"No, no…wait. So let me get this straight. You dropped everything, packed a bag and went mildly insane at the airport so you could get laid?" Meredith scoffed before she took another sip of her coffee. "Hello, happy ending? You were supposed to be going so you could make everything all better. Not for a good time. Not for an orgasm-"

"Multiple orgasms. Not just one." Cristina corrected, tearing at the sleeve on her coffee cup.

"And you let that get away?? Seriously, he gives you multiple orgasms. That's good enough reason to keep him. "

"Whatever," Cristina sighed.

"You're more tolerable when you're getting multiple orgasms." Meredith smirked.

"Shut up."

"Okay, fine. I've tried being your supportive person. But obviously that doesn't work. So I'm just going to tell you that you're stupid. You love him and he loves you and he was obviously trying to apologize. So you slept with him and came home. That makes next to no sense, Cristina. None. I know. I've had therapy. I'm officially entitled to tell you that you're stupid."

Cristina stopped picking at her coffee cup and looked up at Meredith, "Therapy entitles you to analyze my feelings and decisions?"

"Yes." Meredith answered simply.

"Ah, that's strange. I always thought that it required a degree of some sort." She retorted before she went back to picking at her coffee cup.

"You don't want to talk about this, do you?"

"Obviously."

"Fine. Derek and I are thinking about possibly considering the idea of getting married." Meredith said before flipping open another chart.

Cristina glanced at her for a moment before looking back to her own chart. "That's good." She said warily. She knew that next week she'd be holding Meredith's hair out of her face while she vomited tequila mixed with feelings and tears into toilet after some massive breakup with Derek. But at least it got the attention off of her and the decisions she'd made.



When she got off the plane, Cristina had made the choice that she was no longer going to let the loneliness seep into every corner of her life. She had made her choices while in Baltimore and there wasn't going to be regret or sadness once she was back in Seattle. She was going to take what she had left of her life and make it work.

If Meredith would fucking drop it.

She knew that Burke would always linger in the back of her mind, just like any other person that she'd let into her life. She couldn't help but find the bitter irony in the fact that the people she loved the most never lasted long in her life.

It made her worry about Meredith, especially with the things she'd attempted in the past.

Cristina's pager went off, pulling her from her thoughts. She went to reach for hers as Meredith's went off too. They both glanced at each other and then down at their pagers.

"911 for the second floor nurses station?" Meredith asked, her brow furrowed.

"We're at the second floor nurses' station." Cristina answered annoyed.

"Holy crap there you are!" Izzie exclaimed, her blond curls bouncing as she rushed to their side. "I didn't see you over here being the emo sisters."

Cristina looked at Izzie with narrowed eyes, "Wait, I'm sorry. You'll have to slow down. I don't speak stupid fluently."

"Ha ha, you're so funny." Izzie snapped.

"Slower. I'm still having a hard time translating you."

Meredith giggled from behind her chart, "Cristina." She mumbled half-heartedly, though she was enjoying the Izzie-bashing.

"You know what, fine? I was going to warn you. I was going to warn you about something really huge and now? Now I'm not. You can find out on your own."

Meredith leaned forward, her curiosity piqued. "What? What were you going to warn us about?"

"I'm not telling you now."

Cristina smiled to herself. This was an easy enough game, "That's okay, I'm sure it's not huge."



"Oh yes it is. It's massive. It's massively huge. As a matter of fact, it's gargantuan."

"No it isn't," Cristina said, looking over at Meredith with a sly grin.

"You're right. I'm sure it's nothing." Meredith added, catching on quickly.

"She probably just slept with another married man again," Cristina replied, flipping through her chart some more.

"Yes it is. It is huge. You don't call Burke coming back to Seattle huge??" Izzie snapped, slamming her hands down against the counter.

Cristina's eyes remained focused on the chart in front of her and she didn't show an ounce of emotion. After a long moment she finally answered, "Why would it matter to me?"

"Hello, because it's Burke." Izzie said, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, well, I guess you were wrong. You should be used to it though."

"Whatever." Izzie muttered, walking away from the two of them.

Meredith looked over at Cristina. She couldn't understand how Cristina could just sit there and flip through her chart like nothing was going on. This was huge and they both knew it. He came back, and Meredith was sure that he had come back for her.

"Quit staring at me." Cristina answered, making a note in the margin of a lab result.

"It is kinda huge," Meredith admitted in a hushed voice.

"No it isn't," Cristina answered in an annoyed voice. "Not for me."

"You just had sex with him like…two days ago. And now he's home again. That's huge."

"Seattle is not his home. Baltimore is his home." Cristina said, writing a little harder against the thin lab results.

"How isn't it huge? It's obviously not over." Meredith pressed.

The paper tore under the pressure of Cristina's pen and she slammed the chart shut, "Listen, will you just drop it? It isn't huge. This isn't his home and I said goodbye, okay? That? The sex and the feelings and all that crap? That was me. Letting go. It's over, Meredith. There are no happy endings, there's no 

such thing. So quit wandering through life like it's a goddamn fairytale and wake up and smell the reality."

Meredith didn't hear much of what Cristina had said. Her eyes were focused Burke, who was standing behind her. His expression went from one of confidence and maybe a hint of happiness to one of disappointment.

She was saying goodbye?

Cristina waited for some sort of response from Meredith, but it never came. She followed Meredith's gaze, spinning on her heel and finding herself staring straight into Burke's chest. Immediately, she stepped backwards and looked up at him. "And what the hell do you want? Go home." She snapped at him before she stormed away from the two of them.

Burke shook her head as she stormed off and then he looked down at Meredith. "That didn't go quite like I thought it would." He admitted, more to himself than to her.

Meredith reached down into her pockets, digging through gum wrappers and cafeteria receipts to find her keys. She pulled them out and took the spare key to Cristina's apartment off the key ring. She extended it to him, but didn't let go of it. "Why did you come back?"

His fingers wrapped around the end of it, but he didn't pull it from her. "Because I believe in happy endings. If you love something, let it go. If it comes back…"

"That's how you know." Meredith finished, letting go of the key. "If she's not at the apartment, she'll be at my house. And if she's not at either, she's at Joe's. My money is on Joe's."

He nodded and pushed the key into the pocket of his jeans. "Thank you, Grey."

She stood from behind the nurses' station and picked her charts up. "Make it better or I'll make you sorry." Meredith walked away from him without another word. She knew that Cristina was going to kill her for giving him the keys, but she wanted them together. Meredith needed them together. It was one of those strange things that was just supposed to be.

It was then that she decided she wasn't going to work against him. They both cared for Cristina more than words could describe and they both wanted her to be happy. As much as she wanted to hate Burke or sway with whatever emotion that Cristina had assigned to him, she knew she wouldn't be able to.

Besides, how could she hate a guy who believed in happy endings?