Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
A/N: As per consensus, I skipped past the surgery, which is good, because I am no surgeon. And I watch a lot of sci-fi. I'm still laughing at that scene in Prometheus. You know the one.
The excerpt at the beginning of this chapter is taken directly from Marvel Comics' Solo Avengers, Vol.2, No. 15, it's not mine, it's Stan Lee's! Although it did take me a good while of trawling through old comic books to find it…
Now that we have thoroughly established that I have no life, and never did, here is the chapter! Enjoy.
Chapter Three: Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim
"Don't do anything hasty, pal! In case you don't recognise us, I happen to be the Chairman of the West Coast Avengers… And the Lady is a renowned super-spy! Since there are barely a hundred of you, and the odds are so heavily weighted in our favour, I'm going to be sporting and give you a chance to surrender!"
Arizona chuckled as she threw the battered old comic book the table trolley set up in front of her. About a week after her surgery, Arizona had woken up to find a huge air mailed box waiting for her, with the comics and a note from Teddy inside.
Arizona took the crumpled piece of paper that she'd placed at the side of her bed, just within arm's reach and re-read the already worn letter:
"Serves you right for being such a damn hero.
Stole these from your bunk, hope you don't mind – thought you might be going mad in that hospital bed of yours, I know what you're like.
And leave those nurses alone, Arizona Robbins! They're trying to work.
I'm glad you're okay, Hawks. I miss you!
Love,
Teds."
Little did Teddy know, it wasn't the nurses that needed protection from Arizona... It was the doctors… More specifically one Latina Ortho attending named Calliope Torres…
At first Arizona was confused as to how Teddy knew where she was, it's not as if Seattle Grace Mercy West was a military hospital, or was anywhere near where they'd grown up, but when she thought about it, it wasn't really that hard to understand. Teddy had been almost a surrogate daughter to her parents after the amount of time the two friends, along with Tim, had spent being idiots together.
"Why do you read those things? I mean, they're alright, I guess, but you do know we have a library full of real literature here, right?"
Arizona smiled as she saw her favourite doctor leaning casually in the doorway of her room, her hair was tied up in a loose pony tail, the strands of loose hair spilling out and tickling the top of the Latina's neck.
"Me and Tim used to be obsessed with Avengers when we were kids. We used to run around the army base pretending we were our own little gang of superheroes, bringing justice to the world one evil maniac of a bad guy at a time." Arizona replied, smiling at the memory, her hand fiddling unconsciously with the dog tags that had been replaced at her neck, fingers finding the cool metal of one… two… and three…
Arizona had managed to persuade Calliope to let her wear them after she'd reattached her ankle, and hadn't made a sound when she'd put the three dog tags around her neck. Arizona knew Callie had seen them and knew it was odd, she could see it in the Latina's eyes, but Callie hadn't pushed it. Arizona was grateful for that. She didn't know if she could deal with dredging up those memories right now.
"And, Calliope…" Arizona drawled, her finger beckoning Callie closer, as though Arizona was about to reveal secret of life to her. Once Callie's ear was close enough that Arizona's nose was being lightly tickled by her doctor's black satin hair, the sweet smell of Callie's grapefruit shampoo invading her senses, Arizona let out a shallow breath.
"We always got our man."
"Oh really, Lt. Robbins? Is that so..?" Callie moved to pick up the discarded comic, eyes darting across the cover before placing it carefully back on the table.
"And this Hawkeye…" Callie continued, her rich chocolate eyes never leaving Arizona's baby blues, her voice rich and deep.
"Never misses a shot." Arizona replied without blinking. Neither does she.
They'd been flirting like this since the first time Arizona had actually managed to have a coherent conversation with her doctor. She wasn't sure that it was entirely… proper… but, for once in her life Arizona had decided to say balls to protocol. Besides, her daily meetings with Calliope were pretty much the only thing, apart from the comics, keeping her sane in this place.
Teddy and the rest of her company still had a couple weeks left of their tour and her parents lived half a continent away – they'd been there at first, and she loved them for it – the way they were so supportive in every part of her life, but God, if they didn't drive her crazy sometimes. The size of the small hospital room hadn't helped, and by the end of the first week she'd spent in Seattle, Arizona thought there was going to be a mini massacre on her hands.
