So I have me some serious spin-off love and am fully prepared to jump onto some spin-off shipping... but... I also feel like Addison and Alex got the short shrift, and after much time, I finally had decided I could deal with them because, well, Alex is *Alex* after all, and he's hot and he's honest and he thinks Addie's a kick-ass surgeon... and then they went and made me mad. So this is gonna be a few parts (hopefully not too many -- I've got enough on my hands with Who I Am Without You)... and here's the start of it.

Spoilery through the spin-off pilot if you haven't seen it yet.




The idea of rising from his seat on the locker room bench to change out of his scrubs and back into the jeans and t-shirt he'd worn into work seemed like a ridiculous waste of energy to Alex Karev. In fact, after the last 48 hours, he was pretty sure he could fall asleep right where he was sitting if it weren't for the incessant yapping ringing in his ears as the new shift of residents arrived to get ready for rounds.

The exhaustion was intense, but for a guy who'd had to retake his medical boards, Alex knew his current rank as the second best second year, just behind Yang, was worth the demanding schedule he was keeping. He was proud of himself, rightly so; he'd been told more than once that he had done his mentor proud, and it was a compliment he could never hear enough, even if it did remind him of how much he missed her.

Addison had been gone for a little over six months, her private practice in California thriving. Her replacement was a former protégé from New York, and while it was obvious to Alex that Sarah Reynolds was a great surgeon who had clearly learned from the best, he doubted there was a single person in the NICU who hadn't noticed things were just a tiny bit less... amazing now that the woman who had set the standard was gone.

There were no lack of cases, however, even with Addison's departure, though the very best, most exotic cases usually got referred down the coast now. No one would have been able to tell that though from the last two days. Alex and Dr. Reynolds had gone from a scheduled c-section for a woman with placenta previa into an emergency surgery on a car accident victim in her third trimester. Alex had been asleep in the on call room when a page had drawn him to the NICU to operate on the accident victim's newborn son after he developed kidney problems. And then just when it seemed his long shift might be over, Dr. Reynolds had asked if he'd mind staying to help in a delivery on a high-risk patient having twins.

His body felt like it was about to shut down, and Alex was tempted to head back to an on call room to sleep a few hours before heading home, but he knew that if another Neonatal emergency came up, the nurses would page him if he was still in the hospital. They always called him now, and he knew it was because they all thought of him as Addison's right hand. Her leaving hadn't changed that, and he couldn't imagine wanting it to.

Sighing, Alex forced himself to his feet so he could peel off his scrubs. Home, his own bed... that was what he needed right now, and he just had to get himself dressed and get there. And despite the protests of his muscles, ten minutes later, the resident was ready to grab his bag and had for the door. He paused only long enough to make sure the journal article he'd tucked into the side pocket of his messenger bag was still there. It was Addison's first "L.A." article and he knew it detailed a harrowing case she'd worked involving a patient who had suffered a rupture of a previously undetected spinal aneurysm during delivery. She had told him about it during one of their phone conversations. He had been able to envision the whole thing, right down to Addison finding the ruptured vessel after doing a crash c-section. She'd managed to clamp the bleed off, buying enough time for the neurosurgeon on duty to arrive and repair the damage, and though the mother had ended up with some paralysis due to the extreme blood loss and the nerve trauma, there was no doubt that had she been in another doctor's hands, she'd probably would not have survived.

The sound of rain beating down on the hospital entry's windows was no surprise, but Alex groaned at it anyway. He was starting to get ridiculously sick of the rain in this city. Meredith had told him he'd only started complaining about the rain once Addison had left. Alex's reply had been that Meredith was crazy and he'd always hated the rain and his feelings about Seattle had never changed. But he knew that he'd barely even noticed the rain before Addison had mentioned that one of the things she loved best about California was the absence of the constant mist that hung over the Pacific Northwest.

Ever since, the rain made Alex grumpy--grumpy and lonely. And he hated it.

And he missed her.

He knew why she'd left, and he didn't blame her. Alex couldn't be mad, really since he was part of the reason she was gone. He was glad, though, that she wasn't gone because of his ridiculous asshat behavior a few hours after they'd finally given in to the thing that had been buzzing between them for months in a haze of flying clothes and hot kisses in an on call room.

