A/N Hello! I'm very, very late to the Grey's hype but I've binged watched and binged watched and I am completely in love with Callie and Arizona! I've written ridiculous amounts of fanfic before but never Grey's so go easy on me please! And feedback is greatly welcomed! This is set sometime around season 13 and everything that has previously happened in the show, still happened EXCEPT that Derek didn't die after the crash, he survived. Just a short introduction chapter, please let me know if you're interested in more!
"All of my friends who think that I'm blessed, they don't know my head is a mess. No, they don't know who I really am and they don't know what I've been through like you do. And I was made for you."
Calliope was their thing. It was Arizona's thing. She had told her once, curled up in the solace of their room, under the duvet and away from the world, that Calliope was her thing. Nobody called her Calliope except perhaps her father and so, contently, Arizona had stolen it for her own, making it sound like a song from a bird whenever it hummed from her lips, like she should never be anything other than her Calliope.
Somehow, accidentally, she had fallen head over heels in love with Arizona Robbins.
Somehow, accidentally, she had let her go.
Now here they were. Or rather, here she was and there Arizona was and it really sucked. Callie didn't feel like she could feel sad about it because after all, it was her fault. She had wanted out, she had wanted freedom and dancing in her underwear and now she had all of that and more. All of it, except Arizona.
They weren't the same people anymore and Callie knew that. She knew about babies and crashing cars and planes falling out the sky, that kind of crap changed people. Two years apart changed people. Life had taken its toll on them both individually and separately. Now, they barely spoke. They shared snippets of their time with Sofia, let the other know what they had been up to during their week with their daughter apart from that, she knew very little about her ex-wife. All she knew was what she saw from the hospital and that was very, very little. She had though, noticed that the sparkle in her blue, blue eyes wasn't ever quite the same and despite the demons she was fighting herself, that broke her heart more than anything.
Snapped from her wallowing thoughts, Callie was paged and with an inward groan she pulled herself up and off to whatever crisis needed her attention. Of course, it was a kid with a broken bone that needed tending too and of course, she'd be stuck working in close proximity to her ex-wife for half the day which wouldn't really be a problem except she found that she couldn't breathe when she, when Arizona was looking at her or talking to her or in fact just anywhere near her. It sucked.
Arizona was amazing with kids, it filled Callie with a joy she had all but forgotten when she watched the way she animatedly chatted to her patient like she was the only person in the room that mattered to her. Maybe she was.
Did Arizona still care about her in any way other than as the mother of her child and the woman who technically cut off her leg? Who promised her she would fix her and promised her she wouldn't leave her and then broke both promises without looking back?
The thought of being anything less than everything to the blonde haired, blue eyed surgeon made the Latina feel sick to the stomach and for a moment, she thought she had actually been sick. It took a few moments and Arizona's gentle touch on her arm to draw her back to reality and make her realise it was in fact the patient who had vomited on her but that wasn't really the issue. The issue was the way her skin suddenly felt like it was on fire at the touch, in a way that she hadn't in a painfully long time.
"Dr Torres? Callie? You're crying…" Arizona's eyes were soft, her tone gentle, comforting even, despite her confusion. Before she could speak again, Callie was gone. Before she knew what she was doing, she was passing the case notes to her intern and rushing after her wife. Ex-wife.
Callie pushed open the door to an on-call room and ran her hand over her face. Her life had been so easy, so full of being a badass surgeon and tequila. Somewhere along the road, she had lost the fun, the easiness, herself. Looking in the mirror, she didn't recognise herself at all.
Her tears hadn't stopped since she'd fled from the patient's room and yet Callie barely registered them. Pulling off her scrubs and the sick covered black top she wore underneath, she also barely registered the door open and shut.
Callie did however, register the soft gasp of the person behind her and the way she looked as though she couldn't catch her breath and the horrified look on her ex-wife's face when she finally turned around.
"Calliope?"
It sounded so right coming from her lips that Callie could almost ignore what Arizona had noticed when she'd walked in and seen her bare skin, what had caused the shocked gasp. Shocked, or scared, Callie wasn't quite sure.
Almost, but not quite.
