to be waterproof, letting go of it is not the problem.”
Naomi frowns slightly at her explanation and before she can say anything, Addison sloppily places a hand over Naomi’s mouth to finish her statement.
“The problem, Naomi, is that every morning when I wake up, I swear that I feel his weight on the other side of the bed. And the sun comes in through the window just so that it warms up that side of the bed. So I can feel him there with me and the five seconds between waking up and opening my eyes is normal, everything is back to normal because he’s there and no matter what happened the night before I’m not in this alone. And then, then I open my eyes and I realize that he’s not there. I lose it all over again. Every day I lose him, Naomi. That’s the problem.”
Addison blindly reaches for her glass then and throws it back, straining for the droplets of alcohol still residing on the ice. She needs the alcohol to burn the back of her throat so she doesn’t feel the tears stinging in her eyes and the ache overtaking her heart.
So much for being numb.
---
Cristina throws back another glassful of some sort of concoction that Joe calls a mind-eraser. It’s never really done anything to erase anything. Really, the only thing it’s ever done is intensify all of it. She makes a sour face as it sears through her stomach and she puts her hand over her abdomen and fights back bile rising in her throat.
For a brief moment she wonders if always being on the verge of vomiting is really worth trying to forget him.
The nausea subsides quickly and she decides that it is.
She watches from the corner as her friends come in and she scoots farther into her booth, trying to disappear. Cristina doesn’t really recall a period in her life where she actually wanted to disappear and she tries to figure out how she gets out of that place.
Being invisible for the rest of her life doesn’t sound appealing to her at all.
The instant that Alex joins her, she wishes that she could take back that thought. Cristina starts to wave to Joe for another drink but drops her hand when Alex pushes one to her, “What the hell is this?”
“It’s called beer. Shut up and drink it.”
“Did you spit in it?”
Alex sneers at her and lifts his own, “Even if I did, you’re too fucking gone to notice.”
Cristina accepts this reasoning and raises the bottle to her lips. The second it lands on top of the mind-whatever, she knows that she’ll pay for it sooner rather than later but she doesn’t care. Vomiting is better than crying any day.
“Look,” Alex starts, putting his beer aside, “I know that it sucks. You can roll your eyes or make those weird noises that you make but I know that it sucks. Maybe Ava wasn’t the same-“
“I don’t think about it. I don’t know why you think that I even care,” Cristina says, waving her hand dismissively.
“Because you’re half a person, that’s why I know you care. You sulk around the hospital and you’re more of a bitch than normal. The only person who doesn’t know that you care is you. Just shut the fuck up and let me finish,” He cuts her off, already wondering why the hell he even tried to say anything.
She doesn’t answer to that, only looks at him expectantly like he can tell her something about her life that she doesn’t already know.
She’s tired of people trying to pretend that they care.
“It sucks but this thing you’re doing? The sulking and the bitching and the working and the drinking is not why he left. He left because he wanted you to be happy. Or at least Meredith says that’s what his lame excuse was.”
Cristina looks down then, her curls falling in dark tendrils to hide her expression from him. She picks at the hem of her shirt beneath the table and wiggles her toes back and forth as if focusing her energy into movement will be enough to divert her emotions from surfacing.
“I don’t care,” she finally says again and her voice is weak, almost broken.
Alex doesn’t have the patience for it, to deal with her denial and his so he leaves her sitting alone in the corner with a muttered whatever tossed over his shoulder. He tried to be a human being and it clearly doesn’t work with her.
Not that he ever thought that it would.
After she’s sure that he’s gone, Cristina raises her eyes to look in his direction and feels dampness at the corner of her eye but refuses to wipe it away. Wiping it away acknowledges that it’s showing some form of emotion for him, for everything that’s happened and she’s not that weak.
She doesn’t care.
---
Addison remembers looking at the woman Derek had been spending his time with and thinking what the hell was so great about her. She remembers the way that he no longer looked like a high-class, uptight, sophisticated neurosurgeon but rather some lumberjack form of Russell Crowe.
She smiles briefly and then it fades when she remembers how seeing him again caused her stomach to flutter the same way it did when they first met.
Derek clearly didn’t share the sentiment.
She remembers how she battled for just another chance to make it up to him. Addison remembers the struggle to just get him to speak to her without tossing in some form of insult, without cutting her with his words.
At one point, she couldn’t decide if the pain of his insults was worse than actually being without him.
There was love though, she loved him. He still gave her that feeling, she still longed to be in his arms and to kiss him and to share his bed. Addison knew at the time that it had to mean something that she still had those feelings.
Addison stands at the top of the stairs, watching Derek with the new love of his life now and sees the way that he looks at Meredith. He never looked at her like that, not one day in their marriage does she remember him looking at her so lovingly.
Like a well cherished possession, maybe, but never with that passionate intensity.
A soft sigh leaves her lips and her shoulders sag softly when she realizes that even if he didn’t look at her like that, even if she knew that he didn’t love her the way that he loves Meredith, she would still give him another chance and another one after that. She knows that she will never compare to the wiry haired woman before her and though she will never understood why, it doesn’t mean that she wouldn’t try.
For some reason, she still loves Derek and she will never stop.
---
Cristina stands in front of the bulletin board and she looks at his picture. There are words on the article and she’s read them once but she doesn’t want to acknowledge them right now. It’s too much to think about the implications and the second wave of hurt that only adds to the tide she’s already drowning under.
