AN: Just a one shot to keep me motivated; get the creative juices flowing, so to speak.
This is set some time after 8x24 and it's fairly AU. I'm under no delusion that we'll ever see this during Season 9, hence why I wrote it. :-)
There are a couple of warnings for some language, a few expletives and the brief mention of sexual themes – though nothing explicit but perhaps a little sudden so it's difficult to avert your eyes should you wish to.
Cheers, Author's Tune.
It's difficult to be hugged, when you're trying to stay strong, to keep it together for just a few moments longer. Because maybe, if you can survive those seconds, those minutes, then the impossible will become easier.
Perhaps even possible.
But when those warm arms slip uninvited around your waist, it takes more than you have. You know that she can feel you tense, each muscle constricting; and even the deaf could hear the shudder of your body as you force bile back down your throat. It emanates from your pores.
She envelopes you, because she can see every tear that isn't being shed; hasn't been shed. She knows that your body has healed; the wounds have closed and bones fused. Tendons have learned to move again, stretch and flex as they did once before, sliding around the ward in your Heelys.
She still drives you to physiotherapy, stays and helps push you further, harder. And you do it, without fail. Push weights, use machines, throw punches at bags when she challenges you.
Still, you stumble at the last hurdle. Every time.
You're not sure you'll ever walk unaided again. The longer it's been, the harder it gets. Just like the hugs, some walls are just insurmountable and pulling them down means starting again. And that's simply too painful a thought to bear.
"How did it go today?" Callie asks, bag strap across her body and tote resting at the small of her back, bouncing slightly as she walks.
Arizona shrugs, her sweat-lined forehead and loosened, tangled hair indication enough of the fervour the session required. "You?" she asks, not sure if she ever answers a question directly anymore.
"Excellent," Callie answers, forced energy and enthusiasm. "Rocked it, like the surgery God, I am." She grins and Arizona permits a momentary tug at the corner of her lips, the briefest of smiles.
Arms hooked through the guides of the silver crutches, Arizona limps forward, wondering what Callie's elevated mood might mean for their evening. Hard and erotic sex perhaps, void of anything sweet or tender. Just direct fingers, long penetration and hastily achieved climaxes. Anything but the whisper of gentle words and those loving phrases that mask direct assurances of safety and security.
Anything but the pitiful look Callie affords her as she slowly makes her way towards the door. It's always nice to forget, for a few moments at least, in the heat of passion, that she is nothing short of shattered. A mere shell of who she once was.
Who she was before, before she was in a plane that fell from the sky like a clay target. Before her best friend joined her brother; and the others, dropped off through the cold night as if they were strangers on an operating table. Just more lives she couldn't save. And the woman in front of her, with her own shattered heart, held close to the hope that her wife wouldn't disappear. How many times, in the dead of night, has she thanked her for not dying, for coming back to her against all odds?
How many times has Arizona responded with silence? Sometimes, death seems like it would have been preferable.
Callie places a hand on her spine as she holds the hinged door open; the sweat soaked shirt feels cool to her touch. "Long bath when we get home?" she asks, keeping her hand lingering lightly as they progress to the car.
"No different to usual," Arizona grates out; where she once loved small talk, the pleasantries, now seem useless. A waste of precious oxygen.
Callie sighs.
Arizona wonders if Callie had someone else to fall back on, whether she would still be here. If Mark hadn't died, would she have fallen in to some co-dependent and completely unhealthy relationship where both grieved the death of their eternal love with an illusion of perfection? Though one would be a living ghost.
"I'll run it for you when we get home; I got some more of that lavender bath oil you liked." Liked was a bit of a stretch, Arizona might have mentioned that it didn't smell akin to burnt roses. Which is close to 'like', as much as partial is to pregnant.
"Sure."
"Sure," Callie mimics, though her hand still taps at Arizona's cervical spine.
As weeks, even the first couple of months passed, Callie had encouraged in many ways, Arizona's resilience. Her stubbornness and focus on recovery, rather than all that had been lost. All she had seen and lived through. Then it had become problematic, gradually, not overnight. The tears never came and where they might have been, emitted anger and hostility; a biting cruelness.
Callie's efforts to elicit emotion had been useless; too much time had passed now. And Arizona knows exactly the moment, when her control wavers, and she would push so hard that no one could stay. No one would stay.
