mark/addison oneshot
title: Falling leaves
fandom/pairing: Mark/Addison, Greys anatomy/pp (mentions of jaddison and addek friendship
summary: Addison goes to Seattle for Marks funeral and tries to come to terms with her loss
she flies out for the funeral against her better judgement. The flying part that is, not the funeral going part - Though both were traumatic in their way.
At every jolt the plane gave, every tease of turbulence caused a flash of pain and anger. She’d close her eyes, and imagine Mark’s voice drowning everything out. She heard him, felt him echoing lightly over the bare skin of her arm. She was filled up with the ghost of him.
“It’s just turbulence.” He might have said whilst checking out an air hostess. He might have seen clouds on the horizon. He might have kept silent as it got worse. Looked at Callie or Derek maybe, as if the storm were a secret only they knew about, until it hit them, or the engine gave out, and they fell into darkness.
No one had given her a real explanation as to why the plane had dropped, understandably busy with the fact that it had, and it had hurt them. She was left to simply imagine, like someone whose lover had inexplicably stopped writing, or a mother who’s son didn’t call and was three hours late for dinner. She didn’t know how he’d looked, if he’d lost weight or cut his hair or if in the hospital he’d complained about the stupid gowns they made you wear (the fact he died in a bed that wasn’t his own, in a hospital gown that didn’t suit him as well as his own clothes did made her heart constrict, and she felt heavy with the weight of simple hurts in a way she never had before. She wondered now if she could ever make herself work in a hospital again or if she’d see him lying in every bed)
She bashed her head against her chair until she noticed the woman in the seat next to her leaning away looking scared. Then she turned to the window and had pretended to fall asleep.
She hadn’t been sleeping though. Jake had tried his best, but his arms felt too heavy wrapped around her; crushing, not comforting. He’d understood when she said she had to sleep alone.
But the double bed had been too big. Its emptiness swallowed her. She was drowning in the absence of him, of Mark; she couldn’t sleep for thinking of the curves of his shoulders. Addison had opened and closed her tired eyes, willing him to appear beside her in the darkness. In the piercing light of dawn, she’d awoken alone.
The hotel is the same one she and Mark had both lived in when they had got to Seattle. The faces were not familiar anymore and they had got new carpets. She stared down at the blue floor as she’d walked solemnly to her room, it felt like a sea washing all the memories of this place away. It had changed, she had changed, it was like she and Mark had never been in this building at all.
The hotel screws up and gives her a double bed. She stretches her hand across the empty space beside her gripping the sheets until her hand hurt, whispering pleas into the unrelenting darkness, asking a god she didn’t believe in for an impossible someone.
Callie had said they could fit her into their car. She’d refused. She’d walked to the funeral home, in heels that hurt her feet and a black dress that came with bad memories. She’d actually managed to smile at a memory whilst she’d put it on though - one wear Mark had said the only black she should wear was lingerie, and that he’d give anything to see her in a red dress, any day of the week. She’d put on red lipstick instead, smiled once, then had wiped it off.
She had walked in quietly, not looking anyone in the eye as if she had no right to be there. She wondered if she did, but then she felt her heartbeat like a drum in her head, like an erratic lament for the dead, and she knew she had to be.
Hymns and prayers, babies crying, a song by The Clash a part of her vaguely remembered. People she had never met crying for someone who had once put his arms round her whenever it rained at night.
It’s a blur. She has a head ache. Mark is dead. She’s wearing a necklace he bought her, one that had been an anniversary present from Derek. As if she hadn’t always known Derek had forgotten, and Mark had remembered just like always. As if she hadn’t known Mark had shown up in her husbands lunch hour with something to give her - Looking after his friends, as usual. That’s all Mark had done those years in New York. She tugs on the silver chain and it bites into her neck. She had gone to sleep in his shirt.
They finally catch up with her at the wake. They do it at Callie’s apartment. Her friend hugs her tightly and tells her where to find the wine. Callie had always known how to read her mind.
She is lying on a bed with her eyes closed, a wine bottle in her hand. She can hear the bustle of people outside. She’d wanted to be strong and supportive. She wasn’t the only one grieving, but she couldn’t find it in herself. She felt guilty acting like a heart broken widow when she knew all about Mark and Lexie. But as ever, she gave in as selfishness bit at her heels and chased her into the nearest unoccupied space.
She still has her eyes closed when she feels someone lying down beside her. For a brief, stupid moment she thinks it is the one person who could ever make her feel better.
She opens her eyes and see’s Derek staring at the ceiling.
“In bed with you, thinking about Mark. Just like old times.” She says.
“Speak for yourself.” Derek smiles - Actually smiles at the dig about their marriage. “Everyone keeps talking about him but...nothing they say actually sound anything like him, you know?”
“I know. I always hate that about funerals. I mean, I loved him, doesn’t make him any less of a man whore, does it?”
“I think he slept with every woman in that room.” Derek laughs.
“Well he certainly slept with every woman in this one.” She shrugs and takes an awkward sip of wine whilst trying not to spill it.
