A/N I was hoping to have this up sooner, but it's been a hard one for me and I'm not sure of it…anyway, thanks to everyone who continues to read this and offer their support you're awesome. I'm apologising for the mistakes that popped up in the last chapter so many words, I was annoyed I missed as many as I did. I hope it didn't annoy you as much as it did me. So all mistakes are mine and they do piss me off but when you read over something so many times the words merge, so sorry if they do escape.
A big sloppy kiss to my wonderful Beta Zoda, she is my knight in shining grammar & punctuation, I suck at it…I'm getting better and she is showing me the errors of my ways he he. She keeps me from freaking out too much about everything and for that I'm so thankful x
I OWN NOTHING AND DON'T CLAIM TO SO PLEASE I'M HAVING FUN
Thank you to The Sadie Whisperer, keeps me smiling when I feel down.
Alright then I hope you enjoy xx
Chapter 10 - Death, I knew her and her name was….
Grief…They say there are five steps to dealing with death, a tragedy of the heart…a catastrophic loss. The theory is that these reactions to illness, death and loss are as unique as the person experiencing them and that sometimes some people may get stuck at one stage.
Denial, pain & guilt, anger & bargaining, depression, acceptance…these are the supposed steps that everyone follows. A good general guide of what to expect so that a person can be categorised and filed under LOST.
Unfortunately life is not that easy and yes there may be five steps but these steps can be loosely interpreted, everyone is an individual. There is no precise progression from one stage to the next. The reality is that stages can hit at the same time or occur out of order…So why did they bother saying there are stages? This implies rules to follow that everyone must be the same, but in life an individual is unpredictable and can't be controlled, this is what makes us alive and not mindless drones.
The thing with grief is that a person will find their own way through it. It sometimes takes on different forms but the results are the same…you either get over it or you don't.
For Callie in that moment the monitors had started to sound, the denial had hit quickly. Her mind reacted with numbed disbelief. She watched it unfold in front of her, but yet she denied it was happening. She tried to avoid the heart wrenching pain that hit her from within. She felt her heart rip into pieces and she couldn't do anything to control the pain as it tore apart at the seams…it took her breath away from her and it stung her lungs. She felt as though she would implode.
The pain she was feeling was quickly beginning to consume her, but one second of relief…that was all she got when she felt that bullet enter her shoulder, it redirected her pain. It had crumbled down the barriers of shock, the slight buffer she had created…her emotional protection from being overwhelmed and shutting down, it came crashing down around her.
That bullet had launched her into a version of stage two, an emotional but very physical pain mixed with the guilt that she couldn't keep Arizona safe…she had promised she would keep her safe. Her body was in flight mode and her brain was struggling to keep up with emotions that would normally take days maybe even weeks to hit, but they were upon her…jump starting reality.
The shock was replaced by the excruciating and unbearable pain that followed. The bullet wound should have drowned out the heartache, but it didn't. That bullet ripping through her flesh was real and the pain in her chest was just imaginary. How could something not physical leave her with such unspeakable pain? Not even that burning piece of metal when it had burrowed into her shoulder could help her escape the unendurable heartache. The dark red warm liquid that oozed down her skin had just snapped her brain back to reality quicker, looking up into the eyes of a snake, the serpent of death…no Death herself. Callie had found someone that she could place the blame on in that moment and she clung to it, resistance was futile.
"We can't leave her, we can't leave her, we need too…we can't let them have her." Callie's painful pleas attacked Tim's own breaking heart as she shouted into his chest as she was dragged from the room. She had wanted to fight him with every ounce that her body could muster, she couldn't let them take Arizona and she couldn't leave her body there. She owed Arizona that at least, to be laid to rest, remembered, loved…a proper funeral. Not just the Alliance's burn, enclose in vacuumed packed little baggies and filed under the "dearly departed" system that they worked far too efficiently to. The emotional anguish had drained her strength and she had to succumb to doing as Tim had asked. She barely heard Tim as he continued to talk to her trying to calm the storm brewing, fermenting within.
"Callie, something doesn't add up…I don't believe that she is dead!" Tim tried to claw back the struggling brunette who once again gathered enough energy to try phase two in her frenzied attempt to get back into the room; he tried desperately to get Callie to connect with his eyes.
"You saw what I saw Tim! SHE DIED IN FRONT OF US, she slipped away from us, me…when I have just found her, I've just found her and she was taken!" Callie punched a few times at Tim's chest in her escape bid before he couldn't bare the pain it had caused and had grabbed her fist mid strike.