And now, she can't walk. When every test and scan indicates that not only is it theoretically possible, but that she should be.
"Did you push the weight today?" Callie asks, quietly, car beeping as the doors unlock.
Arizona scowls. "Yes."
"How much?"
"One twenty five."
Callie stifles a gasp and her eyes stare at Arizona over the roof of the car. Arizona mutters under her breath, a string of expletives, too harsh for the gentle Paediatric Surgeon that was once all fairy dust and magic wishes.
"That's brilliant. Guess you're God-like today too." They both know what the number means, she's now pushing her body weight. Lying on her back, legs in the air, she could push her own body weight. Walking should be a breeze.
"It's not brilliant," Arizona bites back.
"Come on, Arizona. It's good, more is better."
"Fuck you."
This is the push, walls erecting and defences rising.
"It's good," Callie repeats, softly.
"Don't ever call me God." Arizona slides awkwardly into the passenger seat and her crutches tumble to the bitumen, a clutter of metal.
"I'll get them," Callie assures, opening her door but Arizona releases a hardened growl, like weakness is a sin.
"Fuck you, again," she mutters, breathlessly as she reaches out the door and to the ground. One hand grips the door handle, holding fast to salvation. Inanimate objects only, everything else disappears.
Callie watches, waiting; hoping Arizona doesn't tumble from the car. It's happened once before. "You're angry at me, today," she states, once the crutches are shoved roughly in the back and the door slams shut. Another few scratches on the upholstery.
A flicker of hesitation crosses Arizona's face, because she knows she's fighting the one she loves. "No."
Callie laughs. "Fuck you too, then." A grin crosses her face and Arizona knows she's just being facetious. "Love you, Arizona."
And those words hurt more than anything else; more than her leg and the wooden grief in her chest. She coughs away the swell of emotion and stares out the window; tears abate by the first corner. Then she's taking the stairs to their apartment, because she's horrifically determined and violently obsessed with not succumbing to humanness.
The sex they have that night is everything she envisaged from across the gymnasium. Guttural moans and gratifying, yet absent of anything resembling emotional connectivity. Callie snuggles into her afterwards, physically taking Arizona's arm and wrapping it around her shoulders. Her cheeks are wet and it's hard to tell if it's the exertion or she's crying again, because she misses her wife. Arizona stares at the ceiling, breathless for a long while; the dark hair draped over her chest is so familiar and so dangerously close to her heart.
Against the odds, their eyes close; it's unusual. Callie isn't pushed to her side of the bed, under false excuses and invisible barriers. Arizona sleeps without pharmacological assistance, her senses clear though the numbness quickly missed as horrid images taunt her dreams.
Waking at the shifting weight beneath her, Callie tumbles into consciousness. Arizona arches her back, shoulders burrowing deep into the soft mattress and her head tilts back. With her mouth agape and noiselessly screaming at some hidden force, Arizona's nails tear at Callie's thigh, inadvertently caught in their path.
Callie stumbles to her elbow, cautious and tentative as she spreads her fingers and flattens her palm at the base of Arizona's sternum. Sweat drips between her breasts and droplets tumble into her thumb. Her own heart rate quickens; there's nothing as frightening as watching the tortured sound of silent cries. "Arizona," Callie whispers, voice husky and broken. "Wake up. Please," she quietly pleads, jostling her hand. Taut stomach muscles respond, contracting at the change of sensation and incorporating it into her nightmare. The nightmare that is all history; real and vivid. "Please…please." Callie isn't sure why she's crying, tears trailing over her high cheekbones and down her face until they disappear below her jaw line. This isn't her dream; her nightmare. She has ones of her very own.
Arizona kicks at the sheets and twists her body; a screech finally escapes from her tight throat. The reverberation wakes her and her arms flail in the air, catching the sheets and connecting with Callie's skin, she's fumbling for orientation. She pushes at the bedspread, caught now in her desperation and she's trapped, obscured by dead bodies and blood stained scrubs, thin blankets that keep toes warm at thirty thousand feet. "Nooo, no no no no." It's an echo into the night and she's trying to distinguish between reality and memories.
