Disclaimer: I do not own ABC, Shonda Rhimes, Grey's Anatomy, nor anyone involved with it. Some Maddison baby/abortion drama, Addison-centric. Right now I'm thinking this will end up as a source for random, short ficlets involving relationships between characters, since 622 words isn't really enough for an individual post. Regardless, tell me what you think when you REVIEW.
As human beings, we are easily fooled. Our eyes and our hearts can betray us, deceived by illusions both simple and elaborate. It can happen to anyone - the time you walked up and began to talk to your friend only to realize you'd singled out the wrong person, or sent the wrong memo to the wrong person in the office. Simple illusions are easy to fix – you blush, you apologize, you walk away. But what happens when you become fooled by something much more complex? What happens when your heart is deceived so thoroughly that you don't know what the truth is anymore?
Fata Morgana
She's lying on his bed, waiting for him to come home and wondering what she'll say when he does. If she'll say anything at all. It would be easier to pretend, to smile when he walked through the door and kiss him and pretend like things were normal, but she doesn't think that she can do that, because things aren't normal.
And as she stares at the calendar flipped to the month, the date circled in red marker, she wishes they were. She wishes that she didn't feel nauseous when it came into her peripheral vision, and that she didn't feel like crying when she thought of him taking it down.
More painful to imagine is the look he'll wear across his features when he notices the suitcase, the way that she has desecrated the closet she organized so carefully when she moved in two months ago, back when things seemed so overwhelmingly perfect. She hopes that this is for the better, but sometimes she can't be sure.
Six o'clock. An hour until he's due to be out of surgery and two hours until she has to leave to make her flight. Slowly she walks to the wall, her eyes focused on the circled, but otherwise empty, square. It was insignificant now, and she carefully pulls the pushpin out, closing the calendar and rolling it slightly before placing it tenderly in the trashcan she keeps in the bedroom for old magazines and clothing tags. Her gaze lingers for a moment as the gravity, the finality, of what she's done resonates in her mind, as does the weight of his actions, resulting in a deafening echo in her mind.
She can't stay here; she can't wait until he gets home. She knows what happens when he has the chance to explain things, to be sweet and charming. After all, as soon as he uses The Look, she knows she'll lose her will and stay. She'll call Richard and refund the ticket, and that can't be an option.
She reaches into her pocket and takes out the folded receipt from her plane ticket. Carefully fixing the creases, she tacks it up on the wall, where the calendar was hanging moments before, and scrawls a note telling him that it was a mistake, living with him. That she's sorry, but she couldn't do it and she hopes he understands.
Picking up her suitcase, she calls the cab company and takes the elevator to the lobby, her eyes on the street outside.
He would have been a terrible father.
As humans, we fall prey to illusions every day – the simple, the mundane, the elaborate, and the painful. Oftentimes, our pride gets in the way. We deny that we've been tricked, that what we saw was not all we thought that it would be. Sometimes, however, the only way to move on is to accept the fact that we've been fooled – to apologize and move on, and hope that things return to the way they were…the way they should be.
And, sometimes, that hope is the only illusion we can bear.