#meraddek

meredith and derek are bad for each other because a relationship that starts with a power imbalance was never going to end with a happily ever after.

“when love starts out in the darkness, it doesn't do well in the light. affairs of the heart that start out in the dark usually stay with the night. nobody sees them, at least, not together. she rarely goes out. she spends everyday waiting for the day, when everybody finds out.” new york era maddison.

“we see no change in sight, watching her decline. she gets on a midnight plane. she's done it a thousand times.” INHLW, leaving new york for seattle straight after the abortion.

“I know he loves me, everyday he calls me. he says he adores me, what can I say? you can't love him, you can't have him, I do have him…most of the time.” the meraddek triangle of emotional fuckery.

“maybe it's just something else, but you can't tell me. maybe it's in the way that you… look away from me.” early meddison. inhlw, so many words unsaid. longing glances from the gallery down into the OR.

“anywhere we can, anytime we can… get away.” merder prom scene.

“it's not like any words need to be said. well you always know when something's wrong… my friend” meddison downfall. “you’re… dating the vet? okay.” “addison”

omg hello my friend. thank you for the ask. and thank you lol i feel like so many of my takes are just incoherent word vomit so tysm.

i think about the post season three possibilities A LOT. especially because i have so many addison ships- i imagine a bunch of different sliding doors scenarios. as much as i did love private practice, i really wish we'd gotten to see addison in that environment a bit more.

my most sort of canon compatible thought is always the mark addison route. i'm not as rabid for them as i am for addek or meddison but i do love them and i feel that if they were going to keep addison in seattle, that would make the most sense. i think that a lot of her attraction for alex was as a reaction to mark and at least in part because she was scared of pursuing anything serious.

but i think in that case it would have been extremely interesting to explore the derek-mark relationship as that unfolds. derek, especially post-post-prom apology (which wasn't a real apology), seems to act like his relationship with addison didn't happen or that it had no lasting effect on him. i go back and forth about whether this was just a weird writing choice to facilitate merder or if it makes complete sense and derek is just being all repress-y with his feeelings. but i think that if addison and mark made a real go of things, derek would have pretended like he didnt give a shit, but it woud have erupted one way or another. perhaps a classic mcbrothers fist fight.

i also think the possibility of addison being there after the merder break up is super interesting, especially given the way she reacted to it when she came back to SGH in season four. if i were addison, and my husband couldn't make a real go of fixing our marriage primarily bc he was so in love with his former mistress/situationship, and then i had to had to watch them gallivanting around my place of work only to BREAK UP like five minutes later because he couldn't be a good partner to her either, i would have lost my god damn marbles so hard that there would be marbles all over that fucking hospital.

i think that could have had some fun storylines. like: addison and meredith form a weird friendship, which fascinates the gossip mill and pisses off derek. maybe addison and derek finally have a real post mortem on their marriage after the bullshit way he handled meredith's situation or after/during his weird fling with rose. i also like the possibility of addek ex sex. ooh wait now i'm thinking about a post divorce friends with benefits situation that starts off kind of funny, gets angsty, and implodes horrendously.

ahh i dont know there are just so many possibilities. for some reason i can only think of things that may have actually happened in canon had addison not left, which are much lamer than the things i would have WANTED to happen.

but realistically, or in my fanfiction brain, heres the jumble of fun and terrible things that could have happened had addison stayed in seattle:

-derek sherpherd survivors support group. with tequila. and eventually lesbian sex

-mark/addison/meredith threesome. derek's head explodes

-mark/addison/derek threesome. this heals their friendship but they never speak of it again. except for mark, who keeps trying to recreate it

-derek cheats on meredith with addison

-meredith cheats on derek with addison

-honestly my biggest and most serious thought i keep coming back to is how dark addison would have gone. like, she was at a pretty low point before she left for l.a. i just imagine her, barely six months after signing divorce papers, still just having to bear witness to all the merder drama. iirc, season four is when derek and mark repatched their relationship. i imagine them like a weird fucked up triangulation where as those two get closer, addison feels further away from either of them. i just feel like she would have gotten really depressed and started coping in terrible ways- drinking more and/or filling the void with meaningless sex. jumping into really toxic flings like she does in PP. maybe they would have kept alex/addison and it would have gotten really toxic and hot and messy and awful.

