Hey y'all. I'm a little rusty with writing and this fandom is a little new to me. This is set a little while after 12x24. Not quite canon compliant but whatever - it's all fiction in the end. I try very, very hard to talk about human issues that television can sometimes gloss over. CC is always welcomed, even if it's negative. I'm also considering this story complete but I am not against a sequel. :) I know nothing about medicine or hospitals so Dr. Google is my best friend. If you have ideas or thoughts, feel free to hit up my twitter kathysuxx. Lyrics provided are a song By Against Me! (it's also the name of the fic) I suggest you check it out.

Tonight I can't sleep because I'm haunted

So I'm breaking spells of intention

All I can see is a space in between

The space where you're missing

Whatever idiot coined the phrase 'Distance makes the heart grow fonder" was wrong. Not just incorrect. Like, Callie Torres was contemplating all the ways to snap a femur and not nick the Femoral artery, wrong. Distance does nothing but drag your heart along like tin cans tied to the rusty bumper of a car shooting down a road. It's painful, it's cold, it's broken. Distance is a cop out; a coping mechanism rooted in self sabotage and a keen desire to burn every bridge ever created. Distance had a best friend: Isolation, and coupled together they could penetrate even the happiest of souls. It's a radical treatment option for those with nothing to lose.

I once was drunk on you

So very stoned, fully compelled

Now I'm not sure you ever were

I once was drunk on you

So very stoned, fully compelled

So guided, bound and willed

When the bar dried up, you were already gone

But, sometimes it's all that's left to do. Breakups? Psh, she'd been through so many of those that it was almost laughable now. Chasing after multiple girlfriends moving thousands of miles away? Check. Getting married on a whim - more than once - just to have it blow up in her face? Double check. Loving too quickly and hurting herself along with everyone else in the process? Check, check, check.

George was gone, Erica barely counted, Arizona was alive but very gone, and Penny hadn't been home in nearly a month claiming that residency was kicking her ass but making time to sleep with every female associate at Preminger, so Callie assumed she was very gone as well.

Rooms that I was left in and rooms that I since left

It was another life that I might have had

I know the feeling well, longing for something that's lost

I feel you like a phantom limb

Slowly, her fingers trailed patterns on Sofia's warm back. Somehow the small girl had half wiggled out of her coat and still managed to keep one arm around Callie's torso. A small sigh escaped the warm body snuggled into her side, accompanied by the little whistle of her small snores. Little breaths puffed out of her daughter's angelic face, making the fur lining the hood of her coat dance and weave in the stale airplane air. It was a blessing that her daughter was sleeping through this flight; Callie couldn't handle the innocent girl's questions about why their lives were turned upside down.

I once was drunk on you

So very stoned, fully compelled

Now I'm not sure you ever were

I once was drunk on you

So very stoned, fully compelled

So guided, bound and willed

When I sobered up, you were already gone

Usually counting Sofia's sleepy breaths was something Callie used to as a form of meditation. From the time they made eye contact in the NICU and her little lungs rose and fell, all the way to the previous night when she'd fallen asleep in her room in New York for the last time, the slow melody of her daughter's sleep noises were a surefire way to calm her in the worst of times. The steady beat of something pure that she'd created with nothing but love and light was a beacon in the shadows. Damned to anyone, her mother included, who could not recognize the divinity of the small miniature version of her that she poured heart and soul into. How could they not see this child for the small miracle she was? The simple memory of holding her small baby, younger than any child born full term, was enough to calm any fears she'd ever had.

Oh shit, oh no

What happens now?

But, at this point, Callie didn't need to be calmed. No. Dazed, unfocused eyes focused half-assedly on the small safety pamphlet in the back pouch of the seat in front of her. Bobbing with the sway of the airplane, her head rolled around without a single care. She laughed - those brochures were bullshit - airline propaganda. It was very unlikely that anyone on this flight knew what to do in case the plane went down. The drawings on the crumpled paper would be useless.

Hopefully no one needed an amputation, because those are extra complicated.

Callie shook her head - why was she thinking like this? For the six months she'd been in New York, she'd focused on having a positive mental attitude and trying her damndest to avoid thoughts of Seattle and all the horrible, horrible things that happened there.

But, they were going back to Seattle.

Well, Sofia was.

Callie was not staying.

The busy, overcast town where she'd thrived and sunk, lived and nearly died, loved and lost, was special to her for the strangest of reasons. Alas, she was not welcomed there. No one had said that, obviously. Well, mostly because no one knew she was flying overnight to drop her daughter off at daycare. But, she knew that the breaks she'd caused were not healed and that to irritate them would complicate things.

So, she'd decided to remove herself - the diseased marrow - from the limb in hopes to expedite any healing that needed to happen. From there, who knows where the disheveled surgeon would end up.

This wine hasn't turned to vinegar, there's enough to pour a drink

But just one drink won't be enough to put myself to sleep

Then - and only then - would Callie be free to fall into the wind she desperately wanted to disappear into. Scatter among the 323 million people buzzing about the United States. To disappear as quickly as she'd appeared in the lives of everyone at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital back when it was lovingly named Seattle Grace.

Grace.

Boy, she could use some of the grace she'd prayed for every minute of every moment Sofia Robbin Torres Sloan spent inside of her coupled with the time she fought to survive in the NICU. Even a sliver of the miracles that happened that day would help during this trying time.

Right now, the confident and sassy Ortho Goddess with a smile from the heavens and a strut too sinful for most, was reduced to a disassociated mess of a human with no desire to even keep breathing let alone go outside and face the New York crowds. For someone who was vehemently against running away from problems, she was sure good at doing it. Technically, she wasn't abandoning a girlfriend and moving to Africa. But she was leaving Sofia in Seattle and stepping down as a parent, which was probably the most gut-wrenching decision she'd ever make.

But, just as Sofia had kept her alive while laid, dying on the hood of a car years ago. She now kept her alive by snoring gently on her lap and squeezing her fingers as she slept.

It was all for Sofia, all of it.

But now, she needed to live for herself too.

Finally

I once was drunk on you

So very stoned, fully compelled

Now I'm not sure you ever were

I once was drunk on you

So very stoned, fully compelled

So guided, bound and willed

When the bar dried up

When I sobered up

You were already gone

I'm shit out of luck