"Something is not right trust me, but we have to go…I can't explain it but my gut is telling me its ok, I just know we missed something, it was in Shepard's eyes…but right now Hahn is coming and craving your blood and we have no weapons. Callie, please snap out of it?" Tim pulled Callie from his chest and used his strength to push her onto the wall behind, forcing the still clenched fist against the hard surface above the Latina's head. His other hand forcibly held her jaw directing her head so that he could make eye contact. Tim was never an aggressive guy towards women but Callie Torres in this moment was like a raging bull, no sense of direction and wanting to charge at something she saw red in.
He could see the hurt, the panic and fire swirl in her eyes as she made to push away from his grasp once again. With one final push, maybe harder than he had wanted to, he slammed her against the wall and watched as Callie physically shook something from her head. The force with which Callie hit the wall had snapped the brunette out of her internal haggling with the powers that be, to bring her love back to her.
"Teddy, we need you! You're our eyes…we need to get out of here" Tim spoke hoping that the computer genius was still playing big brother or big sister in this case.
"I'm here, just bringing up the security feed so I can see an escape strategy." Teddy tried to convey a steady voice, that she was placid…that she was fine when indeed the woman was finding it hard to see anything through her tear soaked eyes and her keyboard was speckled with shed tears.
Teddy couldn't believe what she had seen like the rest of them but inside her head and heart she had found acceptance a lot quicker. Teddy had seen the magnitude of suffering that Arizona had been through in her short life and although these were genuine tears of loss they were also tears of relief that her friend was now free of the pain from the things that had been done to her.
This was acceptance but it didn't mean instant happiness and that the world could just start to rotate again. She just knew within herself that she had to move forward. She had a job to do, keep other people moving forward, keep them alive and together they would bring justice for her friend, for the life that had been taken from them so soon after she had been returned.
"Look to your left, fifty paces forward on the left wall there is a staff exit. This will take you to the fire escape stairwell; you have to follow that down four floors to the loading bay…that is the fastest exit that I can give you. Hahn is making her way down to you, she's just getting in the lift with one soldier a floor above, get to the door I'm trying to hack into the access lock." Teddy furiously began typing codes into her laptop as she swore with each access denied message that appeared before her.
Tim began to drag Callie down the hall toward the door but the whole time struggled to keep hold of the woman who now had her eyes trained on the lift doors at the end of the hall. Now that she knew Hahn was coming Callie had conjured an imaginary big RED X on the assassin's forehead. Hahn had become something that she could vent her grief on and she would enjoy dispersing some of that built up pain and anguish doing it.
Tim could see this and knew that with the thoughts running around Callie's head at the moment it could quite easily become a Kamikaze Suicide mission. He knew he had to get her out of there quickly, Callie was still very much under the claws of grief and he knew grief can make you do insanely stupid things.
"How much longer will we sit here twiddling our thumbs little General Bailey while you make a decision? Maybe, if we wait here long enough we'll die of starvation coz you still haven't given the god damn order! I bet Callie and the blue eyed brigade are done and body merging right now and we're sitting in the fucking mud!" Cristina kept her voice low but very forcibly told Bailey that she wasn't happy with the 'sit on their ass' plan that Bailey had them taking part in right now.
"Wheeeesh, seriously you're worse than a child! You know that we are just waiting for Sloan to come back and give us an idea of the layout and if this hairball plan will work!" Bailey clipped the impatient woman across the ear as she watched Sloan scurry back toward the concealed group.
The compound was located away from civilian population much to the delight of the troop. If it had just been merchandise they were after it would be a bust the door down Tasers and guns a blasting kind of a mission, but this needed to have a bit more tact and guile to it. There were people involved, very important people.
"Oh this is sooooooo going to work! All four of them are ugly mother fuckers and will just be happy that any lady is flashing some flesh at them, even one that looks as skanky as you!" Mark looked rather happy with himself as he laid a pointed finger on Cristina's forehead, unfortunately he wasn't quick enough to realise the Asian woman's pissed off features as she made sure her knee made contact with his groin.
Pulling himself together Mark continued "As I was saying, Hatton was correct there are just the four soldiers carrying regulation Alliance stun batons and glocks. They look like meatheads so they will fall for this fucking awesome plan no problem, seriously, as easy as taking candy from a baby." Mark smiled brightly at his audience and nodded like an excited child.
