The problem with getting involved is now it's too late to turn back. Too late to shut off your thoughts; too late to blink hard to block out the picture that keeps rising in your mind. Addison has broken her vow, and part of her doesn't care in the least.

The other part has to watch the object of her newfound affection across a surgery table, eyes fixed on the job at hand, face obscured by a surgical mask. If Addison could see behind the mask, she would see twisted lips; maybe a point of a pink tongue sticking out in concentration.

Addison wishes she could see behind the mask. Right now, that's dangerous.

They're working on an extremely important surgery – so important, in fact, that there are six doctors performing different jobs. Both the mother's life and the baby's life hang in the balance . . . and Addison is having trouble concentrating because Meredith's hand keeps entering her field of vision.

A little more harshly than she intended, she snaps. "Grey, take your hand out of there! I can't see a damn thing."

"Sorry, Dr. Montgomery," Meredith replies, and removes her hand. Quiet falls over the OR – the only sounds are machines whirring and the ventilator pumping as Addison finally stops the bleeding in one spot and manages to cut through another layer of skin. Maybe this C-section will be okay . . . despite the fact that the baby is barely twenty-two weeks old and she doesn't foresee the kid living more than a few hours.

She hasn't told the mother that, because she doesn't want to let her mind go there until she's sure that there's no hope.

No matter what it takes, Addison is a believer in miracles. She does what it takes.

Just as she begins to see the baby's white, blood-smeared skin gleam under the pool of surgical light, one of the interns slips with the suction, punching a hole through the mother's peritoneum and into the depths of her body.

Addison swears. "FUCK! Grey, Karev, Reilly – get that bleeding stopped. I have to get this kid out before her pressure drops." As she finishes her sentence, the woman's pressure drops and the baby's heartbeat begins to slow.

The next fifteen minutes are a blur of blood, breath, bodily fluids and dizziness as first the mother's bleeding can't be stopped, then the little blue baby won't breathe. The tiny doll-like form on the OR's side table begins to shake, then still, and Karev shouts, "It's a seizure – the kid is having a seizure, Dr. Montgomery!"

I can't give up on this mother, she thinks, struggling in the sea of blood, her gloves slipping back and forth as she tries to stop the force of the bleeding. Two bags of blood flow into the woman's veins, but Addison knows most of it is probably flowing back out onto the floor. Just as she thinks it, the woman's heart stops beating, and she swears again, tears coming to her eyes in frustration, just as Karev shouts at her, "What do you want to do about the baby, Dr. Montgomery?!"

"Is it breathing?" Addison shouts back over the beeping of the monitors and the squelching of towels in the body cavity.

"No."

"How long has it been?" She looks up, suppresses the urge to brush imaginary hair out of her face. Meredith takes a towel and gently wipes the sweat running into Addison's eyes. It's what would be done for any surgeon working hard, but the gentle touch seems to reset Addison's brain, and she becomes calmer.

Alex checks the OR clock. "Ten minutes."

"Call it. And I'm calling it for this woman." The blood drips onto the floor – a slow, glutinous sound, and Addison suddenly feels an urge to gag. She pushes it down, stares at the clock. "Time of death, 10:20."

A second later, Alex calls the same time. Both bodies lay on the table while everyone files out. Addison watches them go, every last one of them.

Only then, when she's alone with the dead, she begins to cry.

//~//

She holds onto the bed posts, willing the cold metal to cool her hands – cool her heart. The spring wind is warm today, and she can hear the window rattling a little behind the drawn blinds, but she can't make herself care enough to appreciate it.

It's been a long time since she's lost both – both the new life and the sustaining life. And it's days like today when she wonders what the hell she's still doing here in Seattle, when there's no one to turn to after a hard day, no one's shoulder to lean against – no one's sweet smell to breathe in and be comforted by. She's lost both men she'd turn to after this. One, she'll never get back.

Addison turns onto the bed, staring at the crack of light through the blinds, her eyes stubbornly dry, her contacts feeling scratchy against her corneas, and determinedly closes her eyes.

