Two

'An Involuntary Lesson in Sky-Diving: Can't Try this at Home'

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to SR and ABC. I make no profit from these stories and also? No copy right infringement intended.

A/N (i): Something a little different. I'll be messing around with the canon and chronology a lot, some incidents will have happened, some maybe not, and some will be pushed or pulled in terms of the chronology. I'll forgo the existence of Sophia entirely. I know, I know, I love babies too; I love 'm enough to make you uncomfortable when I joke about stealing them, but for the purpose of the turn of events I'm going for Sophia R-S Torres cannot be in this story.

Flashbacks in Italics.

Chapters are definitely shorter than 'Confessions, Concessions and Cures', my other fic. Give it a go if you haven't yet *(shameless self-promotion).*

A/N (ii): Also, apologies for the last chapter, it was a bit muddled because it was all reported in 2nd person, which is why the subjects and objects in the sentences were maybe a bit confusing. I've tried and corrected it the best I could. But, I'll try again to make it clearer.

Read and Review, pretty please.

Side Note: To the Friendly Neighbourhood Psycho - if you're reading this, I'm sorry I can't update CCC where I'm a little stuck right now, and I had said I would update it. But here's a 2nd instalment to TMTC! In your honour. Enjoy!

I'm bad at hiatus-ing...

Onward

"Callie?" He'd been going in and out of consciousness, gasping and coughing inchoate nonsense that would end in wondrous and painful confessions. He'd struggled to look in to her eyes this time. She'd been fighting to sleep; it kept the pain at bay. But she couldn't ever ignore the smug bastard in her lap. She couldn't do it on their most ordinary days back home, and now? Now that they'd all ended up cold, weak and hopeless in a freaking plane crash of all things?! Now that he was here, every breath sounding like his last, his skin dull and clammy, she couldn't ignore him. Not now. Not him. Never him.

"Yeah, Mark?"

"Could you" he stopped to take a rasping breath – "try to sound more interested?"

She smiled a watery smile and strained against the cold and discomfort as she pushed towards complete consciousness – "could you not screw around with me too much now? You don't look…" she broke into a sob, but then worked to reel it in, running her uninjured hand through his salt and pepper hair – "…you look like an old hag, Mark!"

He gave her a slow smirk coupled with a long exhale - "I feel better…" – something changed in his eyes, he was lying, they both knew it – "I think… Callie, I think…" – tears were slipping down from the sides of his eyes and falling into his hair.

"Mark" she sobbed, "don't okay?! Just… you just rest and we'll…" her face contorted with sorrow as she desperately fought the urge to breakdown entirely and with complete abandon. She tried to speak again – "we'll get home, you and me. We will! Okay?"

He smirked at her – "don't stop me now, yeah?" he'd said it with such quiet and stillness, he looked like he was about to pour whatever was left of him into what he would say to her next.

She nodded in affirmation. She couldn't deny him this. Not now, but she dreaded what was coming next. Her hand has shifted to his chest where she was rubbing small comforting circles, weary of the wound he had from the hack-job treatment they could give him in the field without any equipment.

He moved his hand, placed it on hers and squeezed it just so, as if to say 'I'm still here kid'.

"Cal" – he rasped again, smiling through a light cough – "I love you".

"I know" – she whispered with a smile. 'She was dying inside. He was disappearing and she was dying inside because now she was about to become truly, truly alone.'

"No" it came out in a painful huff – "you don't. I'm not… it's not like that! I love you like, buy a home with you, have a kid with you, grow old with you…" he coughed again. This was taking everything he had, 'he was giving her...them everything he had.' She didn't stop him, he needed to do this; she saw that. She'd heard it in the way he'd called for her, it was all there in the way he'd said her name.

She shifted uncomfortably, painfully; her face – now hovering over his. He could feel her long, matted hair brush against his temple. "I know." She'd said it quieter this time. There wasn't much else to say. She'd say anything for him right now; do anything for him right now, anything to keep him here. 'With her.'

"Cal…" he breathed out again, there was fear in his eyes, he didn't want to die, and he couldn't bear the thought of leaving her. He'd never see her again, her smile, or talk to her, or drink with her, he'd miss her, everything about her. She'd seen him, all of him and she was the only one who'd never asked him to change.

"Callie… I wish, this was fifty years from now…" he was fading…"and we were old, and…" drawing breath was painful now, but he had to say it – "and I was this dying old man, telling you a last joke. And that we'd never have to say goodbye."