Callie crawls to her knees and folds her body over, hands cupping Arizona's face and pressing at the hallowed tissue. "It's not real, it's not happening," Callie murmurs, she doesn't know what to say. "Stop, stop," she tries, frightened of the pressure Arizona is putting on her leg, in the coolness of night; when muscle should be sleeping and healing tiny miniscule tears. She reaches and flicks the dull bedside light on and hastily tugs at the sheets, untwisting the mess from Arizona's still fighting limbs.
"No," Arizona says again, gasping with blue eyes wide and hyper-alert. She thinks briefly, in the midst of purgatory, that Callie is moving away, leaving her. Her nails again catch Callie's skin, slight scrapes down her shoulder and side.
Arizona's scarred leg is exposed and her naked torso; they fell asleep before the usual routine could be followed. "It's okay, everything…everything's okay," Callie articulates disjointedly, wary of gathering Arizona in her arms and sobbing with her; into her.
"Oh God," Arizona looks around their bedroom, distinguishing objects from wreckage paraphernalia. Chairs from plane seats; walls from metal; light from fire. "I can't, I can't…I can't…"
Callie presses her nose to Arizona's temple, warm breath against her ear. She rakes her fingers into Arizona's hair, fisting them slightly and tugging on the strands. "You're home, you're okay," she murmurs, regaining her tenuous sense of control.
"I have to get up," Arizona says loudly, strongly and she fights to lift her head and shoulders.
Callie hastily wraps an arm around her waist, cementing her bare form to the bed. "No," she whispers into her ear, swallowing her fear and exhaling strength. "You're staying." In months, it's the only demand she's made; the only one.
"I can't…" Arizona gasps, chest heaving and fighting, air noisily twisting towards her lungs. "I can't breath."
Moving her arms, Callie pulls Arizona into her body, stripped bare, skin to skin. One arm slides under Arizona's head, around her ear and wraps over shoulder, between her breasts. The other, pulls tight around her stomach, legs curling cacoon like. "Slow," Callie instructs.
"No," Arizona yells the word, chest heaving.
Callie feels like the enemy, holding her with a vice like grip. She's receiving blows, elbows to the abdomen and hard skull against her face. Arizona could be a child, in the midst of a tantrum, cars rushing by roadside. She can't protect herself.
"Arizona, Arizona."
"Let go of me," Arizona fights, body slippery and Callie catches a glimpse of her face. Stained, finally.
Callie shakes her head, and thinks for a moment that the stranger in her arms is sedating. "Never."
It renews the fight and Arizona manages to raise her shoulders a few inches off the bed before she tumbles back into the soft body that she once knew intimately. Still does, deep down. That kind of familiarity is instinctual; intrinsic. "I can't do this anymore. I don't want to."
"Talk to me, talk to me." Everything seems to be being repeated, because if she says it twice, maybe Arizona will listen. Perhaps she'll believe her.
Turning her face into the pillow, Arizona disappears and the sobs crumble her body into a shaking shell. Muffled cries edge through the material and she gasps for air. It's hard to breathe through duck down and she feels like she suffocating again, lung pierced and filling with blood and fluid. "Callie…"
A few more cracks in her already splintered soul, Callie isn't even sure if she actually hears the utterance. Just a figment of her imagination, like all the nights she's dreamt that Arizona is finally asking for her. "I know," she offers in response, though the words seem hallow. She doesn't know; how can she? Arizona never explains. "Just stop and breathe. Breathe baby, please."
Arizona is panicking and grating at her own throat with the sharp ends of seldom manicured nails. The walls are getting closer, blinding her vision and tunnelling her escape route. She has stopped her physical combat and the tears spontaneously cease, her entire being focuses on wheezing in air. Oxygenating through a crushed straw.
She allows Callie to turn her, eyes expansive and petrified. She can barely make out the sound emitting from Callie's mouth and the hands shaking her shoulders. Maybe this is it. Maybe this is the moment where her lungs cave in on themselves and she can succumb to unconsciousness. That blessed space where she feels no pain and sees no sobbing sorrow from the young women in pale blue. The moment where the helicopter isn't noisily appearing amongst the foliage, interrupting her relief filled demise.
Or the authoritarian that is demanding she stay; one good hand catching her limp form as voices pierce through bush.
Softness kisses at her open mouth, her bottom lip tenderly captured. Arizona blinks. Once. Then twice.
Air rattles through her throat. She darts her eyes across the ceiling.
