Owen had considered his life significantly improved after that afternoon in their apartment. He no longer had to wonder what the wistful gazes were for, he knew.

He'd also become a master at dissolving those gazes.

Preston Burke was mere moments away from being forgotten forever, just as he should be.

He step felt lighter as he made his way to the telemetry wing, coffee in hand for Cristina. He asked around and the nurses looked at him with bewildered gazes. Like they knew something that he didn't. He held up his hands in apology and left the unit, deciding she must be scrubbed in on an emergent procedure.

As he glanced over the board, he took note that she was in OR1 and decided to head up to the gallery to see what she was up to. The procedure was a complex one and he wasn't aware of her ever doing one as long as he'd been here, but there were days not so long ago that he wouldn't have known the difference.

People seemed to start whispering more as he stepped into the gallery. He shifted nervously, feeling all eyes on him and he finally glanced up at them. In unison, a large gathering of surgeons turned their head back towards the surgery. He looked down into the gallery himself to see Cristina frantically working to clear her surgical field. The patient was stable, but just barely.

She almost looked unfocused.

His eyes traced to the other person across the table from her, working just as frantically to keep the patient alive and he narrowed his eyes. "Who is that?" He asked, "That's not Thompson is it?"

No, Thompson was shorter.

His fist clenched in his pocket and he dropped the coffee in the trash when the realization came to him as to who it was.

Now he only needed to know what the hell he was doing operating with his fiancée. What the hell he was doing in the city, he was supposed to have been gone. He was supposed to go home and never show his face again.

They were moving on.

Suddenly the feelings that he had of everything moving forward slipped from his grasp and he found himself staring into the eyes of disappointment and doubt once more.

This man would never quit.

x-x-x-x-x

Cristina frantically suctioned around the chest cavity, but the blood just kept coming. She'd never felt so out of control in her life. It was driving her crazy. "Hang another two units. Rapid infuser. Type and cross six more. Change the suction canister, I'm losing suction. And send for more units of FFP too. No. Scratch that. Reheparinize. What's my pressure?"

"Cristina." Burke said evenly, working just as steadily as she was.

"Not now, I'm trying to think." She said, bending her head to hear the nurse mumble a low pressure, "Start him on a low dose of neosynephrine. Titrate to keep MAP greater than 65. I swear to God, Collins if you blow my patient's kidneys while I'm-"

"Cristina." Burke said again, more forcefully.

She jerked her head up to look at him, suction still in place. "What?!" She snapped. "I'm trying to save a life here, Burke. If I had known that you were going to sit here and patronize me while I'm work-"

"Look at me." He said evenly, his gaze leveling on hers.

"Burke, I don't have-"

"Look. At me." He repeated.

She carefully moved her suction catheter around the outside of the chest wall, looking at him just as he had asked. Never mind the fact that her patient had dissected his thoracic aorta in the middle of a routine procedure. Never mind the fact that she had already been in surgery for nine hours with no hope of getting out anytime soon and certainly not with a living patient.

No.

She would stare at him just like he'd asked her to so she could blame it on him when the patient died.

"Good." He murmured, "Good. Now tell me what's wrong with the patient."

"He's dissecting his thoracic aorta, where the hell have you been??"

"Okay. So you're replacing lost blood. You're monitoring pressures and you're suctioning out everything he's losing?" Burke questioned.

"Don't tell me how to treat a thoracic aorta. I may have never done one, but I know what the interventions are." She answered indignantly.

"And when do you plan on repairing the tear in his aorta?" He asked, trying to fight a smile beneath his surgical mask.

Cristina opened her mouth to answer and then closed it. "Idiot," She hissed under her breath at herself.

"No, no you aren't. You've never done this before. It's a lot of blood and your first instinct is to clear the field before you do anything else. Leave the field to me, but you're not going to have any visualization until you repair at least part of your tear. It's going to be a few blind stitches, but it will slow and you'll be able to see more clearly."

"M-maybe you should do this." She said, "I'll clear the field."

"No. You do it. You can do this, Cristina. I know you can do it." He answered softly.

She kept her eyes focused on his as she slid her hand down to the area where the blood flow was most turbulent. With an outstretched finger, she carefully located the tear.

Burke could see the flash of recognition in her eyes. "Good. Good. Now what?"

"I need…some 4.0 prolene and a cross clamp." Her voice was slowly starting to grow more steady. She took her requested supplies and carefully began to work at blindly suturing the tear. A few cursewords slipped from her mouth under her breath throughout the process, but she felt her heart slowing and she felt the blood returning to her face. The flow was slowing and she could actually see a little bit better.

Cristina smiled widely beneath her surgical mask, "I've…I think I've got it slowed down."