"Okay then people, we all know our roles let's get changed and get this show on the road" Bailey gave one last look over to the compound door and gave herself a nod of encouragement, it had been a very long time since she had worn anything other than the leathers and armoured vests that currently graced her wardrobe. They only dressed up every once and a while when visiting Addison and never in her lifetime had she attempted to do this. It was hard to kick ass in a skirt and heels…plus the sand in undesired destinations wasn't worth it.
"COME ON TEDDY!" Tim waited at the door watching the light on the control box continue to flash red with the sound of Teddy cursing in his ear. The red beeping light just drew attention to the bright white walls that surrounded the couple. He started to feel the same frustration that was evident in the stressed out voice currently rattling throughout his head.
He still clung as tightly as he could to the wriggling brunette who was currently glaring in determination at the metal doors down the gleaming white hall. Her struggle intensified as she heard the ding from the direction her body had managed to rotate itself towards.
As the doors opened and her own aching tear glazed brown eyes made contact with the icy grey/blue ones, Tim was caught off guard by an explosion of strength from the now raging Latina who was spurred on by the sight of her wrath. Callie had managed to push back into him with her backside as she pushed forward breaking from his grip from around her shoulders. He couldn't do anything other than watch as she charged off toward the calmly approaching, unarmed Hahn and a soldier who had his weapon drawn and positioned surprisingly not at the charging woman but at Tim himself.
Shaking himself from the image in front of him he decided he could do nothing else but try and get to the other man before he managed to get a shot off. Although weighing up the probability of this, his chances were slim and he knew that. He could understand by the body language of the two that Hahn had told the soldier that Callie was hers. He could hear that she was saying something to Callie but he couldn't make it out as his brain tried to come up with a game plan.
Tim realised rather quickly when Hahn had altogether stopped and allowed the soldier to pass her that the intention was to split them up. Callie was so blinded by her emotions she wasn't thinking about anything other than kicking the woman's ass all the way to the central belt.
He put his head down as he continued forward and hoped for a miracle as he waited for the shot but it never came, just the scuffle of shoes on a polished tiled floor and then a thud followed by the appearance of the gun scraping to a stop just in front of him. When he looked up he saw that Doctor Shepard's scrub nurse had stepped out of the OR and knocked the man to the ground. Watching as the old woman scuttled down the hall leaving scattered instruments across the corridor. Tim watched as the soldier mirrored him, both looking at each other with panicked blue eyes and then quickly back to the gun that was just out of arms reach for both. With a large intake of breath both men launched themselves sliding towards the gun.
Derek's heart was aching as he heard the pleading cries that left the brunette woman as she was dragged from the room. He wished he hadn't had to cause her that pain but he needed the reaction for his plan to succeed. Luckily for him things had worked out quite well, with the appearance of the blonde figure in the viewing gallery…ok the gun shot maybe not the greatest and the fact the woman sounded scary as hell, he was just happy it had got the other two from the room as he had things to get on with and not a lot of time in which to do it.
As the door closed he quickly began to gather his stuff and turned off the camera that had allowed Teddy to see what was happening, he couldn't let her see what he was secretly up to. Knowing well how the hospital worked, he knew that everything that happened in that OR would be recorded until he called time of death. It was the Hospitals way of covering their own ass but it also served his purpose well.
Looking up at the security monitors in the corner of the room it showed the corridor outside he could see the Robbins fella struggle with the brunette whose name he couldn't remember. Getting back to what he was doing he acknowledged his staff as they exited through the scrub room at the back of the OR.
All that remained in the room was his scrub nurse Bokhee, as always the silent woman he trusted with everything so he had already included her in his plan. She quietly watched him connect Arizona's jumbled wires back up to the machines. As all the stats came back to life he released the breath he'd been holding. In that moment he was happy, it had been a calculated risk but he knew that the scientists had screwed about enough with Arizona's physiology that it had already gave the appearance she wasn't breathing in that sedative state.
The truth being that it was never Arizona's stats that were shown on the monitors. Derek needed Arizona's vitals to look as though she was crashing so he had Bokhee stand next to the machine with her own set of wires linked to the machines out of view. There were so many wires running from the machine that you couldn't tell that the little nurse had a set of wires attached to her as well.