There were few things in life Alex really regretted. The way his father had disappeared after their fight was one, the fact that he'd carelessly hurt Izzie was another. But nothing topped his wish to go back and just tell Addison the truth as they'd sat there in the lobby that night, her smiling at him and inviting him to her hotel to help him study for his intern exam, him doing the one thing he hated most--lying to her.

It was a lie of omission, but it had still been a lie. Because instead of being honest with her, which he had always been, he'd just been a jerk. Instead of saying, "I think I'm in over my head here, not because you aren't awesome, but because you are, and I'm just an intern who's trying to figure out who he is, and I need some time here"... instead of saying that he'd said, "No offense. Today was awesome. But you're not my girlfriend."

She'd acted with the class he'd come to expect from her, agreeing with his declaration that he needed to study, walking away without a scene. But it didn't mean he hadn't seen the hurt in her eyes.

The next thing he'd known, Addison was gone. "A leave of absence," the chief called it. Alex felt like hell, and no matter what he said to try to justify himself, he knew that his feigned indifference had probably been the last straw in the redhead's quest to survive her tumultuous year at Seattle Grace, ex-husbands and their girlfriends be damned.

She had never made him feel like he was part of the reason she left, though. That wasn't who she was. After his callous, half-hearted brush-off, Addison had gone to California and when she'd come back, Alex had nervously approached her, unsure what kind of reaction he'd get the first time they met up.

[i]"Karev, did you need something?" she asked, her professional demeanor clear, her voice devoid of the friendly, teasing tone that had been there only a week earlier.

"Uh, I just was gonna update you on Ava and the baby, but if you're busy..."

"I have a meeting with the chief, but I'll catch up with you for rounds, okay?"[/i]

That was how they'd gone on for days after that. She was his boss, he was her intern, and though their work time together had been limited since he'd had his exam to study for, Alex found himself almost angry at Addison for not being awful to him, for not showing the immature vindictiveness he'd have expected from a lesser woman. No, she had left him off the hook entirely--no questions about why he'd given in to the sexual attraction if he didn't want more, no need to make him feel like an ass for turning down her invitation. She had apparently just moved on.

But he'd had no idea how completely until she called him to her office the day after his exam.

[i]"I thought we should talk," she began, and Alex steeled himself for the inevitable dissection of their leap across the line of professional and personal.

"You've done some really outstanding work for me, and I know that you were looking toward plastics, but, Alex, I think you'd be shortchanging yourself if you do that."

A professional discussion hadn't been what he was expecting, and Alex had to take a moment to get his mind to switch gears from the dread of explaining his behavior to an appreciation for what his mentor was saying.

"It takes something more than surgical skill to do what I do. You have to have it in you sometimes to will the impossible. And you have that," Addison said, a slight smile on her face. "You have a gift for neonatal, and I hope that you really consider that when you choose your specialty."

His pride at having earned her praise was enormous because Alex knew she had not always held such a high opinion of him as a doctor or as a person, and it mattered to him that he'd been able to grow enough to change the way she saw him. But before he could express that in any way, she went on.

"But I wanted to be honest with you before you make any final decisions. I... I won't be here to work with you."

The words hit him in the chest and Alex felt his breath catch. He had already made up his mind to choose Neonatal even if he hadn't formally voiced it to anyone. He wasn't sure anything could shake him from that course now. But never had he imagined he'd be going forward without the person who had helped him find his path.

"Where are you going?"

"Los Angeles," she said simply. "My friends have a medical group there. It's an amazing place, and their affiliate hospital has been dependent on Children's to handle their Neonatal emergencies. Their chief is interested in having me set up a NICU there, so..."

Her voice trailed off, and Alex sat there staring at her, unsure what to do. He wanted to tell her she couldn't go, of course, that their NICU needed her and that Seattle Grace was where she belonged and that, damn it, *he* needed her. But none of those words would come out of his mouth no matter what he did to try to will them. So instead he nodded and said, "Well, uh, thanks for telling me."[/i]

If she'd been disappointed in his reaction, surprised by it, Addison had never let on. Instead she'd wished him well and told him that she had hand-picked her replacement, and that the SGH NICU would be in very good hands.