The door opens, then closes harshly behind the entrant, but Addison doesn't open her eyes to see who it is, and she certainly doesn't say anything. In fact, she hopes they'll just leave, whoever they are.

There's a sound of soft breathing in the room, and then a gentle voice. "Are you okay?"

Addison slits her eyes open, regards the person standing against the framed light of the window, blurred because her eyes are too tired to focus properly, and sighs. "I'm sort of – I just want to be alone, okay?"

"Well, all the other on-call rooms are full. I can't really go to another one." Meredith's matter-of-fact, soft-spoken voice jerks Addison out of her sulkiness and she opens her eyes all the way.

"Oh. I see."

Meredith's blue eyes are sympathetic, but she doesn't say anything else. Instead, she climbs to the top of the bunk bed beside Addison's, and rolls onto her back, staring at the ceiling.

Addison says nothing, either, and after awhile, she thinks by the soft breathing in the room that Meredith has fallen asleep. She closes her own eyes, but opens them again at Meredith's voice.

"I'm so sorry."

"Sorry for what, Grey?" Addison's voice is rough, rougher than she wants it to be, and she clears her throat a little.

"Sorry for today. For what just happened."

"Oh. Thank you." There's silence again, but then Meredith clears her throat.

"It makes me scared to be a surgeon, you know, not just helping someone."

"It's not like that every day, Meredith."

"I know, I see enough surgeries, but I just worry. I sort of turn everything I touch to shit, you know?" A sharp laugh, unlike the silvery sound that's Meredith's normal laugh. "I don't know if I can handle death half as well as you do. In fact, I already know I don't."

Addison is silent for a moment, thinking. "It's not about handling it, really. You grow a bit of steel, I guess. You start getting stronger because you've got this responsibility. It's devastating, sure, but you develop the strength to move past it."

Meredith's voice trembles a little. "I'm not past it."

Addison is confused. "Past today?"

"No. I'm not past it. Past the accident. I think about it every single day."

Addison sits upright in bed. "This is different than losing someone in a surgery."

"It's the same feelings. Like it's my fault, you know?"

Addison bows her head, suddenly. "He wouldn't blame you. He wouldn't blame you for anything, Meredith. He adored you."

"I know . . . I think it's what keeps me going. He knows innately that it's not my fault, somewhere, I guess." The conversation is unlike Meredith, and Addison can almost see the blush on the younger woman's cheeks in the half-light. She clears her throat.

"Derek was always going to make his own choices. That was him, he just always took responsibility for himself."

Meredith says nothing, but somehow, Addison is encouraged to go on. "It's not even like he ever put the blame on me for our marriage failing. He didn't. He admitted his part in all of it. But I knew that in the end, it was my fault for not doing whatever I could to make him love me more.

"He was my best friend in so many ways, though, even if he couldn't love me that way. He used to have special Belgian beer for days like this, you know? And he'd save one for me even though he knew I hated beer. I hated it, but I'd drink it and he'd always put his arm around me, and just empathize."

Addison's voice starts to crack. "I miss him. I miss him, too."

Meredith, by now, has come down from the top bunk, her eyes locked on Addison's, willing her to say more. She sits on the floor beside the low edge of Addison's bed, her eyes never leaving the redhead's. Addison goes on.

"We used to have these horrible fights; we'd say the worst things to each other. But afterwards, he'd always apologize first. Always. He was always there for all of my moods, and he absorbed them. It used to drive me nuts that he'd never react! But he just didn't, until he exploded, that was how he was. That was just Derek."

Addison's tears are coming harder, now, wetting the pillow beside her face; the tears she's never been able to muster, never able to cry. "I miss the way he used to look at me like he understood. I miss how I could tell him anything, and he'd consider it without judgement. I can't believe I'll never see him smile at me again, never offer me one of those horrible Belgian beers . . ."

Her voice cuts into sobbing; her hands come up to cover her eyes. Her toes curl, her knees drawing up to her chest. It's rare that Addison cries like this, and certainly not in front of anyone. She saves this type of crying for drunken nights with men, mostly Mark, or for when she's alone at night during a rainstorm.