Luckily, her dad had some important meeting to attend in Washington D.C., and though her mother would have stayed, Barbara Robbins was nothing if not a loving mother, Arizona had been a lifelong internaliser, and this was no different. She needed time to wrap her head around everything on her own, her mom understood that. She was exactly the same.
"I just popped by to check on your leg, make sure everything is where it should be and that those pins aren't getting infected."
"Aah, doc, you wound me!" Arizona mocked, clutching at her chest theatrically.
"Here I was thinking that you came to see me because you liked me."
"Well, sorry to disappoint you, Lt." Callie grinned, her hands delicately probing her leg with practiced ease, checking and rechecking the external stabiliser.
Every time Callie's warm tanned hands touched her skin, Arizona felt as though the entire national grid was routing through her body, every nerve went into sensory overload, every synapse working overtime, her breathing never failing to hitch at the more than welcome contact.
"Ouch!" Arizona winced. Okay, so not that delicately. Callie shot her a sympathetic look by way of apology, Arizona just waving it off. The pain now was a hundred times better than when she first got here, and she still had a fair amount of surgery ahead of her - the Latina finding Arizona's knee much worse than expected when they'd opened her up. Yeah, it was still painful and really, really itchy, but compared to before, this was a walk in the park… And it had its uses. She'd got to meet Calliope out of it after all.
"We still on for Scrabble later?" Callie asked nonchalantly, as if the request to play scrabble wasn't a big deal at all – and normally it wouldn't be, except…
"Urgh, Calliope, you always beat me at scrabble! Always! It's not fair – you banned me from using acronyms …"
They'd began this conversation the night before, when Callie, once again, had beaten Arizona and had named herself Queen of Scrabble.
"The rules banned you from using acronyms…" Callie muttered, leaning over to grab a pot of the Zinc Oxide cream that was working as an antiseptic for both Arizona's burns.
Not missing a beat, Arizona continued on her scrabble crusade, so much so that Callie wondered if Arizona had actually heard a word she had said.
"And you get to use all these fancy medical terms, half of which I am sure you just make up by the way, like… Oh what was it yesterday..? Oh, yeah… Vario.. Varicoche… Varicocele!" Arizona struggled. She had no idea how the thing was pronounced, let alone what it meant.
"It's a varicose vein a man may get in the… produce department, if you must know." Callie replied, her voice the epitome of professionalism.
"What?!" Arizona barked, her body beginning to shake with laughter, "are you being serious?! That's disgusting!"
"Hey, stop laughing; I'm trying to work here!" Callie mock protested, the grin on her face giving her away instantly. Arizona's eyes rolled into the back of her head as the Latina slowly began to rub the cooling ointment into her skin, making Callie grin in response. This was Callie's favourite part of the day. Yes, technically, a nurse, or intern, or someone who wasn't an attending in orthopaedic surgery could rub ointment into a patient's leg, but Callie loved that she was the one who made Arizona feel like this, as entirely inappropriate as that was.
"Okay, okay, fine, but how about we play something a bit more my speed?" Arizona managed, the laughter having robbed her lungs of oxygen.
"Have pity on the poor old crippled soldier, eh?"
Arizona pulled out the puppy dog eyes, adding in a pouty lip for extra clout. Secret weapon deployed. There was no way that Calliope was going to able to deny her now.
"What do you want to play?" Callie sighed. Like she could ever say no to that face.
Arizona punched air in exultation; she'd had a whole childhood of experience at getting her brother to cave. She'd been somewhat of a connoisseur of the art, and had had it perfected by the time she was 9.
"Risk." Arizona stated, levelling her sapphire eyes to meet the umber of Callie's.
"Risk?" Callie replied, her left eyebrow quirking as she wrapped her talented tongue around the word.
"Risk." Arizona repeated, hoping this wasn't going to be one of those Beetlejuice moments.
"How is that fair, I mean of course you're going to beat me at risk, you're a soldier! You do war for a living! It's like me asking you to play operation!" Callie complained, all the while making sure to be extra careful with the ointment around Arizona's pins.
"Oooh, operation! I love operation! Let's play that!" Arizona clapped her hands gleefully; she'd loved that game as a kid!
"Ay dios mio!" Callie sighed to no-one in particular, cleaning her hands of gunk and scribbling furiously at Arizona's chart before dumping it back in the holder at the bottom of Arizona's bed.
"I'll see you later."
