Hey, y'all. Two different reconciliations in this one! Enjoy!
Prompt: "I love you, and you love me, and none of the rest of it matters!"
Running into Callie in the supply closet, Arizona jumped. "Oh! You're here."
Callie looked up over the boxes of supplies that enboxed her. "Yeah. Sorry. I'll be out in a sec. I just need to find..." she paused, searching. "Got it!"
But, for some reason, with the brown boxes peppering the tiny room, Arizona remembered something. She remembered silencing Callie on that night several years before. She remembered insisting: "I love you, and you love me, and none of the rest of it matters!"
At the time, nothing but their love had mattered. Sure, she had left for Africa, but then she had come for Callie, and she had committed. She had committed to loving her, Mark, and their baby. Love had been all that mattered.
Until the plane crash. After the crash, suddenly, there was a lot more that mattered. Mark was gone, for one thing. And then there was the depression, the PTSD, the mourning, the recovery. There was the money. There was the broken promise. There was the next broken promise - the broken vow.
Those things had mattered. They hadn't made any love fade, but they had impacted their marriage. They had impacted their trust and ability to compromise.
They had mattered. They had made their love less significant. They had made their love be...not enough.
With everything that had mattered after the plane crash, love alone hadn't been enough to save them.
"It matters," Arizona whispered before Callie could walk towards the door.
Callie's eyebrows shot up. "What?" She wasn't even sure if she had heard correctly.
"It matters," Arizona repeated, more confidently that time. "Everything. The plane crash. The fact that I cheated on you. Losing Mark, and Nick, and all of it." She shrugged. "It matters."
Slowly, Callie nodded as she began to understand what Arizona was getting at. Early in their relationship, they'd always forgiven and forgotten their problems. They'd always counted on love to be enough - to be what mattered most.
And it had worked. Until it hadn't.
Some things couldn't ever be forgotten entirely. Some things took a long time to forgive.
"Remember?" Arizona prompted, taking a step closer to Callie. "'I love you, and you love me, and none of the rest of it matters.'"
Callie nodded. She remembered. Of course she remembered.
"I was wrong," Arizona admitted. "What we went through...the way we hurt each other...it mattered. Maybe it still does for you."
Callie shook her head. She gulped. "All I remember are the good things, now. There were so many good things." She had forgiven Arizona. She had moved forward.
Arizona smiled, remembering, herself. "There were."
Callie offered her a genuine smile. She was grateful that she and Arizona could finally talk this way. She was grateful that she no longer hurt. All she was left with was love for Arizona; love that would surely always remain.
Slowly, Arizona inhaled a deep breath. It was now or never.
"But, even while all of it still matters... - our life matters..." she continued. Her eyes fiercely met Callie's. "There's something that I still believe matters more."
Callie felt her heart run rampant in her chest. What was Arizona saying? "What?" she prompted. What mattered more?
Could it be...?
"Love," Arizona responded simply. "My love for you. Yours for me." She paused, blinking, as she watched Callie's eyes widen in pleasant surprise. "I know that it all matters now, Calliope," she amended. She had learned her lesson. "But I think we're ready. I think - if we wanted to - we could get our happily-ever-after together. Because love matters most. And I love you more than anything."
Prompt: Mark.
"Arizona!" April ran down the hallway towards her best friend.
Arizona looked up, surprised to see the trauma surgeon in her Peds ward. "Hey," she smiled.
"Hey," April continued hurriedly, with no patience for small talk. "I was wondering if you might be able to check on Callie. I didn't know who else to ask."
Arizona knit her eyebrows together, instantly going into protector mode. What had happened to Callie? "What's wrong?" she demanded.
"I don't know!" April exclaimed. "We were in surgery, and our patient, this sweet dad named Mark, kept coding on the table, and then we couldn't get him back. She called time of death and then just fell apart and ran for the door. I think she might have gone outside, but I don't know!"
Arizona felt her heart beating in her ears. Poor Callie could never stand when a patient died. She couldn't accept that she couldn't save them, that she couldn't have saved them. She always blamed herself.
Arizona began racing in the opposite direction, headed downstairs, when she stopped short. She turned back towards April, who seemed stuck in place looking after her. "His name was Mark?"
April's eyes widened in realization. Oh, yeah. She nodded.
Damn it, Arizona thought, racing down the stairs faster than she would have believed possible with her prosthesis. She couldn't explain her feelings. She only knew that she needed to be there. She needed to make sure Callie was okay. She needed to check on the woman she loved. The woman she would always love.
Arizona walked outside, tightly crossing her arms over herself as she stood beneath the awning. It was freezing and, several feet from her, the rain was beating down onto the asphalt.
It was only when she heard a tiny whimper, however, that she realized that the rain was beating down on her ex-wife, too.
"Callie…" Arizona breathed sympathetically, taking a step towards her. She didn't even notice the rain that soaked her. She only noticed the woman in tears, and all she could think about was making those tears stop.
Callie's head shot up in fear as she heard footsteps approach her, but her face settled into a sense of calm when she noticed that it was only Arizona. "Hey," she croaked.
Arizona smiled lovingly. "Hey," she whispered. "I'm sorry about Mark."
