disclaimer: all the recognisable characters belong to Shonda Rhimes and ABC.

"RANTS OF HIS SUBCONSCIOUS-MIND"

J.M. Barrie — 'You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always think of you.'

About forty years ago, during which was eventually going to be his last tour in Iraq, Major Owen Hunt, woke up to the same scent every morning and could swear that he could smell it every time he closed his eyes. A scent his soul remembered and yet could not be deciphered by his mind. He had let it go the first day. And the second. And the third. On the fourth day he made up half his mind to ask his fellow team members if they could smell something weird in the air. A good kind of weird. But as soon as he opened his mouth, he did not know how to describe it. After all he dint know what it was, all he knew was what it wasn't. He had thought about it a great deal before he fell asleep the previous night. He had concluded that it wasn't musky and it wasn't fruity. Nor was it woody. Or anything he had ever known yet it felt like it belonged to him.

Being a doctor Owen knew that scent was one of the most powerful memory triggers. And yet for the life of him, he couldn't place that one particular scent that hit his nostrils like a breath of fresh air between the gloom and the gore of a war wrecked desert.

As the days and the weeks passed by, he stopped questioning its roots and embraced it as a security blanket, that indiscernible scent became his comfort in loneliness ,his hug at the end of a long day, warmth on cold night, confidence amidst a difficult case, nostalgia of a home far away and his promise for better days. That scent became his haven.

That warm scent was what had enveloped him during that unfortunate RPG ambush that took away his entire unit. All nineteen of them. He smelled it a second before the grenade went off. And after it all was over. In the midst of the chaos and delirium and the stench of burning flesh, that scent for all intensive purposes had shielded him from dying. From losing hope. From giving up. That warm scent had pushed him for finding the strength to go back home. And most of all for the chance to understand and keep that scent alive within him for with the eyes wide open.

How was he to know how that scent was going to change him and his world just a few months later.

Doctor Owen Hunt might have been discharged as an army surgeon posted in the thick of it, but he still was an experienced doctor. And the head of the trauma department of the most prominent hospital in his hometown. And in the country.
Which is why he knew that hallucinations were heightened in delirium and alcohol worsened ones delirium. He had lost a huge chunk of himself with every tour. Every nightmare that he had shaved a few inches off him. Over the tours he had become so small that it had shrunk his vision of life. So much so that he had lost the sight of who he was, eventually alienating himself from everyone he had ever cared about. In his mind if he couldn't tolerate himself, how could the ones he loved.

Sitting across from his new place of work, he thought his hallucinations had taken a whole new form, when he could sense that the now so familiar scent was taking over every inch of his body. It was stronger than it had ever been before. He could not shake the feeling that the scent was all around him, just a few feet away. But he chalked it up to a case of nerves over having to start working at a civilian hospital and the fact that he was just a few miles away from his mother. So he looked up with a new found confidence in himself and told the bar tender to cancel his shot of scotch and just make it a single beer as he started his work tomorrow. Even though he knew that he was only avoiding liqueur to avoid further fuelling his hallucinations.

And today more than forty years after that night at joes, he was again hit by that feeling that the scent he remembers so well was seemingly stronger than what it usually is in his head when he wakes up on any given day. Maybe, he thought, that he was merely wishing for this to be a sappy fairy tale where he wakes up from a long dream that apparently lasted about four decades and he would open his eyes and the love of his life would be at his side and they never separated or got divorced and it was all a dream.

But given that along with that exquisite scent he could also sense a piercing pain in his head and along his torso, maybe he was close to dying and he was just trying to sneak in that scent with him in his afterlife.

But then he decided that just a whiff of her scent wasn't enough anymore. It wasn't enough to last a lifetime without her and it certainly was not going to be enough to last all eternity. He decided he wouldn't die believing that he will not be with her in in his afterlife. Because that was the deal he had made with her when he crashed her farewell party all those years ago. He had made her promise that she would be his in every life after this one. And he was bloody well going to make sure she follows through with her end of the bargain.

With that determination in mind his heart rate started normalising, the change in the rhythm waking Cristina up from her trance.

author's note:

okay guys if you are reading this and could hopefully spare the time, please leave a review, even if it is to critique something, because well sorry for sounding whiny, but the lack of response doesn't really do much to boost my ego in the right direction Considering this is my first fan fiction !

but thank you for reading anyways!