Meredith's hand snakes across the bed; resting gently on Addison's arm, then moves to her shoulder. Meredith's own blue eyes are misted with tears, but she doesn't feel the hurt that Addison feels; of losing her best friend, the person she could always count on to understand, even if he didn't love her as much as he should have.

Addison's tears get noisier as all the held-back grief threatens to rip her apart, and Meredith, against her better judgement, puts both arms around the shaking woman, resting her head against Addison's shoulder. She fully expects to be rejected, but instead, Addison, like a child, turns into Meredith, burying her face against the younger woman's rough scrubs, pressing into Meredith's slight shoulder.

The comfort works. Addison calms down, her arms going around Meredith, holding on for dear life. Meredith leans her head against the redhead's soft hair, murmuring unintelligible syllables of comfort, much as she would with Cristina or Izzie. The noise in the room stops. Addison closes her eyes, but doesn't let go of Meredith, and Meredith takes that moment to lie beside Addison on the bed, spooning her body into the taller woman's, taking from her warmth everything she hasn't been able to feel in the past two months.

Locked like that, Addison's salty eyelashes still screwed up against the half-light of reality, the two fall asleep, their breathing synchronized; their hands upon each other's hands.

//~//

Addison finds herself waking up first; her eyes sore and swollen from crying so hard; her chest hurting from the unaccustomed sobbing. It's not often she loses control like that, and she feels a bit stupid and babyish for losing it in front of her residents. But, she knows she's kidding herself – Meredith has ceased to be someone who works for her, and has suddenly become someone so much closer.

An equal, almost.

She goes to sneak out of the room, but stumbles a little over Meredith's shoes left in the centre of the room, and falls into the bed on the other side of the room. The slight banging of the bed against the wall is enough to wake Meredith, and the younger woman stirs, blinking her eyes like a child, staring uncomprehendingly around the room until her eyes light on Addison.

"Sneaking out?" Meredith's voice is rusty-sounding, deep with the effects of sleep. It's so unlike her normal uncertain soft-spoken manner that Addison freezes.

"I should get back to work."

Meredith watches Addison pick up her shoes and move them to the side, before her shaky sigh causes Addison to turn back.

"Grey." Her voice is reproving.

"Stay. Please. A little while. Just stay with me."

Addison reflects in slight amusement that now it's Meredith who needs someone, but it's not really a hardship to sink back down on the bed beside Meredith, curling up beside her, watching her eyes flutter in the half-light, between waking and asleep.

"I'm sorry," Addison begins, but Meredith puts a finger on Addison's lips.

"No. You can say it later. I don't want to hear it now." And with that, she kisses Addison.

Her lips are soft, salty-tasting, maybe from the tears she shed herself during Addison's crying jag. Her tongue inquisitively touches Addison's teeth, then the inside of her lips, and Addison's hand involuntarily goes behind Meredith's hair, tangling a bit in the soft strands.

Meredith's kiss turns from soft to desperate. She pushes against Addison, her entire body against Addison's front, as if she's trying to get inside her, or cuddle with her so closely that they become one person. Her hands touch Addison's face, then her shoulders – finally her stomach, slipping under the older woman's dark-blue scrubs.

Addison, though she is fully aware of what's going on and has her wits about her, can't help moving her own hands under Meredith's shirt, unclipping the younger woman's bra, feeling the elastic sting her fingers instead of Meredith's sensitive skin. Her hands trace over the satiny-smoothness of the younger woman's skin, feeling the goosebumps rise at her touch; feeling Meredith bite down on Addison's neck.

Meredith's hands are now slipping under Addison's scrub pants, her fingers feathering along the older woman's lace-lined panties. However, just as she starts to push at Addison's clothes, she hesitates slightly, not sure if she should.

Addison knows there's a decision here – one that will change both their lives. Either she lets it go, or she stops it here.

Professional relationships, friendship – even this strange half-love she feels for this girl who shares a dead lover and friend with her – it all flashes through her head as her hands find Meredith's fingers and they freeze there, together.

Then, all rational thought leaves Addison's head. She pushes Meredith's hands down.

Now, there's no going back.