-i really just think that more things would have to bubble up if she remained in such close proximity to derek. like she mentions in the archer-has-brain-worms crossover, she put derek in a "tiny box" after the divorce. and i dont think she woud have been able to keep him there if she stayed in seattle. and i think that derek would have a harder time repressing everything if he had to be in such close proximity to her. and bc he reacts to alot of things with anger or frustration, i think his frustration at being affected by Things would make him really dickish towards everyone for a bit. like shes looming there, Reminding Him of Things, when he's just trying to be McDreamy with meredith or rose or whoever.

-i think that addison and meredith WOULD actually eventually become friends, but that it would take a while to get there. i also think that meredith getting to know addison as a real person would have an effect on her perception of derek. bc derek keeps meredith at a distance when it comes to his past and everytime somebody from his past comes to town, he gets Weird, but meredith also gets pretty Weird about it bc of her own family issues. so i think that addison being basically the personification of derek's past would really knock some things off balnce for meredith. like, i often think about meredith's perception of what derek's life in new york was like

-i also think that meredith and addison having so many things in common is super interesting. i think that learning about eachother would be really enlightening for them both. they both had shitty emotionally abusive mothers and fathers that were absent in one way or another. and i think that early seasons meredith had this very two dimensional perception of addison at some points (and sort of vice versa)

-the clusterfuck of addison being in seattle when carolyn shepherd comes to town

-wait i would LOVE to see some of the SGH doctors interact with bizzy and the captain

-i think we would have gotten to meet vivian carlsmith a lot sooner bc seattle grace is allegedly a world renowned surgical hospital and it would just make sense

-i think that if private practice hadn't happened, they would have done something different with addison's history with pregnancy. like, i dont think they would have fully gone with my sad baby addek backstory theory at that point because they had aready shifted some things around by season three and confirmed some things with the abortion storyline, BUT i dont think they would have still gone with "she just put off having kids and now its too late". or maybe they would have but it still would have been interesting because any exploration of that would have to involve derek too and maybe mark.

-wait now im thinking about how addison and lexi would interact. if slexi still happened, i think addie would give mark A LOT of shit about dating a 24 year old. she kind of did in the sloan sloan crossover, but i think her witnessing it all would have amplified that for sure

-addison and izzie. professionally, platonically, romantically. any of the three. i think addison still being an attending would have a huge impact on izzies career and things would've gone a lot differently.

-i've always thought that addison facilitating callie's gay awakening was so interesting. like, is she just an observant and empathetic friend or is there another reason mayhaps for her knowing a girlkisser when she sees one? anyway i wonder if she would have influenced that story line differently if she had been there the whole time.

-addison would have done some fucking awesome surgical stuff if she stayed at seattle grace. like, harper avery contender for sure. which would make derek really jealous now that i think about it. and maybe mark too but he would be less pouty about it and more horny.

-i guess mostly i just think about how meredith and addison never really got the chance to know eachother. and if addison had stuck around, they would have, which would've had a whole domino effect on both of their relationship's with derek. like, i think that a lot of what merder was to me seemed like derek keeping a lot of himself closed off and meredith being okay with that bc she's freaked out by emotional intimacy. but addison's mere presence would have changed that entire dynamic because addison (and later, amelia) is where derek keeps his Guilt and Shame and Anger and Sadness and Memories. so her just being around would make it so much harder for him to keep himself closed off, which would expose more of the dark and messy parts of himself to meredith. idk if any of that even made any sort of sense. i just think of the slow unraveling of the mcdreamy persona after season one and also how edgy derek gets when his family shows up and how meredith seems both curious and uncomfortable very time its brought to her attention that derek had a life before seattle. is this anything? or is this just nonsense? i'm having trouble articulating what i mean.

when he's good he's great and dreamy and all that - i totally agree. however when he's bad he's terrible! absolute manipulator of a person. i think it would've been really interesting in canon to see meredith's complete separation from that dream where she realizes her whole life was based on a sort of a lie. she loves him, of course she does, but i want to see her stop liking him.

i would've loved to see him live just a little longer that she realizes that the power trip of attending/intern and her being "less than" him was a big part of why he chased her initially. we see it a little bit before he dies, but she progresses in her career so suddenly and he has a problem with her doing that because suddenly they're equals.

and with addison too, a big part of why merder works is because meredith is fresh and new to him, she's over a decade younger than him, and addison is both intellectually and professionally his equal. hell, i mean they went to med school together. i think it would be really interesting to see how all three of them intersect because of this complex he has. it's a big part why @nostradamus0's recent meddison fic is so compelling to me, it really goes into derek's relationship patterns and meredith needing to get away- and draws similarities between her situation at the point in canon before derek's death and addison's situation of being cast aside years earlier.