I have been fighting with this fic in my head for over a week and I gave in and wrote it, so hopefully my muse moves on to someone more appreciative. This is unbeta'd (like I said I wanted to just get it out!). Apologies for any grammar and any random unfinished sentences that may be included.

WARNING: Contains speculation. I have read a number of sides, spoilers etc... so I'm spoiled, though this is so not how Grey's is going to work the whole Africa thing, I can guarantee that.

I do not own the song it is by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - It is called "Stay (I Miss You)" I loved it as a teen and recently rediscovered it. I do not own Grey's Anatomy, though if I did Callie and Arizona would not be peripheral characters. Enjoy.

"You say I only hear what I want to"

She rolled the box around in her hands, not for the first time. She opened it and starred at the ring sadly. The only woman that could possibly deserve this ring will never see it.
The irony was that she had to build up courage to ask the blonde to move in. A proposal had been on the tip of her tongue for months. Despite following love around the world those four words no longer seemed to want to burst from her mouth. In fact they barely entered her thoughts anymore. She looked at the ring like it may hold some secret that would fix all the wrongs.

"You say, I talk 'so' all the time"

She had been to Africa before during her time in the Peace Corps, she had seen the beauty of open plains, she had seen the deep reds oranges and to her surprise deep greens. Once upon a time wished to capture the beauty in her mind's eye, now she looked over at the blonde next to her, she wanted to always remember her this way, the gold curls, the ivory skin, the pink of curled lips and the slight red blush that remained on the blondes dimpled cheeks
She tried to burn each rise and fall of the blonde's chest into her memory forever as she wished that this could be their last moment together. This serene moment could be the moment they part. The wish that she could walk off into the parking lot of no return and keep this beautiful moment as her last memory of her salvation, her love and her life.
Hours later Callie exhaled the word they both has dreaded "So..."

"and I thought what I felt was simple, and I thought that I don't belong,
and now that I am leaving. now I know that I did something wrong."

The trip back to Seattle was brutal. Physically and emotionally she was drained. Empty to the core. She had spent the majority of her flights wearing tear stains, renewed every so often when something little triggered another memory, like the brand of wine the airline offered, the way the woman next to her slept and even just breathing.
In her last break-up's with George and then Erica her pride had been injured and it was what drove her emotions. She couldn't stand anyone know that she had failed at yet another thing in her life... Her pride was not in focus this time. It was the loss. Callie's badass reputation was constructed in order to hide away weakness. It was obvious there would be no facade when Mark had to scoop her into his arms because her legs failed in the middle of the airport. It was then the thought hit. She wasn't home because Arizona wasn't here. Breathing paused, as did all coherent thought. Maybe she was wrong.
The evening blurred into a series of shots and cheers, people welcoming her back with warmth, when the Arizona question was raised most had the manners to reign in the look of shock. Cristina - never really getting the manner's memo - did not hide her feelings. She did however hand the Latina another shot.

Callie looked at the glass and then to the sky whispering "Yeah. I miss you", before letting the liquid burn her throat.

"And you say I only hear what I want to:
I don't listen hard,
don't pay attention to the distance that you're running
to anyone, anywhere"

The one thing that she hadn't expected happened. Callie followed her.

She had flirted with the idea of the military when she was younger and then DADT made the decision for her. It would have been difficult to live like that, but this? Living like this? Living in a country where it was illegal for her to be in love with the most wonderful woman on the planet... where they had to live as "roommates"? It was a new level of torture. She knew that Callie was struggling. She saw the pained expressions. The pauses. The raven-haired surgeon had come so far to be comfortable in her skin when the law was not just telling them that they were not the same, but that they were wrong. Arizona let distance settle. She didn't hear what was being said. She ignored the distance and prayed the days away, until she woke to tears and ring. A ring that would have meant the world, but couldn't. The words were uttered and the end was indeed a whimper and not the bang that Callie's emotions generally called for.

"I don't understand if you really care"

It scared Arizona to see Callie that way. Defeated. She had only seen her like that once and she would not be the reason for that. The blonde was the reason Callie was not defeated. As much as she wanted to beg, to ask her to bide her time to let her get this set-up, and they could return, but there was never an end date on the work, it was impossible to give a timeline. There was a chance the work would never end, and she couldn't let the orthopaedic surgeon continue, so she did fight. She didn't beg. She let go without letting her emotions show. Just like last time.

"I'm only hearing negative: no, no, no."

She'd been back a week and unlike the previous break-up she did not feel the need to be angry. Two break-ups in the space of one relationship pretty much said it all. It said "The End" in big blinding lights. She still had doubts about her decision. Right or wrong? Selfish or smart? She thought about Africa, she thought about staying there longer, about going back and begging the blonde to forget... and she couldn't. It wasn't her. She might not have always been so out and proud, but she would never be ashamed of the love that she had for Arizona. She was disowned for it. She would not let what they have slip away slowly because someone told her it was wrong. And that's all she heard about her love. It was wrong. Two women was not right. Negative, negative, negative. She could not bear to be told her saving grace was immoral. At first it seemed trivial and easily avoided, but the longer they were there the more strained things became. The more tedious hiding their relationship became. It felt like she was just there as a surgeon. And as a surgeon, she missed so much. Her cartilage research was beginning to get the buzz it should have from the start. The clinical trial had almost finished its second round and she was a very little part of it. She was asked to a series of lectures in London on her research and results. While the idea of speaking in front of people answered the question for her it made her see that she was a world-class orthopaedic surgeon trying to push the boundaries. That person couldn't be confined to the two bedroom house they were living in. She was tired of hearing no. And as much as it hurt, she couldn't stay indefinitely. She couldn't be deprived of Arizona for 90 percent of the day and not be a surgeon as well. So she said no.

