A/N: Let's face it: I am complete and total Addek trash. What else could compel me to start a new story when I have multiples to keep up with now? But this story started screaming at me to write it and I couldn't not. Please see author notes at the end of this chapter. Oh, and if it's convenient, please play Ryan Star's gorgeous Losing Your Memory before, after, or during. And then watch Rachael's brilliant vid of it on the site that rhymes with blue noob. (Her name is pheobecolefan and the video is perfection.)

This is different from anything else I've written. It's an alternate universe, but this time we're not the only ones who know just how alternate it is. And with all the Addek angst that I admittedly adore, I wanted to do something a little different. Check it out and see what you think - the first chapter is a short little mini-chapter to get us started and see what you think of the premise...

Where Have I Gone?

Where have you gone?
The beach is so cold in winter here
And where have I gone?
I wake in Montauk with you near
Remember the day
'Cause this is what dreams should always be
I just want to stay
I just want to keep this dream in me
You're losing your memory now…

Her head is still buzzing as she drives home from the airfield. Her parents are gone. She watched their flight leave, just to make sure, and it left. Her parents are finally gone and her life can go back to normal.

Except that every revelation from their painful visit is still buzzing in her head.

Bizzy's wasn't the victim. She lied to me.

Susan was never on my side. She lied to me.

The Captain wasn't cheating. He lied to me. (And I lied for him. Is that even worse?)

They all lied. They all let me lie.

Everything was a lie.

A whole life spent wrongly covering for her father and worrying about her mother. There was no need. They knew it was a game all along. It was a game, and Addison was nothing more than a pawn.

They all lied.

But what if they hadn't? She rests a hand on the steering wheel, wondering.

Would she still have grown up with that flexible moral compass, the one that helped her turn to Mark to numb her pain? Would she have known how to keep her life on track? Would she have been so afraid to start a family of her own? Would she be 42 –

(For one brief, almost amusing moment, she remembers that "42" was the answer to life, the universe, and everything in the Douglass Adams books she and Derek used to joke about in medical school. Doesn't seem like as much of a joke now that she's 42 and has no answers at all.)

- 42 years old, and alone?

Because that's what she is.

Alone.

Completely, painfully alone.

She rests her hand on the sliding glass door handle, feeling like the only person in the universe.

Then again, what else is new? She's been alone since she got to California.

No, since she got to Seattle.

Okay, fine, since she lived in New York. Not forever, not at the beginning, not when … but for a while before Mark … alone.

Face it, Addie, she scolds herself, you've been alone forever.

It's what she deserves, isn't it? And anyway, it's too late now.

It's about choices.

It's about choices … and all of hers have been wrong.

She draws deep breaths of clean ocean air. At least there's the beach to soothe her. At least there's a massive bathtub and a very expensive bottle of wine waiting for her to wash away the afternoon. That's something, at least.

She stands outside the glass door her beach house, and for just one moment she thinks ruefully of calling out I'm home, except she lives alone and no one would hear her because no one is waiting for her.

Well, the bottle of wine. At least she still has that. Steeling herself against the solitude, she slides open the door...

...and blinks into confusing, relative darkness.

The door is open now, but there's no brilliant California sunshine, no sunny yellow welcome; she's ... somewhere else entirely, with electric lights and dark wood that smells like cooking.

And there are stairs.

Wait. Why are there stairs?

…Why are there stairs that she recognizes?

She looks around slowly, almost afraid, touching her hand to her forehead at the same time. She's hallucinating. That's what's happening. It must be.

Panicked, she looks behind her for the sliding glass door she opened to her beach house but the glass is gone. The beach is gone. All she sees is a heavy carved wood front door instead.

…and she recognizes that too.

Okay. She forces herself to breathe. This is just a dream. That's why it's the same but different, the pictures on the wall and the rugs and the furniture too. She had more to drink than she meant to, all week. It's been a difficult time, no one could blame her. It's just a dream. Maybe she fell asleep in her car - oh god, hopefully in the parking lot and not on the 405, but it's okay, it's just a dream.

"Addison?"

...or maybe she's losing her mind after all.

Because standing in front of her wearing an oven mitt on his hand, and smiling – smiling, at her! – is …

...let's just say she hasn't had this dream in a while.

And she may seriously need to cut down on the drinking.

Surreptitiously she pinches herself. Nothing happens.

She opens her mouth, but no words come out.

He's still walking toward her, looking at her with that soft expression she hasn't seen in anything but a memory in years.

Even as his name echoes in her head she can't say it out loud. Derek. Derek.

He cocks his head slightly and it's that familiar gesture that almost undoes her.

"You okay, Addie?"

"I'm…" I'm losing my mind. How is she supposed to answer that? She offers a weak smile that she hopes will conceal the fact that she's shaking.

The only good news is that this can't possibly get any stranger.

Until she hears another voice calling out.

"Mommy's home!"

…okay then. Want to come on this crazy parallel journey with Addison, and with me? Let me know. I'm a machine, but a machine that runs on feedback…

Coming up: more WTF, and an unlikely spirit guide…

This story owes a lot to, and inspiration has been drawn from, the brilliant The Road Not Taken by AriaAdagio. It's in my favorites list; it's MerDer, and it's freaking amazing. I highly recommend. So. Magical realism alternate universe Addek?

PS Anonymous reviews bashing the pairing for no apparent reason will be printed out, shredded, and used as cat litter. :)