"Good." He said with a nod, pride surging through him. He'd never had any doubt that she could do it once she focused.

She looked back down and continued her work, more carefully suturing. She marveled at how the blood slowed to almost a complete stop despite the amount of heparin they'd pumped into the patient and she shook her head in disbelief. "Give protamine." She spoke with a small glow about her. "Slowly. Have three more units on standby. Do an H&H."

The bleeding slowed to almost a complete stop as the protamine was given and she shook her head in disbelief. "Okay…let's close the patient. Call ICU and put them on notice." She paused as the nurse read back the lab results. "Give one unit and recheck an hour after transfusion. I want him sedated until tomorrow, don't fast track the patient. No wedge pressures. Keep pressures less than 100 but greater than 80." She ran through the rest of her orders and glanced up at Burke.

"Do I have it all?" She asked softly.

"You've covered everything well, Dr. Yang." He said with a slight nod.

Burke could see how happy she was in her eyes, he could see the excitement. He'd missed this, seeing her in this place. Nothing had ever made her as happy as surgery did, it's just who she was. Realizing that made him love her even more than he had before.

She hadn't changed a bit.

He looked on in a proud silence as she finished closing the patient. She wasn't his intern anymore, but a graceful and talented surgeon. One of the best. Her case had started out shaky, but only with a little bit of verbal direction she had turned it around completely.

They walked together to the scrub room and Cristina felt as if her legs were barely carrying her. It was such a rush to do one of those, but so scary at the same time. "Thank you…for coming on such short notice. I would have never been able to do it without you."

"You would have."

"No, really. It was my first and my department is sorely lacking in experienced surgeons. Roberson retired in May and I haven't been able to replace him yet. I always have to fly my thoracic aneurysms to Portland."

"Not anymore," He smirked, pulling of his mask. "Now you can do it yourself."

"You're damn right I can." She grinned, smacking the button on the sink.

Silence lingered between them for a moment as they washed their hands. She looked over at him from time to time before she finally let the question slip from her lips. "How do you think you could handle working at Seattle Grace? With me?"

Burke looked over at her in surprise, clearing his throat. "Cristina, I-"

"On a professional level. I can handle it. I'm asking if you can handle it. We need an experienced surgeon and you're the best. I can work with the Chief to get you on." She answered, not looking at him. She knew that Owen wouldn't be happy about it, but he knew that she was his.

This was strictly business.

He was silent for a long moment, "Give me a few days to think about it."

Cristina nodded, a small smile on her face. "Alright. In the meantime, we can go get a cup of coffee. It's the least I can do to thank you for your help."

"That I can agree to." He smiled back at her.

They walked from the scrub room together and towards the coffee cart. He glanced around in awe of his surroundings. "It's astounding to me how little has changed since I was last here. Really the only things that are different are your scrubs." He remarked with a slight grin.

"I much prefer the navy to intern blue." She laughed softly.

He couldn't help but grin from ear to ear, "I always preferred you in the navy."

Redness rose to her cheeks, recalling the memory of stealing one of his scrub tops and parading around the apartment in it and a pair of flimsy panties, well hidden beneath the excess of soft navy material. "I can't hire you if you bring that up." Cristina said, a little flustered. "And yes, you preferred it. A lot."

The two of them laughed together as they arrived at the coffee cart, flashes of old memories running through their minds.

They had good times together. They had a lot of good times, even if the darkness had overshadowed most of them.

After retrieving their coffee, they leaned against the railing, casually chatting about their life before- back when she was an eager young intern. Back before everything became complicated and messy.

"Does he dance with you?" Burke asked before he took a sip of his coffee.

"He does." She nodded with a smile, "He's a good guy, Owen. You'd like him if he hadn't gone and tried to break your jaw."

"I respect him." Burke said, looking down at her. "He did what any man should do. He was protecting you."

Cristina shook her head, "I don't need protecting. Least of all from you."

Burke knew better. It was a different kind of protection. Owen was protecting what was his. Owen was hurting him for hurting Cristina. It was barbaric and an act that would have best been left out of civilized society, but he understood it.

And he knew he deserved it.

She reached up and traced her finger along the scar, "I did a damn good job on those sutures. You can barely tell."

"If you were an intern, I'd tell you that you had a future in plastics." He teased gently.

"And I would tell you where to go." She quipped before taking a long drink of her coffee.

He laughed again, shaking his head. He hadn't felt this relaxed in a long time. For the first time ever, Burke found himself wondering if they could be friends all things considered. He certainly didn't want to step on any toes and he didn't want it to interrupt her life, but he wanted her in her life at the same time.

If he could have her.

