Disclaimer: It's all Shonda's

Rating: T

Summary: Three weeks after an accident. Warning: character death and tissue warning.

Thanks to Sara, Fi, and Andrea!!

Cristina was in the resident's locker room getting changed for her shift. Meredith and Lexie sat watching her, worried.

"Are you sure you want to come back to work so soon?" Meredith asked finally.

"It's only been three weeks," Lexie added.

Cristina pulled her hair back out of under her scrub top after she put it on and tucked the chain holding her engagement and wedding rings under the shirt she wore under her scrubs like she did for the last year and a half.

"Yes. I did Shiva and I laid on the bathroom floor and I've gone though his things and I've cried," she told them, putting her pens in her pocket, "I'm fine."

Cristina clipped on her nametag, grabbed her paged, and left to do rounds.

Lexie and Meredith looked at each other.

"Do you really thing she's fine?" Lexie asked, "Owen was everything to her."

Meredith shook her head, "She's not fine but she's Cristina. She can't be at home anymore."

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Cristina was doing well, even with Bailey checking on her every half hour. It was annoying but she supposed she would understand. She did have a panic attack when they told her. Long ago she told him she couldn't breathe without him and it turns out that was true.

But she wasn't going to think about that. She was fine now.

Bailey came up to her twenty minutes after Cristina had last noticed her doing a check up on her. That was different.

"I wanted to warn you so that you had the chance to leave if you wanted to," Bailey told her. Derek let Cristina come back because they all knew it was how she coped, but no one expected her to stay.

Cristina was confused, "warn me about what?"

"Dr. Burke is here for a patient he's been seeing at his private practice," Bailey explained.

"Oh," Cristina replied, surprised, "Ok. No, I'll stay. I'm fine."

"You're fine?" Bailey asked in a way that was both a statement and a question and she gave Cristina a look that she didn't really believe her.

Cristina nodded, "Yes, I'm fine."

Bailey held the look for another moment then left, ranting to herself what sounded like "If she was still my intern…"

-----

Cristina didn't have to try hard to avoid Burke. The patient he was there for wasn't hers so he was busy with Avery.

She discovered, though, that if she stayed in the cardio wing, it was easier to be fine. The clinic was probably the safest place since she and Owen didn't really have any encounters there but then she would have to deal with people. The pit was out of the question if she wanted to remain fine. So she hung out around the cardio wing, working on charts.

Cristina found that her assessment of the affect the pit would have on her was correct. She had to go down to take some labs to Teddy. It took her five minutes before she could enter the pit and then, as quickly as she could, she took Teddy the labs and left.

The few minutes in the pit reminded her so much of Owen and she left before she could think too much. She went to get a coffee but it was a coffee cart they went to together often.

She decided against coffee and thought about going to lay down in an on-call room when she ran into Bailey. She told the General Surgery attending that she was fine and went on her way.

Going to an on-call room sounded nice but that one was where they made love for the first time, and that one is where they laid together while he was in therapy, and that one is where she tried to seduce him when Wyatt was withholding surgery, and that one is where he fell asleep on her after his panic attack, and that one is where they talked about their small city hall wedding.

Unable to choose an on-call room that was neutral for her, she made her way back up to the cardio wing, taking the stairs because the elevators also held memories. Memories of when she used it to avoid him while they were broken up, of a time when he used it to apologize to her when she was mad at him and he couldn't get her alone anywhere else.

She got back to the cardio wing and decided to check up on post-op patients and update the charts.

-------

She was on her way from checking on a post-op patient when she ran into Burke. She had managed to box in her thoughts again and she was fine. She was fine.

"Hello," Burke greeted her. He had been meaning to talk to her all day.

"Um, hi," Cristina replied, not wanting to deal with him right now. She really couldn't deal with him right now.

"I heard about…" he started, "I'm sorry for your loss."

She actually couldn't deal with today, with being at the hospital, and he just made it worse. "Seriously!? You're sorry? You left me in a church in a dress I didn't want and sent your mother to get your things and now you're here and you're sorry for my loss?" she spat at him.

He was surprised by her mini rant, "I don't really know what you're going though but…"

Cristina cut him off, yelling, "No! You don't know what I'm going though! My husband died three weeks ago! In a stupid, stupid accident. I wasn't feeling well and I wanted some tea so he went to the store to get me some!" She yelled, in the middle of the cardio wing, her eyes had filled with tears.

"He went because of me and it was raining and he got into a stupid accident! We were going to start trying for a baby! And we wanted to look for a house! We had plans and now he's gone! I love him more than I thought was possible and I wanted to spend the rest of my left with him. But now I can't and I don't know what to do!" tears were falling down her cheeks, "he survived a war! He was not supposed to leave me!"

Burke didn't know what to say, all movement around them had stopped when Cristina started yelling and he though he heard one of the nurses tell another to page Dr. Grey or Dr. Bailey.

"So don't you tell me you're sorry for my loss and don't try to sympathize with me!" She told him in a low voice, not bothering to control her tears.

No one tried to stop her as she ran off. She followed the familiar path to the only place that, despite the memories, would make her feel better.

She got to the vent and stood on the grating of the air vent. She was just in time for a burst of air to try and blow her off of the grate. She tilted her head back trying to clear her head; not caring if there were still tears on her cheeks – she was still crying and it just didn't matter. And then she felt it. Felt him. She felt Owen surrounding her; he was all around her. If all she got was this feeling, she could deal with it; because although she would give anything to have Owen back, this feeling was more than she could ask for.

Anything really could happen on the vent.

Please don't hate me! I cried while writing it!

I will be posting a fluffy fic in the next couple days to make up with this.