The news that the redhead was leaving spread through the hospital faster than perhaps any other piece of gossip Alex had ever seen. Torres and Bailey were both clearly unhappy over the news, the chief had turned into a total grump, and Sloan was extra unlivable. Shepherd didn't appear to have an opinion one way or the other, which made Alex want to punch him in the face--an urge he tamped down with great effort.

The two weeks between Addison's return from California and her planned departure had passed quickly, especially with all the personal drama going on at Seattle Grace. Meredith's stepmother Susan had died, sending his friend into yet another tailspin. Callie had discovered George's infidelity, and though everyone suspected she could have done much worse, with Addison at her side, the Ortho resident had simply thrown her ring back in George's face before going to the hotel to pack up her husband's things so she could leave them on Izzie's--well, Meredith's--doorstep. And in the aftermath of the reveal, Callie, who had been largely an outcast at SGH, became the sympathetic figure, and Izzie quickly found herself on the outside looking in as the nurses and doctors rallied around her nemesis.

To everyone's surprise, the weekend before Addison's big move, Cristina and Burke had actually gotten married. The reception couldn't have been more tension filled as the various participants from the year's romantic dramas ended up in the same room, but Alex was kind of happy for Yang. It was a hell of a thing to love someone and have guts enough, even if you weren't sure, to just go for it.

With O'Malley moving back into Meredith's and everyone's lives falling apart, Alex had entered his break facing nothing but change--he needed to find a new place to live, and he had to say good-bye to the woman who had dominated the last few months of his life. And the daunting task of finding affordable housing close to the hospital seemed like nothing compared to the issue of watching Addison Montgomery walk away from Seattle and the hospital for the last time. He had been sitting at Joe's nursing a beer trying to make peace with the idea when a hand slapped down on his shoulder.

[i]"Buy me a beer, Karev."

He looked at Torres and didn't doubt she needed a drink badly after yet another day of her life being gossiped about in the hallways. Alex motioned for Joe to bring another beer over as the future ex-Mrs. O'Malley sat down beside him.

"He's a total idiot. You know that, right?"

Callie glanced at him questioningly.

"Aren't you part of the 'Stevens is a golden goddess' fan club?"

"Iz is my friend, and I care about her. That doesn't mean O'Malley isn't an idiot."

That seemed to be answer enough, and Torres raised her beer in a salute of acknowledgement before she took a sip.

"All right, Karev, since you're being a totally great person right now, I'm gonna do you a solid. Because I get it, I really do, that you're not ready for the whole white picket fence thing, and I'm pretty sure that's why you flipped the hell out on Addison. But you will be ready someday. And if you don't make this right, she's gonna be gone. And by gone, I don't mean in L.A. Just ask Sloan. You miss your chance, you've missed it."

Alex sighed and shook his head.

"I can't ask her to stay here, not for me, not when I can't promise her anything."

"I didn't say anything about asking her to stay. I said make it right. Just... make sure she knows you don't want her to leave."

"What makes you think I don't want her to leave?" he asked. Torres rolled her eyes at him.

"All right, fine. You want her to leave. You want her to go to L.A. so she can fall for some surfing Doc Hollywood dude who'll make her forget she ever had a thing for the hot, brooding intern in Seattle. Okay, fine."

"I..." Alex took a deep drink of his beer, the bottle slamming against the bar loudly. "Look, if she wants all that, some guy and the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids and the whole life thing, then she needs to go find that. What am I gonna say that's supposed to make a difference?"

Torres sighed and put her hand on his arm. "Tell her... tell her you wish you were ready, and it sucks that you're not, and you want her to be happy. Don't let her leave thinking she didn't mean anything to you, Alex, 'cause right now... that's what she thinks. And I'm pretty sure you and I both know that isn't true."[/i]

Four hours later, Alex had found himself getting a very tipsy Torres back to her hotel room in one piece. And once he'd done that, he wandered toward the elevator, climbed in and contemplated whether he was going to push the down button to make his way back to the lobby or the up one to head to the twenty-first floor.

He brushed his hand over the up arrow and watched as the doors closed, sealing his choice.