Cristina's pager alarmed at her hip and she glanced down at it with a sigh, "Just a break. I just want one freakin' break." She muttered. She glanced over the message and shook her head. "I have an embolectomy in OR 2 that isn't going to wait. You heading out?"

"Yes, I have a couple cases of my own that I need to follow up on."

She gave him a nod, "Think about what I said. We could use you here."

"I will, Cristina." He answered softly. He watched as she jogged down the hall and out of his view. The implications of coming back to Seattle Grace were heavy and he wasn't sure that he could bring himself to do it.

He needed to think.

x-x-x-x-x

Cristina walked out of the scrub room after the emergent embolectomy, stretching her back. She was going to need a long and hot shower after the day she'd had. Her eyes traced over to a form sitting behind the nurses' station and she smiled when she saw Owen.

"Hey." She murmured, pulling off her scrub cap. She made her way slowly to him and leaned across the counter to steal a quick kiss in the darkness of the long closed unit. "I repaired a thoracic aortic aneurysm today all by myself."

"You didn't did it all by yourself, Burke helped you." He answered, not looking at her or responding to the kiss.

"But he didn't suture it." She said, narrowing her eyes. "I did it by myself. He just explained it. It's the first I've ever done. I was excited." She explained, a little wounded by the comment.

"By the way, what the hell is he doing here? I thought he'd gone home."

"He lives here. He works at Seattle Presbyterian." She answered slowly. "For now, anyway."

Owen looked up at her in question, "What do you mean 'for now'?"

"I offered him the open position." She answered, trying to be unaffected by his tone. "I know that you don't like him, but he's the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the country. He'd bring something to the program that nobody else could."

"Cristina!" He hissed, "How could you do that? How could you invite him here?"

"It's not like I asked him if he wanted to sleep with me, Owen. It's a job. We're professionals. We can handle being professionals."

"Says the intern who screwed her attending." He muttered.

"Yeah, well I sure as hell didn't hear you complaining when I was the resident screwing her attending." She snapped back at him before she turned to walk away from him.

Owen flew up out of his seat and chased after her, grabbing onto her hand. "Cristina."

She pulled her hand from his, spinning to look at him, "No. No. You don't get to throw that crap in my face. How many times have I told you that I belong to you? That I'm yours? How many times Owen?"

"Look, I'm-"

"What? You're sorry?" She asked angrily, "You're not playing fair. It's a job, Owen. I-I can't keep doing this. After everything we've been through, after everything- you're going to question my loyalty to you know? You're going to bring my faithfulness to you into play? I've never given you a single reason to doubt me the entire time we've been together."

"It's not you, it's him." He argued, "It's Burke. I don't trust him."

"Oh, please. Don't feed me that line of bullshit. Burke couldn't hurt me if he wanted to, and he's certainly not going to talk me into his bed. He's too busy kicking himself for what he did years ago."

"All the more reason for him to make it right."

"He has made it right. It doesn't involve us falling into bed together!" She hissed, "What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so threatened by him?"

Owen dropped his hands to his side, shaking his head. "Have you seen how you look at him? The way you touched him that night that you were suturing his face? Have you heard yourself talk to him? You love him, Cristina."

She scoffed, "I do not love him. Not like that. Not like you."

"But you do love him." He said, his voice dripping with accusation.

"I care about him! I worry about him because I know that he's shut himself off from everybody else in this world. He's given up. You worried about Beth. You worry about the people from your past. Don't tell me that I'm not allowed to care about him. That's going to happen whether he's here or in Guam."

"I'd feel better about it if he were in Guam."

"Because you don't trust me."

Owen crossed his arms, "Dammit, Cristina. I do too."

"Then let me do what I want. If I want to hire the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the nation to work in my department, let me. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to marry you. It doesn't mean that I'm going to sleep with him. It means that I'm doing my best to cover my department the best I can. Nothing more. And as the head of trauma, you should know how important that is. It's purely business." She said, challenging him.

After a long moment of silence, he finally spoke. "I don't have to like it."

"I never said you had to. It's not your department."

"I don't have to like him either."

Cristina shook her head, "I never asked you to like him or to be friends. You don't even have to talk to him."

It was a battle that he knew he'd lose anyway. He ran his fingers through his red hair and sighed. There was nothing he could do. "Alright," He murmured softly. "Let's just go home."

She nodded and crossed the short distance between the two of them. Her hand rested gently upon his forearm as they walked the darkened hallway together.

This morning he'd woke up and he was sure that everything was going to be okay. That soon they'd be married and they'd been working on all of the things they'd dreamt of.

This evening he was going home with Cristina at his side wondering how much time he had left with her before another man would take him away from her.

Before he lost her forever.