She was looking at him like she saw him for the first time. She'd always known they'd loved each other, he was her family. But this was different. Somewhere in the last three years Mark had changed, he was still Mark, but Lexie had left to be at Maryland and he'd become different. They'd take care of one another, they were friends and some nights they were more, but this was different. His love for Lexie had been big and bold and loud and unrepentant, but with Callie everything it seems had been under the surface, muted. With her, being in the same room was enough, watching her smile or get angry was enough. She was enough even when she wasn't his to keep. Callie was enough. And, now she knew. He'd told her and that had to be enough too, because this was all he'd get.

She was sobbing silently at the quiet admission; he saw it in her eyes, she'd made a decision as she leaned in towards him. She stopped to look into his eyes, and as she lay a soft kiss on his lips, wet from her tears and dry from the cold, something akin to life shone in his eyes. She pulled back to look at him, he was still there, barely, but his eyes were intent on looking at her. She saw uncertainty and contentment vie for a place in them, and she whispered – "we are Mark."

He looked at her confused and questioning, but she continued maintaining eye contact with him, her words ringing of an insistent earnestness – "we are, okay?" She sobbed – "right here, right now, in this moment we're old and you're fat and my boobs are sagging, and we've had fifty years. And…" 'God she couldn't take it anymore!' "And we've been in love and you can…" She sobbed and choked on her next words, she was dreading having to say them but she saw he needed it – "and you can go now ok? And, I'll see you."

"You'll find me?" he's asked it like a child trusting its mother.

"Yes I will." She promised.

"Callie", the dying man was smirking at her. She knew that smirk. She smiled wet but wide as she saw his hand flop about blindly at her face. She shook her head as she took hold of it and brought it to her breast and helped him squeeze. They both chuckled and looked at one another again. She slowly slid his hand back beside him; his last words to her were - "one for the road Torres." Mark Sloan, she knew, was never one for long goodbyes.

Many hours later Callie felt her best friend slip away silently into the cold and inexorable night, while they were all still trapped amidst the wilderness. She held on to him – tighter now; somewhere a slight distance away Kepner was being mauled by the sinister gifts of the wild.

She was too tired to cry, and when the rescue team had found them next morning she was running her hand through a dead man's hair, her eyes closed, and a faint smile playing at her lips, while she was humming a lullaby.

Later, when it was all on the cusp of being over and just beginning, all at the same time, they'd decided to see it – that thing that almost killed them. Some of them would never see it. Those that did envied their friends who were allowed to rest, and stop, never having to think of that ugliness again. They lived, and in that they're friendships and relationships were recast in the dirty mud of the forest soil mixed with jet fuel and blood.

Everything was laid out in front of the survivors. Derek, Meredith, Christina, Alex, Callie; they'd decided to see it once, foolishly thinking that seeing it would help them to an epiphany – that ever enchanting possibility of a solution – the 'so we were in a plane and it went down in Boise, and what do we do next?'

It was like someone had taken apart a giant rubix cube.

When they'd won the case, they'd sat silently in the court room. The world outside was mired in a barrage of queries, nosy reporters, loud questions; they'd be put under a microscope for everyone to see till they were no longer that interesting.

They knew…all of them lived in this shared knowledge that – the world had changed on them. It was alien and unfathomable and dangerous and it had left them raw, grating untiringly at their every nerve ending, and that rubix cube? It didn't matter if it was together or apart, it'd always be beyond them. The solutions would always evade them, because there weren't any, and they too would stop questioning this difference, this gap between what was and what is, and that anxiety of what will be. They'd do it hoping there would be peace; that they could rest finally, just stop - blank, emptying out all that tumultuous noise that unsettled their souls with every burdened breath they took.

But with time a paralysing stillness overtook them all, it was something sinister, winning over their silence and clawing away at that unexplained love they had for each-other after the fact of suffering. Some of them couldn't look the others in the eyes for too long; it was a shared and inexplicable shame, and that is when they knew that on that mountain they'd all died a little. Their ashes were scattered to the violent and cold winds, and on some nights that damp ground littered with their blood and their deaths called to them, till it was too much and they could neither breathe nor move anymore.

A/N (iii): This fic is NOT a Callie and Mark fic, you'll see smattering of the two, an indefinable attraction between two very lonely people. They're really close friends who've never bailed on one another; they are permanent fixtures in each other's lives.

Also keep in mind, the Callie I'm writing is an A/U character that has been in the crash. So, this is what I think she's kind of be live – devoid of the kind of joy we're used to seeing when it comes to her; just like Arizona changed in canon.

So please, no grief on those two counts, right? Because it's totally A/U and things work out very differently because of that.