"No, look at me. Keep looking at me and slow breaths. I've got you." Does she? She has no fucking idea. Callie tosses a leg over Arizona's good one, only white speckles now where glass once pierced. She palms Arizona's cheek, guiding her face towards her and surprised when there's no resistance.
Pupils dilated; a fear response. That's the first thing Callie thinks when she holds Arizona's gaze. She can only imagine that it emulates those moments spent amongst the wreckage. Arizona exhales a cry and her mouth clamps shut, catching it.
"Cry," Callie encourages though she earns a defiant shake of the head, eyes rooted – blue on brown. More tender kisses, feather light; they elicit a shiver of expelled emotion. "You're allowed. Has anyone told you that? You're allowed to cry, Arizona. You're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to hate me, everyone, the world. You're allowed to be whatever you feel."
Arizona's features quiver, threatening to crumble. "You shouldn't let me treat you like I do."
"I've hoped that one day you would realise that I'm staying and you would come back to me."
"Fuck." Arizona hiccups a sob, hands to her mouth.
"Are we there?"
Tears spill over her lower lids; she doesn't know where she is. Nor where she is going. "I don't know how."
Neither does Callie. And for a second, she feels guilty at the relief she is absorbed in, holding her fragmented wife in her arms. Arizona shivers, the cool night air licking and drying the beads of sweat. "This is where we start," Callie assures, "anew." Arizona watches through her tears as Callie draws the sheet over them, up to Arizona's neck. She cacoons her, white tucked tight against her skin; it gives Arizona the illusion of colour, life. "You're going to be okay."
The ceiling creaks and they both cast their eyes briefly above.
"When?"
"I don't know." She could hardly lie; give a time frame that is meaningless. What should she say? Hours? Weeks? Months? Years even?
"I can't do it." There's conviction in Arizona's eyes; she truly believes that she can't do it; whatever it is.
With her hands tangled amongst the sheets, Callie strokes Arizona's skin through the one thousand thread count cotton. "Do you remember?" she asks, sharing Arizona's pillow. With the slightest of movement, her lips grace the blonde hair covering Arizona's temple.
She looks confused momentarily and frustration bubbles in her chest. How quickly the anger rises these days, without cause; without intent. "No," she murmurs, harsher than she wishes.
"Hey," Callie reaches for her hand, entwining their fingers. Arizona tightens her grip, inadvertently. "Please don't go again."
For the first time, Arizona hears more than her own fear. The same terror radiates from Callie's every pore, oozing trepidation. Guilt rushes towards Arizona, like the ground rushed to meet the plane. She shakes her head, unable to form and articulate the apology that simmers.
"The day you…the day you left. Out in the rain, do you remember what I said to you?"
The day that Nick received a death sentence, Karev dodged a bullet and fate spat out a bitter pill. "No," Arizona says, though she knows. She remembers Callie's every word and promise, and the way she felt, wrapped in her arms like there was still hope.
"Whatever you can't do, I'll do," Callie reiterates, wrapping her words with a lingering kiss. "I forgot to add a clause though," she whispers and the pads of her fingers press tightly to Arizona's ribs. "I forgot to say that you have to let me; that I can't do it if you don't let me in."
And the anger rises again; 'cause she's doing the best she can. But her best isn't good enough; it still isn't enough to please everyone. Or anyone.
"Shhhh," Callie reads her mind, or the stiffness under her touch. "It's not a criticism, just a reminder. I'll wait forever if that's how long it takes you to be ready."
"Forever doesn't exist."
"Maybe forever is just too crappy a thought, right now."
"Tomorrow's fucking scary enough," Arizona growls the words almost and salt marks her cheeks again. "It's too much."
Callie shakes her head and inwardly curses. She should have pushed harder; the time when Arizona refused to see the Psychologist again or the day she let go of Callie's hand and started saying she could do it on her own. Whatever it was, it didn't matter. She could do everything on her own.
Except walk without crutches.
"Tell me." Because maybe a few words will make a difference, loosen the weight on her shoulders.
Arizona shudders and her head moves back and forth, tapping against Callie's. They're so close on the pillow, but light years apart. Callie's grip tightens, she not even aware that she's doing it. She's frightened, of taking one step forward and a hundred back.
"I can take it. Whatever it is – something or everything, you won't break me. You won't lose me. I promised I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise me again."