Hearing the name and reminder only pushed Callie over the edge again. Her lip quivered before she fell victim to the tears: her face crumpled and she leaned forwards, wracked with a sob.
And Arizona couldn't handle it. She couldn't handle just standing there – three feet from Callie – and not being able to do anything. Not feeling like she could do anything.
So she did something.
Tentatively – but also, somehow, with more confidence than she'd shown in a while – she reached for Callie's hand, forcing the woman to stand upright and face her.
Straightening, Callie cautiously watched Arizona's face as the rain beat down on them both, concealing tears.
"I'm sorry," Arizona repeated. "For this Mark and for our Mark. I'm so sorry they didn't make it."
A steady flow of water poured from Callie's eyes as she reached for Arizona's sincere words.
"And I'm sorry I couldn't mourn with you last time," Arizona continued. "I'm sorry I couldn't remind you how good life still could be. I'm sorry I wouldn't let you hold me."
Callie shook her head, refusing to allow Arizona to blame herself for any of those old wounds. "You couldn't. It wasn't your fault."
And Arizona knew that. She knew that – of course – she would have been the wife Callie had needed at the time if she weren't so consumed with her own pain and trauma. "I know," she conceded. "But still. I regret that it couldn't be different. And I regret that, even now, I can't…" She paused before continuing, then shook her head. It wasn't a good idea to say it. She knew she shouldn't say it.
"You can't what?" Callie challenged. "You can do anything." She wanted Arizona to do…everything. She always did, but especially then.
The rain had soaked Arizona's hair, her skin, her scrubs. Raindrops fell from her eyelids, but in that moment, she didn't notice. She was only focused on one thing. The one thing she wanted to do. "I can hug you?"
At that, Callie inhaled a deep breath, feeling her stomach clench and her body begin to hum in anticipation at the mere thought. Arizona could hug her. Of course Arizona could hug her. It was all Callie wanted. It was all she ever wanted: Arizona.
"Yes," she finally vocalized.
Arizona's eyebrows flew up; she was clearly surprised that Callie hadn't vigorously shaken her head and stalked off in the opposite direction. What had she said? Yes?
Yes. She had.
And Arizona wasn't going to give her ex-wife the time to change her mind. Forcing the fear and hesitation to the back of her mind, she wrapped her arms around the taller woman. She didn't completely press herself against Callie, but god, she wanted to. She just didn't know what was and wasn't okay. So she allowed Callie to decide what the next step was.
And it was Callie who pulled their bodies tightly together. She melded herself against Arizona's smaller frame, tucking her face into a milky neck and breathing her in. Her arms were vices around the blonde, just as Arizona's were around her.
They each held the other steady. They held each other up.
As the rain continued to soak their tired bodies, they found warmth in each other. They felt safer and more understood than they had in years.
Finally, in a tiny, terrified voice, Arizona expressed, "I'm sorry for everything I did before. I'm sorry for everything I didn't do."
Surprised by the one apology Callie actually wanted to hear, she pulled back slightly, her hands coming to rest on slim hips. She implored glassy blue eyes, with clear confusion on her face.
Arizona smiled, even through her tears. "I'm just…I'm sorry."
Callie's hand came up to wipe away the tears that began to cascade down pink cheeks. "I'm sorry, too," she breathed.
That time, it was Arizona who was surprised.
"There was so much I didn't know, then," she explained. "About the plane crash. About your pain. I should have reminded you that what you were feeling was valid. I should have asked you what I could have done to help. I shouldn't have pushed you so much." She knew it was true. She hadn't always been what Arizona had needed her to be. She hadn't been nearly as sympathetic as she should have been. She had been caught up with her own pain, too.
Arizona shrugged, surrendering, "We both did the best we could."
Callie nodded. "We did the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time."
"Right," Arizona sighed. The problem was that there was so much more she knew, in that moment. She'd had two years to learn how to be better. She'd had two years to learn how to love better: both herself and her loved ones.
Callie had the same problem – or the same solution, depending on the way she looked at it. The problem was that, in that moment, she knew how to love Arizona better than she ever had. And, when Arizona had stepped towards her with worry in her eyes a few minutes before, Callie had known that she loved Arizona more than ever before, too.
It was a problem because they weren't together.
And the solution was so impossibly, impossibly simple: to be together.
"You're wet," she nodded her head towards Arizona's navy blue scrubs that stuck to her skin. Arizona looked like she was freezing, and all Callie wanted to do was to envelop her back in her arms and keep her warm. To protect her. Just as Arizona always wanted – and tried – to protect Callie.
Arizona knew that Callie was implicitly suggesting that they go inside, but she didn't want to. She wanted to keep her hands on Callie. She wanted to be all around Callie. She wanted to do what she always did: she wanted to protect her.
So instead of turning towards the entrance, through the shout of rain, Arizona whispered: "You're warm."
And Callie understood that implicit message. She nodded, and her hands began to trail down a taut spinal column. She countered Arizona's statement with the truth: "I feel like I'm home when I'm in your arms." Arizona was home to her and always would be.
At that, Arizona didn't hesitate to gratefully wrap her arms around the other woman. Callie eagerly reciprocated, and suddenly, they were warm.
"Me, too," Arizona breathed. "So come home."