"So I turned the radio on, I turned the radio up,
and this woman was singing my song:
lover's in love, and the other's run away,
lover is crying 'cause the other won't stay. "

The songs flowed one by one. She wallowed in 'Calliope's Playlist' it didn't have the music Callie listened to, but it was the playlist that the Brunette had created when they last broke up. Arizona had stumbled upon it and uploaded in instantly. It was a list of sad songs. Not necessarily break-up songs, but sad, sad enough to wallow in pity to.

She wondered briefly if Callie was listening back home. Home. She wondered if Callie felt as betrayed as half these people, or if she felt sad like the other half. Numb that what Arizona felt. Yet, puzzling enough, there were tears.

"Some of us hover when we weep for the other who was
dying since the day they were born.
Well, well, this is not that;
I think that I'm throwing, but I'm thrown."

She kept going, kept working, kept making inroads. She struggled to smile her dimpled her smile, but some days were always going to be easier than others, like when she healed a small child who had been sick since she had left the haven of her mother's womb. Arizona made that difference. She felt that she was making a difference in a way that she'd dreamt of and yet the joy was not what it used to be. The butterfly fluttered slower and the rainbows seemed less brilliant. She was driving their future, but withholding her own.

"And I thought I'd live forever, but now I'm not so sure.
You try to tell me that I'm clever,
but that won't take me anyhow, or anywhere with you.
You said that I was naive"

"Arizona?"

Her eyes lit up and her smile grew.

"Calliope!"

"I... Hi."

"It must be God... late really late... or Early?"

"No, I'm in Spain...I uh... I got asked to do a lecture series throughout Europe for a couple of weeks. I thought since I was in almost the same timezone and... well in Spain I should give you a call."

"Spain? That's great. That's more than great, that's..." The Latina waited for 'Awesome', she knew it was coming. It was so typically Arizona. "Really great. You are going to change the world." And with the last sentence whispered softly, Callie knew the blonde was struggling. She wasn't sure with what, if it was one particular thing or the sum of everything, but her heart broke once again.

"Come home with me, I could call my father and get his jet, you could leave to today." She gasped at her own words, how easily they spilt from her mouth.

"I can't leave. There is so much work to be done. It's naive to think that I could have achieved enough in seven months Callie."

The phone conversation dried up completely into one sentence questions and one word answers, and the final exchange of pleasantries were really quite painful to both parties.

"and I thought that I was strong.
I thought, "hey, I can leave, I can leave."
Oh, but now I know that I was wrong, 'cause I missed you."

She let her mind wonder to the Latina. It certainly wasn't the first night that the image appeared in her mind. She wondered if they would have survived a long-distance relationship. She wonders what would have happened if she had declined the grant.

'You'd be in freaking Spain drinking Sangria and having crazy inhibition-free vacation sex with a hot Latina who can speak the language' was her minds angry reply. So instead she let her mind wander away. Tears sprung to her eyes. She asked herself how much she owed the world. Her family had a long history of sacrifice and for the briefest selfish moment she asks the universe if dying would be slightly more painless.

She decides that if she is ever asked to go back to October 2010 she will and she will decline the grant and have lots of fat babies with the love of her life. She thought she was ok to leave the raven-haired woman...that she was strong enough.

She diverts her thoughts to sitting on a bench overlooking Seattle holding Callie, feeling her, smelling her, listening to her breaths and her breaths alone.

"Yeah... I miss you." She whispers to the shadows that consume her bedroom.

"You said, "I caught you 'cause I want you and one day I'll let you go."
You try to give away a keeper, or keep me 'cause you know you're just
scared to lose. "

It was 12 months to the day that she left her blonde sitting on a bed in tears. She's been on dates with men and women, and nothing. It turns out she really was an Arizonabian – not bisexual, not gay, not straight, she just loved Arizona and Arizona solely. She had come to the conclusion last night, abstaining from the usual flood of alcohol her nights seemed to hold. She thought about what decisions she had made in the last year, starting with the decision to leave. Truth be told she didn't much get passed that one decision. She finally saw what she was trying to do. It didn't make sense to leave someone she knew was her match. It didn't make sense to leave someone before she was left. The whole situation did not make sense, but she finally realised her motivations why she left. Even if it didn't make sense. It didn't make any sense to return to where it all started. It didn't make sense to wear her leather jacket.

It did make sense when she started crying. It did make sense when she went and looked into the mirror and saw her eyes red and swollen. It made sense when she heard it.

"And you say,"

She didn't listen to the ramble she didn't hear the words until the most glorious of all words is asked, Callie assumes it's in the context of "Can I", "Won't you", or "Please", it's the sweetest sound she has heard: "Stay."

"And you say,"

Arizona looks at Calliope as she would imagine one would a mirage in the Sahara, she never did get there to see for herself. The moment everything was official and self-sufficient she was on a plane back to the states. Callie starts rambling about not listening and something about Arizonabians but admittedly the blonde is not really listening, that is, until the words "I love you so much" fall from Callie's mouth and that is all she needs.

"I only hear what I want to."