Callie shakes her and then feels a rush of shame as Arizona squeezes her eyes shut and tries to hide her face again. "Look," she insists, repositioning herself and taking both of Arizona's hands in her own. She guides the hands to her face, her neck. She holds them to her chest. "See, I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Bar a one in a million aircraft crash; a malignant sarcoma or a roadside explosive.
"I told you, that I couldn't do it again," Arizona insists, self deprecating and loathe of her inability to manage; to cope.
"I don't care, okay. Well, I care of course, I just don't care whether you can or you can't. I'm not letting you disappear."
Arizona turns suddenly, drawing her knees up and huddling on to her side. The top of her head presses into Callie's chest, where the nape of her neck meets the join of her clavicles. "I hate crying," she scrapes out, ironic given the impending meltdown. And she hides as she sobs, eyes pinched shut and chin tucked; foetal.
"I know," Callie whispers, consecutive streams of half kisses amongst dishevelled blonde hair.
"I miss Tim." Of the entire trauma that she expects Arizona to slowly disclose, the mention of her brother isn't highest on the list. Though Callie supposes, as she slowly caresses Arizona's bare back beneath the covers, it all began with Timothy. She knows the story, vaguely. The way he died, lying alone under an overturned vehicle, shattered bones and internal injuries. His aorta had slowly bled until it ruptured entirely; he was probably conscious up until that moment and for the split seconds afterwards. Then his blue eyes, identical to his sister's, would have closed for the final time.
"Did you think…" Callie trails off; she doesn't know how to phrase her question. How can she ask how close Arizona thought she was to dying? How close did she think she was to living her brother's destiny?
Arizona quivers. It was Mark who died in the same way, with the exception of shattered limbs. He bled out, spontaneously, lying on her good leg. Metallic thick red fluid that drizzled from his nose and ears, bloating his abdomen and trickling from various orifices.
The guilt and the shame still has grip of her stomach; she didn't cry when they lifted him off of her. Nor when someone checked the pilot for a pulse, he had been dead for hours. Derek had tapped at her cheek; and she can still feel the numb sensation of his gentle slap, the way he moved her head at will. She had never had a lot to do with him, a few surgeries, acquaintances at dinners and pleasantries in hallways. They didn't need to liaise, or build a friendship; mutual respect and admiration didn't demand it. She had saved his daughter; he had saved her wife. Wife to be, at that point. Words were redundant.
There were sobs too, loud and heart-wrenching. Just not from her.
"Arizona?" Callie watches as Arizona stills and then sporadically moves, running fingernails harshly down her cheek in amongst the tumbling memories. Post trauma lines between reality and history are so blurred. So very blurred.
He had kissed her forehead, chaste and fleeting; it had seemed odd yet perfect. Her eyes had felt so heavy and he was talking to her suddenly, holding her upright. Asking her for a few more minutes; not forever. He only asked her for a few minutes.
"Arizona?" Callie asks again, moving against her and trying to draw her out of the reticent posture, isolated and inhibited. "What happened?"
Callie uses her strength to unfold Arizona, so that her ear comes to rest against her stomach. A combination of bare skin and knotted sheets amongst hair and tears. "The thoughts and the images. It's like I'm there, all over again; feeling every touch and hearing every sound. I feel it. I'm not remembering, I'm half living it."
It doesn't take an in-depth knowledge of neurobiology to understand the symptoms, the life Arizona finds herself living, though skilfully hiding. The thing about trauma is that it places an index card in the brain, carved with every smell, sight, word. The mere glimpse of a similarity and the card pops up; the body responds as if there again, all adrenalin and survival mode. The brain is poorly equipped for mere memories, humanism stumps even the most complex of organs.
"He told me to hold on. For you; for Sofia." The little girl she had barely held in her arms and whose questions for Mama had been left grossly unanswered.
"Mark?"
"No," Arizona shakes her head. "No, Derek asked me. He made me promise just a few more minutes, for you."
"Oh."
"He could hear the chopper. I could only hear silence and Mark's blood was on my scrubs, and the blanket. His blanket. Mine, I don't know."
"Mmmm." She has to be able to hear it, if she can't hear it, Arizona will never tell her. But God, she suddenly wishes not to.
"I could have gone to sleep, I wanted to. I didn't save anyone, didn't help. And he just asked me to hold on. Told me. Told me that I was keeping my eyes open for a few more minutes."
