Authors note: this chapter is a slight deviation from the main Cristina and Owen story but I hope it still fits. It is mainly Daniel and Owen, but It also gave me a chance to write my other favourite character in GA and explore his importance as I see it within all the relationships at SGMW.
A plea also from you guys reading this story- please give me some ideas for chapters you would like to see for Cristina, Owen and Daniel. I really want to keep this going till hiatus is over but am feeling fatigued at generating situations! Give me the ideas and I will write lots of love always
Cristina had been back in the residency programme for a month. Between herself, Owen, Owen's mom and the hospital daycare Daniel was thriving in his new daily routine. He had become a sociable baby that adapted easily to the various people who were becoming permanent fixtures in his life. If his parents were in long surgeries, they would send someone else to go check on their son up in the hospital playroom.
Daniel had started to recognise who was who in his dysfunctional hospital extended family. When someone arrived to visit him in the playroom, he took a moment to quizzically examine the faces and the bodies and match them with what he had worked out about the personality. Callie was the one who talked, she talked a lot, sometimes in a language he didn't understand if she was stressed. She also talked a lot about things called bones, he wasn't sure what they were! Jackson was the one with the bright green eyes, he had a girlfriend called Lexie. She would smother Daniel in kisses and cuddles, which he enjoyed but did feel that now he was getting bigger she would have to start to back off. His Aunt Meredith always came and off loaded about her sleepless nights with his miniature person, Zola, or lamented the lack of good surgical cases. She always ended her visits by telling Daniel he was a good listener.
Today was different. Today bought a visitor who he had not seen since the very day he was born, but the presence of this man immediately drew Daniel in. He knew he was an important figure, he was someone special.
Chief Webber had left his wife in the exam room with Derek to get her neurological assessment completed and had begun a slow walk around the halls and floors of the place that had defined every aspect of the last 35 years of his life. He had grown from a boy to a man inside these walls, he had cared for patients and colleagues like a father nurtures his own children, he had sacrificed personal rights of passage for professional status, he had hit rock bottom here and got back up again.
And now time was pushing against him. He was old, his wife was sick and what would he have? Surgery, his hunger for it, his total love of it, had sustained his life but now he had scrubbed out for the final time he allowed regrets for all that he could have been to take over the space the scalpel had filled.
He thought of Cristina Yang- driven, focused, a surgical robot or so he had thought when he first met her as an intern. But not now. She was striving to have it all- the surgical greatness of Ellis Grey but with the family life that Meredith's mother had fought so hard against. Ellis could never see how she could be anything other than a surgeon, her gift was her focus, it was the core of who she was, and Richard wondered if he had left Adele and been with Ellis if he could have given her what Owen had given Cristina- a life that could contain love for so much on so many levels.
He would never know what could have been on his road less travelled, he just had too keep moving. Richard stopped at the door of his old office and ran his hand thoughtfully over the plague engraved Chief of Surgery. Shaking off the sentimental urge to open the door and let the memories of his achievements and failures inside that room engulf him, he turned on his heel and carried on walking towards a part of the hospital he had never really had a need to go to.
The older man had come over to where Daniel was sitting in a baby bouncer. Daniel had taken in his kind face, his grey beard juxtaposed by his dark skin and his life worn brown eyes and instantly felt like this was a man he wanted to know more about. Something about his energy reminded Daniel of his own father.
Richard carried Daniel over to the rocking chair in the corner of the room and sat down. The chair fell into a soothing motion and Richard laid Daniel's back on his closed knees and took in his features. He had his mother's eyes, they looked thirsty for knowledge, hungry to take in every detail of his environment. He could tell this boy was smart, like his parents. Probably book smart like Cristina and experience smart like Owen. He had his father's openness to his face, a face that could not conceal emotion, a face that made you feel seen.
"Daniel Hunt." Richard's deep baritone softly lilted over the words he imparted to the baby. Daniel felt his eyelids droop and he fell into a contented sleep, feeling secure in the embrace of this man who was a familiar mystery. Daniel did not know who he was exactly but he knew that he mattered. "You are part of something special. A great big family I have raised and now your daddy is going to do the same. Your father is a good man- he's a great doctor, he has a soul that truly cares. And your mom, well she is going to be brilliant. She will save lots of lives and win awards, that I have known since the moment I met her. But now I also know she is going to give you a life outside of this hospital. You have made her see surgery for what it is- her work, you are her gift."
Richard rocked the chair and just sat, enjoying the calm. He did not know how long he had sat there in the playroom, before he felt compelled to tell Daniel something an elder had once told him as a child, " Remember this Daniel, Darkness is not the scary place in our lives. We have to sit in the dark sometimes so that when we get back to the light we can see all the colours."
Richard raised the sleeping baby to his eye level and tenderly kissed the little boy's forehead. He rested him back in the crook of his arms and Daniel instinctively gripped his finger, bonding himself to this Storyteller. Daniel just knew Richard Webber was someone he wanted to hold onto to.
Owen stood outside the open window of the playroom and smiled at the scene of a man he so respected with his son. As he listened to Richard's words, he imagined what his own father would have made of being part of this little boys life. Richard was the eternal parent of this hospital, whether he was physically in the building or not. He had nurtured and supported world class surgeons, investing in each of them his pride at their successes and frustration at their failures. He pushed them to be the best, not just for him and the reputation of his hospital but for themselves, for each of them to truly reach their full potential. Owen knew that the respect of Dr Richard Webber was sustaining and prized as an achievement in itself. Owen felt lucky to have worked for him as a surgeon, he could only ever hope to emulate his skill as a doctor. But Owen was so grateful to have known him as a man. It had been Richard who had bought him into Cristina's life and while Richard had his flaws, his own demons, just like Owen, Richard had fought them to move into the light with the people he held so dear.
"What you looking at?" Cristina asked as she came to a stop next to her reflective husband, weaving herself around the side of his body.
"I think Daniel has just met his grandfather."
Family is not just biology. It is more than our DNA, more than the collection of people our blood ties us to. Families are the people that we have no control over loving so fiercely. The people that seek out our hearts and match their rhythms to. Our families are ones we want to protect, the ones we bestow our knowledge on, the ones we respect. They are the people that go beyond what we could ever ask of them and they do it because their hearts tell them their is simply no other choice. The head of a great family never truly leaves you, they show you the way, let off the reigns and stand back, delighting in watching you soar.