Arizona awoke to the feeling of a warm body pressed against her back and an arm wrapped around her midsection, fingers curled lightly around hers where they rested on the small mattress. The room was quiet, aside from some muffled movement in the hallway outside, and she could hear Callie's soft breaths as they danced across the back of her neck. The other woman had clearly fallen asleep too after their quick and dirty coupling earlier, and in the small space the on-call room bed afforded, they'd wound up tangled together – whether consciously or not, Arizona wasn't really sure.

It was an intimate embrace – almost too intimate for the way they'd been acting lately – but Arizona just let out the soft breath she realized she'd been holding, her body completely and utterly relaxed. It was this that she missed the most – that she'd always missed. The sex with her ex-wife had always been incredible, even when their marriage was on the rocks, or when she was still self-conscious after the amputation. The sex had always been fun, and passionate, and heated like nothing else she'd ever experienced – but it was the moments after, and between, and the moments that didn't involve sex at all, that Arizona had truly loved more than anything.

Because they weren't moments she'd ever really had with anyone else, not until the feisty ortho surgeon came into her life and irreversibly changed it. Arizona had been in love before Callie, but she'd never been in the same kind of love; not the kind that changed a person forever, that made their soul ache in its absence. No, the love she'd had with Callie had been a different thing entirely – the kind of thing you experienced once in a lifetime, if you were lucky.

She'd never been a big cuddler, or one to revel in simple things like holding hands and snuggling on the couch; never one for the constant touching and arms around shoulders and sharing pillows in bed. Callie had changed that though – had made her crave those moments, made her need them like she needed air. And as Arizona lay there with the brunette's arm securely around her, she felt – for the first time in years – a sense of contentment that she'd almost forgotten could exist.

She closed her eyes again, allowing herself a little longer before the other woman would inevitably wake up, and she let herself forget that they were no longer a couple. For a minute, she let herself forget that Callie was no longer her wife, no longer hers to hold, and she just let the feeling of comfort wash over her – let her memories bring her to a happier place.

It was foolish, she knew. It was foolish to pretend that what they were doing was anything more than a release of sexual tension, anything more than the product of the raw magnetism that just always simmered between them. It couldn't be, because they couldn't go down that road again. They'd traveled it so many times and it had always ended in disaster, and Arizona had no reason to believe they could ever make a successful journey, even if they wanted to. And there was so much more at stake now, there was a child old enough to feel her own heartbreak – to understand emotions like she hadn't really been able to the last time they'd broken apart. It had been a small blessing then, the only thing Arizona was remotely grateful for, because Sofia had never really been hurt in the process of their divorce. She barely remembered them together as a family and so what they had now was simply normal for her – and if there was one thing the blonde would never be prepared to do, it would be to risk her little girl's happiness.

"Mm."

A quiet murmur from behind her sounded in her ear, and Callie let out a sleepy sigh, yawning slightly and muffling it against Arizona's hair. She stayed wrapped around the blonde for a few moments, and then as if realizing what she was doing the hand over Arizona's quickly let go and the arm slid from around her waist. Her warmth was immediately missed, but Arizona let out a soft sigh and ignored the feeling, and pretending she had just awoken as well she turned her head to glance back at her ex-wife.

"How long have we been in here?"

Callie rubbed at her eye, lifting her wrist to glance at her watch.

"Like two hours. Not that long."

Arizona closed her eyes again and rolled onto her back, bringing her into closer proximity with the brunette who still laid on her side behind her. She felt Callie's hand land on her stomach and could sense how close they were on the single pillow – probably closer than they should be when they could both consciously move away – but she made no movement to get away, to remove herself from the situation.

"I needed that…the sleep," she sighed, eyelids fluttering open to reveal vibrant blue, "thank you, Callie."

"Someone has to take care of you," Callie smiled, a teasing lilt to her voice, "I know how you get sometimes with your patients."