"Don't forget the operation!" Arizona called after her surgeon, eyes firmly planted on a certain pair of cheeks as Callie left the room. As much as she loved it when Callie came to see her, Arizona couldn't deny that she kinda liked the view when she left.
"What operation are you forgetting? And why did you say my name? Do we have a surgery?!" Mark, who had been checking on a patient just down the hall, boomed.
"No, Mark. I told Arizona that I'd play operation with her later." Callie replied, stifling a yawn. It was only mid-day and half-way through her shift, but she already felt as though she'd been up for 40 hours. Taking in Mark's perplexed look at her comment, Callie elaborated.
"Y'know, the game? With the buzzing and the red nose..?"
"How come you get to call her Arizona, and I still have to call her Lt. Robbins?" Mark asked, his confusion obviously nothing to do with the childhood game.
"You stare at her boobs." Callie replied matter-of-factly.
"Well, they're good boobs! And don't act like you don't." Mark said dejectedly, scuffing his foot out at the floor and shoving his hands in his lab coat pockets.
"Not when I'm talking to her I don't. Besides, we have a reciprocal arrangement, Mark." Callie smirked. She'd caught Arizona sneaking a peek a couple of times when she was bending over to check the progress on her leg, the cute blush that erupted on the blonde's face proof enough for the Latina's suspicions.
"Oh, and you've had your hands all over her ass." Callie added, annoyed.
"It's a good ass, too." Mark perked up at that, the look on his face all too smug for Callie's liking, especially when Arizona had been cooped up in a hospital bed for the entirety of her stay, and the Latina had yet to personally assess all of Arizona's assets.
BUZZZZ!
"Goddammit! Stupid Adams Apple, I mean, where the hell are you supposed to pick it up from?" Arizona grumbled as she threw the tweezers down and promptly began scratching away at the newly grafted skin under the bandage on her right arm.
"Can you stop itching, please?" Callie requested in her best matron, mother-knows-best voice.
"But, Calliope, it itches!" Arizona cried. She swore this was some sort of new torture technique the military had decided to us her as a guinea pig for.
"You'll scar. Do you want it to scar, Arizona?" Callie continued, maybe she was being a bit harsh, and it may have been a bit selfish, but Callie really didn't want Arizona to muck up that skin graft. Callie had always thought scars were pretty sexy, but there was a limit – especially when you had such silky smooth, milky white skin as Arizona. The bits that hadn't been exposed to the harsh desert sun were, anyways.
"Yeah…" Arizona moaned as she continued to scratch. Man, that felt good.
"Scars are badass. Besides what's one more little scar?"
"Arizona Robbins, I'll have to page Sloan to come in here and sort it out again if you break the skin. He's very proud of that graft, you know." Callie said, raising an eyebrow at her patient and crossing her arms firmly across her chest.
"That's because he took the skin off my butt. Perv." Arizona grumbled as she stopped scratching, unconsciously rubbing the side of the cheek Mark had decided to take the skin from. Arizona was sure that he could have used some other part of her body, but Callie had insisted, when Arizona protested, that due to the state of her legs, the ass was, indeed, the only suitable alternative. That didn't mean that Arizona liked it. "Fine."
"Thank you." Callie replied happily as she grabbed the discarded tweezers of the game she'd commandeered from peds. The bread basket was going to be child's play. Just gotta get hold of that little handle…
"But next time, you're getting gauze paws."
Arizona's sapphire eyes widened in fright at the prospect. Gauze paws meant no cutlery. No cutlery meant no spoons, and no spoons meant… No jello! It had kind of become hospital folklore how much their star patient and war hero enjoyed her jello.
"You two sound like an old married couple, you know that?" A woman's voice at the entrance to Arizona's room catching the attention of the surgeon and soldier.
"Momma!" Arizona cried, her face matching Callie's in a nice shade of beetroot. All of their flirting had been completely harmless, no unjustified touching, nothing like that, it was all a bit of fun – they'd only known each other for what? Two weeks at most? Not to mention that Arizona was a patient, for Gods-sake, and she'd never do anything to jeopardise Calliope's job. But even her mother mentioning something so… important… miraculous… so distant in what may turn out to be a hypothetical future as being married to Calliope Torres, made Arizona's heart flutter.
"Hey baby, how are you feeling?" Barbara asked, walking into the room and checking her daughter's temperature out of habit with the back of her hand.
