This is for my lovely friend ameliashepherdgoeshunting. Thanks for being my cheerleader, especially when I need it the most :)
Can you imagine? Imagine if life had worked out the way you had planned? Imagine if your mistakes were nonexistent and your blessings were in abundance? Most people can. There's the "grass is always greener on the other side" effect. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a life with no failure. The same exact life you have, but better. He used to think about that a lot. If only things had worked out better. She used to think about it a lot, too. If only she had done more, been more. As if anyone can ever be more than they already are. And, yet, it was still everything they had always wanted.
It had been three days. Three days and she hadn't seen or heard from him. She knew they kept saying no feelings, but all there was was feelings. Feelings that could not be swept under the rug any longer. Feelings that they had pushed back at, but had never let out, let free. On the fourth day, she became worried. On the fifth, she left a voicemail. On the sixth, she left two more.
It was on the seventh day that he returned. But not alone. Oh, no, he returned with Teddy in tow. And it hurt. It hurt so much; it hurt like her heart was painfully melting to meld with the rest of her insides. Whoever needed a heart anyway, she thought bitterly. Surely it had never done her any good. Not once had loving someone, family or otherwise, proved to be in her best interest. No. People died and people left. People didn't reciprocate your feelings. People were born with no brains and people were born with ticking time bombs in their heads. No one was safe, no matter how much they wanted to think they were.
"I'm sorry I worried you," he said shortly after his return. "I didn't have the international phone plan," he explained. She nodded, otherwise apathetic to his words. He moved to continue only to be stopped by her "I have a surgery." She turned swiftly and left without a second thought.
He tried to find her for days, but he could never track her down or keep her in one place long enough or private enough to dig into anything meaningful. It was when Teddy went back to Germany after assisting on a case that he was finally able to find her.
He didn't want to make assumptions, but it seemed like Teddy leaving had lifted a weight from her shoulders. She was less jumpy, less flighty. She didn't avoid his eyes. He found her resting in an on-call room-their on-call room, he thought sadly-and sat on a chair across from her. He watched her, relishing in the moment of reprieve. It was a moment where he could feel all he wanted to feel without being judged.
When she finally woke up and her weary eyes adjusted to the light peeking through the shades, she tensed. He knew she had spotted him. "Hi," he said quietly.
She nodded, sitting up easily, before curling into herself. She drew her knees up to her chest and held them tightly.
"I wanted to talk to you."
"I figured."
"You've been avoiding me."
She turned her eyes away from his probing gaze. "No, I haven't."
"Yes, you have." He came closer, sitting next to her on the bed. She shrunk back, and he sighed. "I know you, Amelia. I know when you're avoiding me."
She trembled at the reminder of her tumor. Of how he knew when she was avoiding him. Of all the times she ran before that. "So what?" She didn't want to deny it. She couldn't blame it on the tumor anymore. "So what if I was?"
"I just want you to talk to me."
"This isn't a feelings game."
He chuckled. "I told you it feels like all we do is talk about feelings now."
"Maybe I don't want to," she said. She didn't meet his eyes though. She couldn't. She couldn't because she did want more than just a friends-with-benefits situation.
"Well I do." He said it so confidently that she had to look him in the eyes. She found sincerity there, but it wasn't enough.
"That's a mutual decision. You can't just make it on your own." She rolled her eyes, hoping the motion would look disinterested despite it really being used to hold back tears. "You found your person," she spit.
He shook his head. "What do you mean?"
Now she rolled her eyes for real, standing up and beginning to pace. "Don't act like you didn't run off to Teddy the moment I mentioned her name."
"That's not fair-"
"What's not fair?" she bit. "You didn't have a tumor. You chose to cheat anyway. You chose her anyway. What was I? A consolation prize?" She looked up at the ceiling. All of this anger and sadness was bubbling over. She couldn't hold it in anymore.
He stood up. "You know what, I didn't have a tumor. You did." She raised her eyebrows, willing him to continue. "And that was devastating. For you. And for me." He ran a hand through his tangled locks. "I know it was your tumor, but that doesn't mean I wasn't hurting. That you didn't hurt me."
"I told you that you could leave me."
"I didn't want to leave!" he shouted. "But that doesn't mean I didn't want you to apologize or acknowledge my feelings in all of this."
She choked down a sob, holding her head high. "Then why did you leave?"
"What do you want me to say?" he shrugged. He felt bad enough about that already. "That I let Megan get into my head? That I thought that you had never loved me because if everything was the tumor, then what was our marriage even built on? That we weren't talking and I was afraid it was never going to get better?" He started pacing, too, breathing heavily.
"You think I didn't think that, too? You think I didn't worry about those things? You could've talked to me!" she shouted, the tears now spilling over.
"Talk to you? You could've talked to me, too. And, besides, why would I put all that on you? You'd just had brain surgery for God's sake, and I thought you were just staying to make it up to me. For the tumor stuff. I didn't want you to do that." He lowered his voice. "I didn't want you to do that," he repeated.