She answered after the second knock, her cell phone pressed to her ear. Addison had waved him inside as she turned away to finish her call.

[i]"Okay, can you please e-mail me the address and I'll just meet you out there? Thanks. Good-bye."

She hung up and switched off her phone, tossing it into her purse, which sat open on the bedside table. Then Addison turned and faced him, her arms crossed in front of her.

"Hey."

"Hey," Alex echoed, but then he said nothing more, just standing there, unsure again suddenly about whether coming here was the right thing to do.

"Sorry things are such a mess," she offered, her eyes moving off him and over the stacked and packed boxes that were taking up most of the open floor space in the room. "I never really thought about all the things I never unpacked after moving here till I started boxing up what was out and around. Then I felt like I had to look through everything and see if it was worth keeping."

"Did you get rid of a lot of stuff?"

Addison shook her head. "Not really. Turns out it's all stuff I love. It's just... well, between two hotel rooms and a trailer, there was never anywhere to put most of it."

He nodded, realizing for the first time that she had never really had a home here. How could be surprised, then, that she didn't feel a need to stay?

"So I guess there won't be another hotel room in L.A., huh?"

"Nope. I'm gonna have space. Lots and lots of space, inside and out. I'm looking at a place on the beach the morning after I get there."

She sat down on the edge of the bed and motioned toward the sole empty chair. Alex walked over to it and took the seat.

"I brought Torres home," he said, not sure how to explain his presence without telling her all the thoughts in his head. "She had a little too much to drink at Joe's."

"Thank you for making sure she was okay." Addison took a deep breath, her fingers pulling through her hair as she released it. "I feel guilty for leaving her when she's going through this. Divorce sucks, even when you know it's the right thing."

"She'll be okay. She's tough. And too good for O'Malley, that's for damn sure."

That made her laugh. "Yes, that's for damn sure."

It took a moment for Alex to realize that Addison had stopped laughing and that they were both sitting there now, silent, each waiting for the other to say something. He considered bolting, just standing up and running out because she was leaving, after all, and her last day at the hospital was a mere formality--signing forms, saying good-byes, packing up her office. He could run out and never see her again, he thought.

And then Alex realized... he could run out and *never* see her again.

"Is there a guy?" he asked, dropping the half dozen ways he'd practiced this and blurting the first thing that came into his head.

"What?"

"In California. Is there a guy--a white-picket fence, barbecuing guy who'll teach your kids how to play catch? Because the thing is, I want to be that guy. I think I might be him, but... I'm not ready yet. I'm not..."

Her earlier surprise at his question melted away and Alex stopped speaking when she slipped off the bed and moved over to him, her fingertips touching down on his lips.

"I know. I know you're not. I knew you weren't, but I... I just wanted you to be."

He nodded, grateful that she understood even if he was also sad at the way her admission seemed to take all the sparkle out of her yes.

"There's no white-picket fence guy. Trouble, but no white-picket fences. And even if there were, he'd have to settle for me and the fence and the barbecuing because there aren't going to be any kids to play catch with."

This time he was the confused one, and Addison sank back, sitting on the ground as she went on.

"I wanted a baby, even if I had to have one alone. I didn't always want one in that deep down, gotta have one way, you know? But I always thought I wanted one, and I realized after we... women have a finite window, and mine was starting to close. So I decided to have one alone. Only I can't. Not anymore."

He moved to her now, sinking down beside her, his arm wrapping around her shoulder.

"You should be somebody's mother," he whispered. "She doesn't have to come out of you to be yours. But after seeing you with all those babies... I just think you should be someone's mom. And you shouldn't give up on that."

Addison curled into him, her head resting against his shoulder.

"You're gonna be somebody's white-picket fence guy, Alex. It's who you are. Promise me you'll let yourself see that someday, okay?"

"What if..." He stopped and when he did, she lifted her head to look at him. "What if I'm supposed to see it with you?"

She smiled and leaned in, her hands touching lightly along the lines of jaw as she kissed him.

