A Love That Will Never Grow Old
By greyeyedgirl
Summary: Anguish, avoidance, acceptance, and love. A Cristina & Burke story.
Chapter One-Okay, so I am just going to say, you are never, never going to see what's coming. But it will be intense. And you will like it. This is only the first chapter, but no worries, because I don't write unhappy endings.
The chocolate tasted bitter. People would think that Cristina would be fond of bitter chocolate, as she often came off so bitter and harsh herself. But it tasted nasty as it slipped past her teeth, and her taste buds craved the sweet comfort of a Hershey bar.
She kicked the vending machine in annoyance, angry at the crap that it had fed her. She spit the candy bar into the trash, hoping the garbage bin would care for the acrid glob more than she did.
"Eighty hour limit, Yang." Dr. Webber seemed to appear out of nowhere as he crossed by her. She dropped the wrapper with a thud, turning around. "I, um, actually have four hours left," she stammered.
"Lucky Preston will cover for you," Richard muttered, sauntering down the hall.
She rolled her eyes, slightly annoyed, as she pushed her long, heavy-feeling hair off of her shoulder. Lucky me.
"Hey," Meredith said, walking up to her, tugging on the bottom of her scrub top absentmindedly.
"Hi."
"Anything good left?" Meredith asked, inserting her dollar bill into the slot.
"Not unless you feel like something that tastes like it's been dipped in Southern Comfort and rolled around in dog crap."
Meredith gagged involuntarily, pushing the coin-return button quickly. "You're very talented with your similes."
Cristina shrugged her shoulders, twisting the top of her bottle of diet coke, listening to the satisfactory hiss of bubbles. "Lunch is in an hour."
"I have to go home. My limit's up." Meredith made a face, stashing her wallet back into the pocket of her scrubs. "Last time I had to leave early I ended up reorganizing our entire fridge, my CD collection, and make up bag."
"I unalphatized Burke's medicine cabinet." Meredith laughed, turning with Cristina as they headed down the hall. "So how's it going with you two? I haven't heard any fireworks going off in the OR."
"It's fine, Mer. How's you and McSteamy?" Meredith shot her a dirty look, turning into the locker room. "Hint taken. You don't want to talk about you and Dr. Burke."
Cristina leaned against a locker, closing her eyes as Meredith changed into her a pair of jeans. "He wants me to move in with him."
"So? You're there all the time anyway. Whenever I call your apartment, you're never there."
"I wasn't there that often before. There was an annoying divorced guy who lived in the apartment next to mine, and I could always hear him crying until I banged on the wall to make him shut up."
Meredith laughed, taking her hair out of it's ponytail. "Not exactly Mister Roger's neighborhood."
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"Cristina." She paused at the sound of his voice. "Hey," she said, looking up and smiling. "I was thinking maybe I could make you dinner tonight. What's your favorite food?"
"Um, spaghetti." She smiled at him, watching his eyes focus on her as she set the pen she'd been scribbling on a chart with down. "What time do you get off tonight?"
"Four."
"Same as me," she said, her eyes glued to him intently.
"What a coincidence."
"Do you want to rent a movie or something? I don't have to be in till 7 tomorrow." 'I can't be in till 7 seven tomorrow,' was a more accurate statement.
"I thought maybe instead we could talk. Find out some things about each other."
"Fine," she said, still smiling.
"Convince you to move into the apartment."
She smiled at him again, but her eyes glimmered now. "Burke."
"Sorry." The word came out tentative, but he hadn't meant it to. Funny how things could come out wrong.
"I have a surgery in a little less than an hour, but we could eat lunch first if you'd like."
"You mean together?" Cristina didn't bother to mask her surprise at this suggestion. Breakfasts and dinners were spent together, but at lunch she sat with her friends, and he chatted about grown-up things with his fellow attendings.
"Would that be all right?" He didn't sound angry, exactly, just curious.
"Yes. It's all right."
"Cristina, you don't have to if you don't want to."
She smiled at him, and the glimmer had shrunk to a speck. "I want to."
They walked to the cafeteria together, moving the way through the busy halls as the only noise that reached their ears was the voice of the other. Burke let her go ahead of him in line, watching her hair jump softly as she balanced her tray. "It's a little chilly. Do you want to eat inside?"
The cafeteria was stark white, as was the norm for Grace. Preston had always liked them, the feeling of clean was comforting to him, but Cristina thought that the over-whiteness was slightly cold, and longed for a splash of life to incorporate them.
"Oh, I forgot ketchup." Cristina looked down at her fries, wondering how on earth she could have forgotten. What was fries without ketchup? A mushy old potato, that's what.
"I'll get it for you," Burke offered, standing up. "Or we could share?"
Cristina smiled, scooping some of the red glob onto her own plate. "Thank you." The ketchup smelled saucy and seemed to glow under the harsh, unrelentless hospital light.
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"Middle name?"
"Nicole. Yours?"
"Michael."
Michael. Cristina paused, fitting him to it in her mind. "Okay," she smiled.
"Favorite color?"
"Purple."
He smiled. "Mine too."
Cristina laughed into her spaghetti. "Seriously?"
"Birthday."
"June fifth."
Burke paused.
"Yours?"
He hesitated, feeling the small pinch of his lower lip between his teeth. "October eighteenth."
Cristina studied her warped reflection in the silver fork. "Oh." Her voice was soft. "I'm sorry."
"It wasn't your fault." Burke's voice was quiet but firm.
Cristina was quiet for a moment. "Um...favorite...movie."
"Brokeback Mountain."
Cristina laughed, trying to picture it as she toyed with her fork incoherently.
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The bedroom was quiet, and from Cristina's spot under Preston's arm she could read the alarm clock's glaring red numbers, eyes of the devil in a pit of black. 2:27.
She sometimes wondered why it was times like this that she remembered most clearly. Her mind would sort of swoon, and in her drunken, feverish state, the moments of her childhood would resurface. Not her childhood. Her...babyhood. She closed her eyes and forced herself to withdraw, shrink away from the memory, letting herself exist only in the bed, lying on her side shielded with Preston's embrace.
It had hurt. She remembered that, the pain burning from all sides of her. Yes, it had definitely hurt.
She had her father's hair. His hair and her hair would be mixing on the bed, the vision of it swam in front of her, mixing with the vision in reality of her hair falling onto Burke's comforter.
"Daddy, it hurts. I don't like it."
"Shut up, Cristina. Nobody likes a baby."
Her tears were climbing inside her, but her 2-year-old self would not let them escape. He was her daddy, and he loved her, and this is what people did when they loved each other. That was what he said, and her father would not lie to her.
"Daddy, please," she whispered, her tiny voice a ripple in the emptiness. It wasn't black that she saw when he did this to her. He was pushing against her, and she fell into herself, surrounded by a sea of white in which everything was obvious, and nothing was reality. "Cristina, shut up!"
Why was she remembering now? Why did it have to come back when she was with him? She hadn't had this problem with her other boyfriends. She was safe, and happy, and knew Burke would never let her be hurt again. Why did it have to haunt her like this, an everlasting shadow of white emptiness when she could finally be fulfilled?
"Cristina? Are you okay?" Burke's voice was soft and sounded disoriented. Her restless fidgeting had woken him up.
"Yeah. Sorry. Had a bad dream," she whispered. He frowned, still not quite awake, but bent his head to kiss her hair, the soft strands tickling and delighting his lips. "No more bad dreams," he murmured into her ear. She smiled, feeling his arm tighten around her. "No more bad dreams," she whispered.