Callie nods, tears drip to her pillow. "I love that man then," she manages to scratch out and to her ears it sounds as strangled as it feels.
"They lifted me, though I told them they shouldn't and Derek held my hand. I don't think he had ever touched me before that day. Then I woke up and it was your hand." Callie nods, she remembers that moment clearly. "I don't know anything between." And she has never once asked.
"I was there Arizona, I never left. I promised you I wouldn't." Callie draws in a breath, tries to even her pulse and contain the waver in her tone. "You want to know what happened?"
Some things she could surmise, years of medical training tends to have that effect. But perhaps, if Callie starts than she will finish; it seems oddly conceivable. "A little." The unsaid pulses, be gentle for she's not remotely healed.
"There was just under a week between those two points," Callie explains softly, one hand in Arizona's hair whilst the other strokes up the back of her arm and down her side. "You dropped your GCS at the scene, so they had to ventilate. You were first to arrive."
"Oh."
"They kept you sedated, though your blood pressure was so low, even with fluid and a transfusion. We red blanketed you to the OR."
"We?"
"I told you," Callie repeats and she will say it another million times if she needs to. "I wasn't leaving your side."
"You operated?"
"No," she mutters, scowling. "Consulted only, which is fair enough. I was spontaneously crying in between yelling instruction." And there, Arizona releases what might be the first genuine hint of a giggle since she was forced into a surreal existence. "I've never been so petrified in all my life," Callie adds.
"I remember what that's like." And she does, sitting next to Callie's intubated form, silently begging her to wake up and live. For her.
When the same plea had been asked of herself, Arizona had fallen short. She had lived, from a physiological perspective, yet in so many other ways she had died that day.
"Yeah, you do."
"Calliope?" Arizona asks, lifting herself slowly up on to her elbow first before she slips her good leg underneath herself and sits upright. She clutches the sheet to her exposed chest, for comfort more than modesty.
Callie follows her painfully slow movement intently. "What is it?" she asks, reaching a hand in the air towards her. Arizona catches it in one of her own, brings it to her lips and kisses the knuckles of her fingers. She drops her head briefly and cries, working at sustaining some semblance of control. "Arizona?" Concern breaks Callie's features, the grip on her hand is strong and desperate.
"I am," Arizona says slowly, pausing, "so incredibly, incredibly sorry."
Callie starts shaking her head before the apology is even articulated. "Please don't," she whispers.
"I need you so much," Arizona softly murmurs as her face crumbles again. "And I've just been…I've…" she trails off again.
"Please?" Callie asks, tugging at their joined hands. "Anew remember. It's okay; please don't do this to yourself."
"I'm sorry."
One last apology and she falls forward, clinging to Callie like the lifeline she's been searching for. She can't find the words to say that she's sorry for the anger she knows is still quelling inside of her and will plummet without warning. Harsh words will be uttered and devastatingly morbid thoughts will threaten to pull her into a world of darkness. And the images won't disappear, this isn't a fucking fairytale. Her life is no fucking fairytale.
Arizona stands at the end of a set of parallel bars, two sweaty palms gripping the white hard cylinders. Her bare feet fix to the floor and just a few fluorescent lights are illuminating the large rehabilitation gym. Callie lingers a few feet away, quietly watching in the vacated room.
"Okay," Arizona mutters eyes at her feet; she crawls her fingers to the very edge.
Callie swallows heavily, the tension is palpable.
"Wait," Arizona says in hesitation, pulling her head up to glance at Callie. She reaches one hand out, holding her weight with her other muscular arm.
Rushing forward, Callie takes her hand and grips it tightly, it's hard to tell who has the firmer hold. "Ready?"
"Just wait," Arizona bites back, shaking her head against the bile that burns the back of her throat. She's thinking about expectations and failing, of childhood rules and stupid pledges to vacant fathers. Where one foot in front of the other would be a more appropriate space for her mind to be.
"Take your time," Callie adds cautiously, standing painfully still.
Arizona looks to her again and there's tears pooling under her lower eyelids; they darken her lashes. "Don't let me fall."
Callie closes her eyes and exhales; she exposes her irises and leans in close to Arizona. "I won't," she states strongly, kissing her cheek.
Arizona walks then, albeit with a death grip and a heavy limp. And from the grimace emerges a smile; who would have wagered a bet that her dimples still exist?
Yet, they do.
Fin.