There is a brief and comfortable silence. She realises it’s the first time she’s talked about Mark without crying. It makes sense that it would be to Derek. They together had known him best and longest.
“When we were little Mark used to be round my house all the time. Like all the time. It got so that my mom got him this crappy little camp bed in my room for him. It was uncomfortable as hell though, so we’d take turns in sleeping in it...on the night...on the night my father died, it was my turn. For some reason it felt like the most important thing in the world to stick to that routine. Mark was the one who told me to stop being stupid. He pushed it next to my bed and got in. He slept next to me all night and held my hand.”
“You never told me that.” Addison said quietly. She can hear the strain in his voice when he starts again.
“He held my hand in the hospital. He hadn’t done that since we were kids but he did it then. Like we were still little and he was still...trying to tell me he was there.”
“Do you think he is? Still here? Not like a ghost... or anything but...just, here.”
Derek just shrugs but doesn’t answer. “I’d like to think so.” Addison carries on. “But...I don’t know. I feel alone. I can feel that he’s gone, like a phantom limb. I would have thought if he was still here he’d do me the courtesy of banging the pipes or knocking cups over or something.”
“Well it depends on what you believe I guess. I’m going with the heaven option personally.”
Addison nods. She had always wished for the comfort in knowing, or feeling that you genuinely knew what would happen to you but she never could quite get there.
“What about Mark? Did he find religion?”
Derek lets out a chuckle. “Not exactly. This is still the same Mark Sloan we’re talking about.”
“Well maybe it found him somehow.”
Derek sighs loudly and she thinks she’s upset him. She nudges her knee against his. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I was just...thinking about something. It’ll be difficult but just listen ok?” he looks her in the eye imploringly and she see’s an infinite number of emotions in one blink.
“I’m not very good with difficult but I’ll try.” She smiles.
“He loved Lexie.”
‘Definitely difficult’ she thought, taking another sip of wine.
“He was sad about her, guilty even. I think that to think about you, in the forest after she...he felt bad about it. So he tried not to. It wasn’t fair on her.”
“How do you know all this?” she whispers.
“He told me, in the hospital. He tried not to think about you because Lexie had just died and he didn’t want to betray her memory. Personally I’m proud of him for it...but...”
Derek sighs and shifts uncomfortably. “After he’d done talking about Sophia and his family and stuff he said something.”
“Well?” Addison urges, only half sure she wants to hear.
“He said...well Mark said that...he saw you.” He says it slowly as if just realising the impossibility of his statement.
“Excuse me?”
“He saw you. We were stuck out there for days, he thought he was going to die then, thought he wouldn’t make it to the hospital. And what he saw when he thought he was dying... was you. He said... he closed his eyes and you were there. It was sunny and your hair was brighter than ever. Your dress was yellow and he remembered your laugh. He told me that he had always thought heaven was whatever you saw just before you died, like that’s why people see bright lights, because they’re seeing whatever they think heaven should look like...” he closes his eyes. “I’m saying this wrong. I’m saying...”
He looks at her. Tears are streaming down her face and he takes hold of her hand.
“I’m saying that I think you were his heaven.”
There is a single pause, as if the universe stopped to hear the confessional, the final and faithful admittance of love that held every moment they had had together inside of its syllables, and for once she truly believes in some extra unknown force in the world that had breathed truth out of Mark and into the air to surround her with a real and unmistakable feeling, an inescapable fact that after everything they had known, in the end he had loved her with the pureness of heaven.
She’s crying still, but she manages a smile at her ex husband who grips her hand more tightly when he hears her shivering breaths.
“Did he...did he say anything else?”
“About you? Yeah, actually. He asked if you knew about everything, if anyone had called you. Later on though he told me to tell you he was sorry... He actually said “tell red I’m sorry for leaving her.” At the time I thought he meant just, one of your break ups. But now I think...”
“He meant this. He knew what was going to happen to him.”
Derek shrugs. “We’ll never really know for sure.”
But she knew. She understood. Mark had known till the last heartbeat. He had accepted it with grace and kindness. She feels guilty for wanting the apology more than anything. It settles in her and she inhales deeply, feeling the confirmation of her anger and feeling it slowly dissipate. He had left her and she had not known how irrationally angry she had been until now. He wasn’t the one that left. That was her, it had always been her. Mark had always come when she called. But not this time. She had wanted him to show up on her doorstep so she could rage and rage at the ferocity and suddenness of death with any strength that he had not already taken from her.
But he had apologised. And she knew now she had had nothing to forgive him for. He had felt guilt, and love, and understood the chorus of heaven in the light reflecting off her hair in a dream. He had died. And she had to live because he had loved her, and she had to hold that love inside her and protect it like a child. She couldn’t give in because that would mean that last part of Mark would give in also, and that could not happen. As long as his night time kisses echoed on her collarbone he would live in some small and strange way.
She flies back home a day or so later. Jake meets her at the airport and she is genuinely happy to see him and not someone else. He kisses her and it is him she feels and recognises.
Mark becomes a name that exists in the silence between her heartbeats.