A/N Thank you so much for the faves, follows and the reviews! Please keep them coming, I love to know what you're thinking!

"Nothing comes easily, where do I begin? Nothing can bring me peace, I've lost everything. I just want to feel your embrace."

"Calliope?"

Immediately Callie pulled on a fresh top, frozen to the spot. The whole world seemed to stop, like all that was happening was blue eyes meeting brown and the moment she had been avoiding and yet so desperately needing for many months was suddenly in front of her.

"I don't understand. Callie?"

Callie shook her head, taking a step backwards as she could see her ex-wife's mind working in overdrive, trying to think of every possible answer to the question's whirling through her mind.

"Did… I-"Arizona was practically shaking and surgeons, they didn't shake. Not under stress, not under pressure, not at all. But this, well this was Calliope.

"Does she hurt you?"

Callie's eyes snapped shut, a sharp intake of breath, "Arizona it's not your job to protect me anymore."

"Damn right it is!" She noticed how the Latina flinched at the raised voice and her heart broke.

"Sorry, I- I'm sorry I didn't mean to shout, Calliope. I'm scared, I'm really frightened." The bruises were all she could see every time her eyes closed for even a second. Old ones, new ones, finger marks on her arms, it hurt so much Arizona felt like she could feel bruises on her heart.

"I used to walk tall." Callie's voice was barely a whisper and Arizona sank down into a seat opposite the bunk bed her wife not perched on, hardly daring to breathe in case she scared the delicate woman in front of her.

"That's what I told Mark. I used to walk so tall. Now I hide. I hide from confrontation and badass surgeries. I hide from you and Penny and you know what's worst, Arizona? I hide from myself. I wanted to dance in my underwear. I wanted to eat cheeseburgers and drink tequila and find more for myself. I suck. Everything sucks."

"Callie you don't suck. You're awesome. You are amazing. You can't, I-" She hadn't even realised she was crying. Why was she crying? "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh sure! 'Here you go Arizona, Sof had spaghetti bolognaise for dinner tonight and she played painting at day care. Oh by the way, you know my amazing girlfriend? The one I started dating after I left you in a therapist office and the one who saved saint Shepherd's life? Well she has major anger issues and by anger issues I mean she gets her thills beating the crap out of me when I so much as say a word out of place!' You're not my wife, Arizona, you're not even my friend these days, why the hell would I tell you?"

Arizona felt like someone had slapped her. She knew they weren't close anymore; hell they hardly even spoke. But hearing the words out loud almost broke her.

"Calliope-"

Callie shook her head, "don't. Don't try and fix me. I couldn't- I couldn't fix you and you can't fix me."

Arizona swallowed back, trying to calm her nerves, "are in pain?"

Callie shrugged like it was the simplest thing in the world, like what she was saying wouldn't shatter hearts and tear down buildings "I've felt worse."

It was like a sharp blade to the heart, jaggered edges to make the pain more severe and it stopped her breathing, made her need to choke for air. Bruises adorned her ex - wife, the one person in the world other than her daughter that she cared for more than herself and yet Arizona knew.

She knew the physical pain was nothing to the emotional torture she had put her Callie through. Infidelity, lost limbs, lack of trust and communication and maybe even love, they seemed like nothing now. She might even have gone through all of that again just to have the moments of happiness that made her heart swell. And there were lots of those moments. Simple things and bigs things and everything in between and Arizona was sure the good had always outweighed the bad and yet somehow they had gotten lost. Somewhere along the way they'd forgotten how the good things far outnumbered the bad and that yes, they didn't always make time for dancing in their underwear but when they did, it was magic.

"Calliope, I... I am so sorry, I-"

"Don't Arizona, it's okay. You don't have to."

"I do because, because I suck, Callie. Not you, me. I used to be awesome and now, I suck. Ever since the crash I've sucked. As a wife, as a doctor, even as a person. I'm not a good man in a storm, Calliope. I didn't protect the people I love." Callie's brown eyes were watching Arizona intently, mesmerised that her wife, ex-wife, was suddenly opening up after all these years and she had to stop herself from letting Arizona find a place in her heart again because she couldn't breathe when she imagined it. Had she ever not had a space in her heart?

"I hated you. I hated being around you, when you touched me it made my skin itch-"

"Wow, Arizona if this is supposed to make me feel better then it's not helping!"

"Just shut up and listen, seriously Callie. Just listen."

Arizona looked straight ahead, ignoring Callie, ignoring everything they should have been doing and just spoke, opened up. Breathed.

"I hated you. Except, I didn't. I hated myself. I hated what I had become, who I had become. I hated my leg or my lack of. I hated the empty space on the bed where my leg used to be. I hated that you let them cut off my leg but more, I hated myself for not forgiving you because I knew, I know, there wasn't anything to forgive. It was my life or my leg and I understood that. But I was a monster, a raging monster that had lost control and then, I lost you. Then my leg didn't matter, nothing mattered except that I didn't have you. I'm sorry that I didn't realise that until it was too late. I'm sorry I didn't know, I didn't see. I should have seen what she was doing! I should have, I-" Sobs took over Arizona. Cries of regret and heartache and mostly, loss. They had had it all and they had lost it.

When she realised Callie was crying too, Arizona was up and beside her on the bottom of the bunk bed and before she knew what was happening, Callie's head was on her shoulder and her face was against her neck, warm breath tickling her skin and it felt like coming home.

"I need to, I, you have to let me help you Callie. This isn't right, it's not okay, my love." The words slipped off her tongue like she had never not said them, "I want to be a good man in a storm again. I want to be who I was raised to be and I am not the same person I was before the crash but I can get that part back. So please, without expectation or limitation and without a thought for myself, let me be a good man in a storm, for you, Calliope."

Callie was going to answer, she was going to respond in some way that seemed to be a coherent sentence but then the door opened and nothing was going to be okay at all.

A/N Thoughts?