"Then when you're ready... I guess the universe will make sure I'm somewhere you can find me."[/i]

Alex thought about that night all the time, about how the return to the honesty and trust they'd built had led to hours that were seared into his mind--the difference between the heat and franticness of their first time and the wonder of having time to feel her skin beneath his fingers, to note how his hands felt made to rest in the curves of her waist. Mostly it was the sweetness of being able to show her with his body that everything he'd said to her was true.

Two days later, she was gone. And though they spoke all the time either by phone or via e-mails, Alex felt her absence constantly. But he never asked her to come back, and she didn't ask him to come to California because he knew she wouldn't and she knew he wasn't ready yet.

He imagined Addison would fill his dreams once he finally got home and collapsed into bed, which was delayed yet again when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out with a groan, expecting to see that he was being summoned back to work before he'd even made it out of the building, and if not that, it would be Meredith or Izzie asking him to come over and hang out because he never did anymore now that he was renting a room from Torres at well below cost in her new downtown loft.

But to his surprise, he saw neither the hospital's name nor one of his friends' on the cell's display. Instead he saw a number with a 310 area code, and though he didn't recognize the rest of the digits, he only knew one person who'd be calling him from California.

"Hey. It's raining here. Which I know, shocker, right? So if you called to tell me it's bright and sunny and high 70s there, I'm gonna hang up on you."

"Okay," Addison said. "I won't tell you."

He laughed, but when that was met with what he was sure could only be the sound of sniffles, maybe even muffled crying, his hand gripped the phone more tightly.

"Addison, are you okay?"

There was silence, and that scared the hell out of him. Alex walked away from the front door of the hospital and made his way to one of the lobby chairs.

"Addison... I need you to tell me what's going on."

She sobbed, and he thought for a second he might actually yell at her out of sheer frustration, but he bit his tongue and kept his worry from getting the best of him. Instead Alex sat there and listened to her cry and felt his heart break under the weight of how helpless he felt.

"I'm... I'm okay," she said finally, her voice raspy and shaky. "I'm okay, all right? I just... I had a really awful, awful day and I just... I'm in the hospital."

He felt his pulse quicken as his earlier sense that something bad had happened was seemingly proven true.

"What happened?"

"It was stupid. God, Alex, it was so stupid. I... I was at the hospital checking on a patient and there was this accident, and the ER was just overwhelmed, you know? And so I ran in to help, and I was just walking around a damn corner to give a nurse some blood to take the lab and this gurney ran into me and I... I fell."

It was the kind of accident that, frankly, probably should have happened far more than it did in crowded, frantic emergency rooms. People were moving so quickly, with such purpose, that sometimes, the finite amount of space simply ran out. But he couldn't imagine her being hurt so badly in that situation that she was in the hospital, and Alex started to ask what her injuries were when her voice emptied his mind of everything but the next set of words she spoke.

"I'm pregnant. I'm not supposed to be pregnant, but I am, and I fell and... I was so scared. I was cramping, and she wasn't moving, but now... everything's okay now. We're both okay."

He leaned back against the seat he was in and tried to process the details of what he'd just heard. He repeated to himself silently that she'd said she was okay, that the baby was okay, trying to make himself believe it. Then he found his voice.

"We're having a baby?"

"I wanted to tell you a hundred different times," she said, "but I didn't want to make you feel like your hand was being forced. So I decided I'd tell you when she was born. And it seemed okay, it really did, for me to not tell you because I thought it was the right thing. And then this happened, and I thought about how I might lose her and you wouldn't ever have gotten to know about her or see the ultrasounds or hear her heartbeat, and I just... I had to tell you."

She was quiet after that, and it took Alex a while to realize he was nodding, acknowledging what she'd said to himself and giving her no response at all.

"But you're okay? No more cramping, no fetal distress?"

"She started moving again a few hours ago, and her heart rate's steady. And I'm fine, really. I just needed you to know what was going on."

Imagining himself as someone's father, someone's partner had overwhelmed him months ago, and Alex hadn't been sure he'd ever be ready for that despite Addison's assurances that he would. Now faced with that moment in reality... and far sooner than he'd expected it... he could only seem to focus on one thought.

"So 'she'? We're having a girl."

"Yeah," Addison said, and he could have sworn he heard her smiling through the phone. "We're having a girl."

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