Arizona just studied the other woman, her eyes traveling over Callie's upturned lips and deep, endless brown eyes. She looked like the Callie that Arizona had first seen in this hospital – like the Callie she'd fallen in love with all those years ago. She seemed younger, somehow, and unburdened, her eyes sparkling with a radiance that Arizona found simply breathtaking. She'd lost that somewhere, over the last few years they'd been together – and apart – and Arizona hadn't truly noticed until she was back and standing in front of her in the ER the other week, looking like a brand new woman. Arizona hadn't truly noticed it slipping away…which, in hindsight, had been part of the problem to begin with.

Callie's brow furrowed a little as Arizona silently watched her, and she brought a hand up to smooth back her slightly sleep tousled wave of short hair. She had never intended any of this to happen today when she guided her ex-wife up to the empty on-call room, she honestly hadn't. She'd simply seen the exhaustion on the other woman's face and wanted to provide her with some rest, with a chance to recoup – she worried about Arizona, even though it may not be her place anymore.

"I should…I should go, shouldn't I."

She watched as Arizona let her eyes close again, a soft, tired sigh escaping her chest. The hand that had landed on the smaller woman's abdomen shifted a bit, her thumb absently rubbing circles over the navy cotton, and she waited. For what, she wasn't sure, but she knew she would only move if she was asked because as fleeting a moment as this may be – it was one Callie wanted to capture.

"They always make me think of Sofia."

When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and quiet, and her eyes opened again to stare at the ceiling above them.

"The babies. The mothers; the ones in my OR. They all make me think of Sofia."

Callie watched her face, her thumb stilling its movement.

"We were so lucky."

"It was for her, you know," Arizona's eyes flickered over to meet the dark ones beside her, "why I did all this. I mean…it was for me, but it was because of her. If I had been trained back then…if I had had the skills…"

She brought a hand up to rub her face, letting out a sigh.

"Maybe she wouldn't have had to be born that day. Maybe I could have kept her inside you, let her grow and be safe for a little longer…saved her the operations and the struggle in that NICU."

"Arizona…"

Callie pulled the blonde's hand away from her eyes.

"Sofia turned out perfectly. They wouldn't have let you operate on me anyway…they barely let you help her as it was, and from what I heard only because you refused to let Alex touch her and forced your way in. You were family, you were her mother."

"They would have had to, Callie, if I was a maternal-fetal surgeon. They would have had to and we wouldn't have had to wait for Addison. Because technically, then, I was nothing."

A silence descended over the two women, and Callie instinctively brought her hand up to cup a soft, strong jaw. She traced her thumb along the other woman's cheek in a familiar, intimate way, and she squeezed her eyes shut – the idea that Arizona could ever have felt that way causing her heart to clench painfully in her chest. She knew that Mark had yelled it at her in a fit of frustration, in the middle of the hospital, and although she'd never quite forgiven him for that…she never thought her ex-wife had truly believed it either.

"You have never been nothing. Not to me, and not to our daughter. You were everything."

Her last words tumbled out softly and she immediately wanted to take them back – worried that she'd said too much, that it was too soon. But Arizona didn't seem taken aback, and she didn't flinch away. She simply nodded, and then let out a heavy sigh as her pager bleeped to life in the shadows beside them. She rolled away, reaching down to silence the device in her discarded lab coat, and she glanced at the screen before shifting to sit up.

"I have to go. Triplets."

Callie pushed herself up too, straightening her scrubs as the peds surgeon shrugged on her white coat and pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

"That's how I do it, Callie. I think of what our lives would be like without Sofia and…" she shook her head a little, a smile gracing her features as she thought of the little girl, "if I can spare another parent ever having to think of that…"

She shrugged lightly, and this time the smile she tossed the other woman illuminated the entire room. It felt good to talk to Callie – to be with Callie – as much as Arizona wished she could deny it. It would be simpler if she could deny it…but then again, things had never been simple between them.

"That's how I do it."

.