Finally, she stepped closer to him, meeting his eyes. She grabbed his hands and held them close, pushing through all the doubts and insecurities she still had. "I never felt obligated to be with you."
"The ring…"
"You wanted out. I wasn't going to stop you. I thought you felt obligated to be with me."
"I didn't-" he began.
"-Neither did I," she finished.
He let out a tired sigh. "How did we get here?" He looked at their worn, tear-stained faces. "What happened to us?"
She pulled on his hands, leading him toward the solitary bed. Sitting down, she began to trace the lines of his palm. "Probably because we were too afraid to do things the right way."
He met her eyes. "What do you mean?"
She shrugged, having trouble articulating her thoughts. "I mean, I was afraid to tell you things and you were afraid to tell me things. I didn't tell you how out of control and scared I felt."
"When the tumor was messing with your emotions?"
"Yeah." She sighed. "But I can't say it was all tumor. Other times in our relationship, I was scared, too. I didn't tell you, I just ran. I couldn't let you in."
"Why not?" he whispered.
"Because every man I love dies." She said it with such bluntness that he ached for her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, silently urging her to continue. "And they also hurt me. I didn't want you to be able to hurt me." She chuckled. "Of course, that happened anyway."
He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I didn't see that. That for a while I didn't agree with all your questions and I didn't notice how scared you were."
"I'm sorry I hurt you trying to figure it all out."
"I'm sorry you had a tumor," he added.
"I'm sorry you had to have a wife with a tumor."
He pulled her closer. "I'm sorry about Teddy."
She took a wavering breath, trying to pull away. He, however, refused to let her. Holding her close, he said, "I went to talk to Teddy because she's always been there for me. She knows me. I needed to close that chapter of my life for good. I mean, there could have always been that thought that we would've been good together, if I had just chosen her when I had the chance, but it never would have worked. I could never love her the way I love you."
Her breath caught at his use of "love" and opposed to "loved." She was still worried though. "You went our whole marriage thinking that?"
"No, no," he was quick to correct her thinking. He used his free hand to tilt her chin in his direction. "I loved you so much that Teddy never even crossed my mind. But when the weeks turned to months and you never came back, I started to wonder if we were doomed. After your tumor, I thought you didn't love me, not really, so I started to think about Teddy for the first time since we'd been together."
She let out a relieved breath. "Do you now? Do you love her now?"
"No," he said with conviction. "As a friend, yes. But I will never be in love with her. I never was." He looked up at the ceiling, and she could practically see his self-loathing. "What do they say? The grass is always greener?" he scoffed.
She nodded. "I know the feeling." Then, looking down at her lap, she continued. "Then why did you bring her back?"
"Kepner called. She had a major case and trusted Teddy. Remembered her field work. I agreed because it made sense and April's been dealing with a lot lately anyway. If this could make her happier-"
"-You'd do it." She nodded along with her words. "I get it." Amelia gave him a small smile.
"I wish we could've talked before." He met her eyes, holding her chin in his hand. "If we hadn't kept saying something and running-"
"-I know. If we had just sat down and not left." She shrugged. "But I think we needed this. We needed to see that what we were doing wasn't working. We needed to talk about the hard stuff. We needed to make time for each other that wasn't just for sex." She paused, grinning slightly. "Although it was phenomenal," she teased. He grinned in response.
"What happens now?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said. "What do you want?"
"I want to be with you. For real." He said it without pause, without hesitation, and it felt like her heart was congealing into a solid mass once more. It was painful, yet it also filled her with a fierce sense of hope. "But only if you want that, too."
She nodded, happy tears now gracing her crystal eyes. "Of course I want it." She moved her hands to cup his cheeks, smoothing her thumbs over his scruff. "But I want it to be better this time around."
He smiled. "I want that, too."
Three months later and, in the same on-call room, he proposed again (well, he took her as his wife once more). She had laughed at the eloquent picnic spread across the room's floor, but he had only smiled and said there were too many memories in here to let the space go unused.
When he asked her, presenting her with the ring she missed so dearly, she was speechless. She wasn't expecting it. Before he could worry, though, she jumped forward and planted a firm kiss on his mouth. Pulling back she said, "I wouldn't want it any other way." He slid it onto her trembling finger, then tugged her into another warm embrace.
And it was then that he realized that going back and fixing all his mistakes would never work. Getting only blessings and never hardship would never make him happier than he was right now. It would never work because he wouldn't have her-his beautiful, intelligent, kind-hearted, sassy wife- in the way he did now. He would've taken it for granted. He wouldn't have pushed for more emotional intimacy. He wouldn't have the life he knew was ahead of him. One that is amazing, full of love of laughter, with her by his side.
And he didn't know it, but at that very moment, she was thinking the exact same thing. Their trials were painful and left their fair share of scars, but she wouldn't change them for anything. Because where they were today? It was more than even her dreams could comprehend.
This was their happily ever after. This was their forever.
Comments? Ideas? Thoughts?