It’s supposed to be a professional picture but even when he was being professional, there was this small smile to his lips that she could discern. Maybe it was because they tried being professional at work and keeping their distance and she started interpreting that small smile as something else. His eyes, in grainy black and white ink, still penetrate her. They pull at her being, they whisper things in her ear and she can still clearly hear the sound of his voice in her head.
She shivers slightly at the things that she remembers him saying while wearing that very expression.
Her throat constricts slightly and Cristina knows that she cares and she hates how much she cares. She hates how much she hates him and loves him all at the same time. She hates how she feels like the only person in the hospital who can see her isn’t really a person but a picture on an article.
The picture is an old one, Cristina knows this for sure. She remembers teasing him for looking like a dork in it and the ensuing evening afterwards. She wonders if they had taken a new picture if his shoulders would be as broad or if there would be a certain sag to them. She wonders if the light in his eyes would be dulled like hers is.
She wonders if he cares like she does.
“It won’t be enough for him,” Addison comments from behind Cristina.
Cristina straightens out and looks at the ad next to the picture, seeking a roommate and then she looks back towards the article, “What? What are you talking about?”
Addison smiles sadly and shakes her head, “The Harper Avery. It won’t be enough. Not for Preston. The accolades, the surgery, the working, the coping- none of it is ever enough. It’s not enough for him and it’s not enough for you.”
“I don’t’ know what you’re talking about,” Cristina mutters, turning away from her.
It’s bold but Addison reaches out and manages to snag the back of her arm by the rough material of her lab coat, “You know what I’m talking about.”
Cristina looks back at her, eyes shimmering. Of course she knows what she’s talking about. She’s not stupid and she’s not blind. Every time Addison has been there, working her into the ground or putting her on scut for days at a time, she’s noticed. She’s seen Addison tearing into Alex for his mini-tirade and then for chiding him for giving up so easily at Joe’s.
She most definitely knows, she just doesn’t care. Or she doesn’t want to. She’s not really sure this time because she’s tired and everything is blurry and Burke is sitting right there staring at her trying to fight it all back and if he were really here, he would know that she cared.
He would know that she’s been doing everything that he has and none of it has been enough.
“I tried,” Cristina finally says, not looking at Addison but at the grainy photograph. “I tried for him. I hid things and I made concessions and I did everything that I could. It wasn’t enough.”
Addison smiles sadly, looking at the back of her head. “It’s never enough. I tried for Derek. I made concessions, let go of dreams, tried to be something I couldn’t-“
“Shepherd is an ass,” she interjects.
“I’d give him another chance in a second,” Addison admits. “You’d give him a chance. It’s what we do. We can’t fail. We have to get it right. If we’re not enough, we pick up and we try again. Failure is not an option.”
Cristina looks at her, uncomfortable with how Addison understands exactly what it is that’s going through her mind.
“I still love Derek,” she continues, “I see him with Meredith and I wonder what I could have done differently to make it work. Even after all this time. It’s a constant analysis of what you did wrong. What they did doesn’t even come into account.”
“I want it to stop,” Cristina remarks idly, “I don’t want to care.”
“It won’t. You always will.”
Disappointment and frustration traces Cristina’s features subtly and she glances down at the ground, “The thing is I keep going back and thinking about what I did wrong, where I screwed up and I can’t figure it out. I can’t pinpoint it to one exact thing. There are little things but I keep trying to put it together and it doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. One minute he’s there and I’m in this dress and I’m trying to remember vows and trying to make him go back up the aisle and the next he’s gone and I can’t make it…make sense.”
“There’s only one person who can offer you that explanation,” Addison says softly, “and I’m not that person.”
Cristina looks back at the picture and then down to the floor knowing that she’ll never get that explanation. “So what? Don’t forget but don’t think about it and hope it’s enough?”
“It won’t ever be enough.”
“Then what?”
Addison shakes her head, “I wish I could tell you what’s enough. I’m still trying to figure that part out. But I can tell you that you have to try, even if you don’t know what you’re trying for. You can’t just give up and fade away.”
With a soft sigh, Cristina looks up at the article again and pulls it down from the bulletin board. Her eyes trace over the words Harper Avery and the lack of her name stings once again, except this time frustration and anger mingle with it.
Finally, she speaks as she drops the article into the trash. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all you can do.”
The young woman seems to be content with this amount of acceptance from her superior and starts to walk away when Addison calls after her again.
“I know that I’m not really a friend and that Meredith maybe considers me the enemy,” Addison offers in an awkward tone, “but I do know what it’s like. I know more than Meredith does, more than Alex does. I know that you’re a person who doesn’t talk Cristina but if you ever feel like you do want to- talk, I mean. I can listen.”
She leaves out the part about how it would be nice to simply talk back to somebody who understands exactly where she’s coming from, doubting that Cristina has any free available emotions to appeal to right now, if she were the type of person to respond to an emotional appeal.
Cristina doesn’t really respond to the positive or the negative, only thanks her and walks away.
Addison would like to think that maybe she’s helped her just a little bit through all of this, even if it isn’t some sort of magical redemption, even if she doesn’t have all of the answers. As much as Addison wants to make it all go away, make it all better, she knows that her obscure amount of advice really isn’t enough.
Nothing ever is.