"What are you doing here? How long have you been standing there?!" Arizona blurted out, shaking the totally crazy, but totally awesome images from her brain.
"Zona, you seriously think that I can stay away from my baby when she's in a hospital bed for more than a week? And not long, dear."
Barbara proceeded to sit in the unoccupied seat opposite Callie, and gave her daughter's surgeon the patented Robbins dimpled smile.
"Mom, I'm 27." Arizona rolled her eyes and looked at Callie for support, who just shrugged.
"And you're still my baby." Barbara cooed, enveloping Arizona in a warm embrace.
Feeling slightly awkward in the new company and becoming entirely too self-conscious, Callie cleared her throat and made to get up from her chair.
"I should probably get going…" Callie mumbled, stepping slowly towards the door.
Arizona shot her a questioning look, one Callie replied by nodding minutely towards the elder Robbins, her hair bobbing magically at the movement.
"Oh, Callie dear, no, please stay. I didn't interrupt anything, did I?" Barbara cut in, her eyes darting back and forth from her daughter to Callie to the half-finished game on the table.
"No, Ma, Calliope was just telling me how she had a consult to do soon." Arizona reassured, watching as Callie visibly relaxed at the lie.
Callie sent Arizona an 'I could kiss you right now' look - which Arizona was more than up for - before nodding sadly to Mrs. Robbins in agreement.
"Oh, well that's too bad. I really wanted to get to know this amazing surgeon my daughter keeps raving to me about on the phone. We didn't get to talk much before and…"
"MOMMA!" Arizona shouted, suddenly wishing that hospital bed sheets were just that little bit thicker so she could smother herself and her embarrassment right there and then.
Callie let out a hearty laugh at the confession from Barbara's lips, watching Arizona squirm like that was the cutest thing, but made her way to the door anyway, save the blonde beauty from herself, and her mother.
"I'll check up on you later. Just remember…"
"I know, I know, no itching." Arizona held up three fingers on her right hand. "Scout's honour."
"You weren't a scout, Arizona." Barbara noted, foiling Arizona's attempt to pull the wool over Callie's eyes.
"Fine," Arizona muttered, releasing her thumb and pinky finger so her entire hand was raised beside her.
"Marine's honour. Semper Fi… So help me God." Arizona added. It was going to take all the will God could give her to not itch the oh so itchy itch.
"Mrs. Robbins, it was a pleasure to meet you again." Callie turned to Barbara, the smile she gave would have made Arizona weak at the knees, if she wasn't in a bed already and her knees weren't pretty weak to begin with.
Callie had just finished what felt like the longest shift of her life. Just after she'd slipped out on Arizona and her mom, the Latina had been called in to perform a hip reduction on a 35 year old female who'd been mown down by a drunk driver whilst out on her daily run. It was people who did things like that, which made Callie wish she hadn't sworn an oath to 'do no harm'.
Feeling like she needed to rant, and knowing that Mark's shift had finished a couple hours ago, Callie decided to pay a visit to her favourite patient. Her patient, who was also bedridden and couldn't escape her pending outburst at the stupidity of the human race.
Opening the door gently, Callie was met with the most beautiful sight. Arizona, head dangling to one side, was drooling lightly in her sleep, her hair looking like some sort of creature out of a bad sci-fi B movie.
Stifling a laugh, Callie moved into the room as quietly as she possibly could, and delicately brushed the hair back from the blondes face, Arizona's brow furrowing in her sleep at the contact.
Throughout the day, when she was awake, Arizona had the uncanny ability to be constantly perky, at least Callie had never seen her patient ever truly anything else, but she always held a look in her eye, a small line across her forehead that said "I've seen things". But in her sleep, Arizona was the picture of innocence.
Deciding that her rant wasn't really all that important, and not feeling half as angry as she did before she entered the room, Callie quietly tiptoed back to the doorway of her soldier's room, whispering as she left,
"Sleep tight, my soldier. Sweet dreams."
A/N 2: And today's Latin title means… Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you. Arizona's has already been useful - she met Callie out of it! Next chapter, Arizona is going to have some stuff to deal with, but I promise it's going to drive the narrative forward rather than being in there for the sake of it. What will Callie do when she sees a darker side of the queen of perky?
Thanks for reading and the reviews, I love 'em!
Much love!