When they put Arizona under it had put her body into a type of shut down mode, everything became relaxed, her heart rate was non-existent so it wouldn't have been noticeable if he had used her and just disconnected the wires. There wouldn't have been the dramatic decrease in the stats and he needed everyone's reaction if he was to complete his performance. The two of them had come to an agreement that when he said that he was finished closing the small Asian woman would disconnect her wires setting off the monitors, giving the effect that they were losing the blonde. He hadn't been 100% sure about the shocks but he had hoped that because Arizona's heart rate was so slow to begin with, it wouldn't do any damage to her just what he needed it to do.
The main connection point in her head had to be removed before the shocks because that would have caused her to be left brain dead if he had surged the chip while still connected to her brain stem. By shocking her he hoped that he had completely surged the left over connection points, there was no way that he had the time or would he risk having to disconnect every point from her nerves. This had to work as he and the blonde hoped it had because she would not survive an operation of this magnitude again. The connection points still being there would not cause an issue but it would have been easy to just replace the chip - by surging them he had rendered Arizona de-funked. It made him sad as he could now see on closer inspection the very faint almost non existent scars run down the inside of her forearms and down her fingertips, he realised the pain the child must have gone through when they had done this to her in the first place. He knew that he had just saved her life but he had also knew that by doing this she was at more risk, before they would have probably tried to capture her again, by removing what they wanted back he hoped he hadn't just helped to sign her death sentence. They would have no hesitation in just exterminating her once they found out their science controlling her had been destroyed.
"Bokhee, could you please turn the lights off for me, lock and stay by the door…just in case, we'll need to wait here till she comes to" Derek smiled nervously at the set of eyes smiling at him under large glasses as she gave him a nod.
As the room became darker, Derek sat down next to Arizona and waited for his eyes to adjust to the change in light. He made sure that the stitches in her head were ok and that her stats were stable. Looking over to the security monitor to check that there was nobody about he was surprised when he saw the scary looking woman stalk down the hall with an Alliance soldier his gun pointed at the two Resistance folk. Realising that the soldier was closest to them he went to grab the phone on the wall. Knowing that the small woman was the height of a smurf he quickly grinned at his plan in his head, obviously the scary woman had something to do with Burke and he needed to buy himself some more time because no doubt she would be heading for him soon enough.
"Bokhee…uh… I'm sorry but when I tell you could you exit this room and could you make sure you hit him hard enough to dislodge the gun." The little nurse looked up at what had Derek's attention as she listened to what else Derek was saying. "Then get out of there as quickly as possible…I honestly wouldn't ask you but, I don't know what else to do…"
Derek was cut off as he heard "Yes doctor" and a nod of her head.
Derek smiled at the woman as he picked up the phone "Ah yes security, there is a male and a female up on the OR floor…a shot has been fired and they are attacking two of my OR staff out in the corridor…both have weapons and the male appears to be dressed in fake Alliance attire please could you send people quickly."
Derek returned the phone to the wall and continued to watch the security feed intently, "Now Bokhee!" Derek watched as, just as he imagined, the soldier was a lot taller so when the nurse stepped out she hit him right in the chest knocking the gun out of his hand. As she scurried up the hall, Derek quickly got back to setting the rest of his plan into action - he had a very important person waiting for his signal that the girl was in his possession.
As Callie continued toward the woman she watched as she Hahn stopped, she was waiting for Callie to get to her and decided just to play with the brunettes emotions a bit more.
"Oh Torres, how did it feel to watch the little Blondie girlfriend slip away? How are you going to defend yourself now that your little weapons went bye bye! Just let it be known, I will have great delight in breaking you down... you're going to be my new play toy. Oh but since your my new favourite thing, I tell you what! I'll make sure you get her body back…finger by finger!" Erica could see her little speech was having the desired effect but she was enjoying her torment so much, she hadn't realised just how quickly Callie was upon her.
As Callie reached Hahn she drove her elbow hard into the chest plate of the woman's reinforced light weight Kevlar suit, forcing the woman back a few steps but otherwise having no effect other than the wide eyed but almost amused expression that crossed her face. Callie continued forward as Hahn continued to provoke the brunette, she knew that Callie was fighting from her emotions, Erica knew there was no place for emotions in her line of work…it was why she was so good at her job, she was a heartless bitch. But she knew it.
Hahn let Callie take three more hits at her, letting her think she had the upper hand before Hahn responded by twisting her body to avoid another blow. Steadying herself she quickly threw a punch into the side of the Latina, winding her. Callie turned quickly realising that the pain in her shoulder was not helping with her free movement so she charged at the woman making sure she connected. Callie tackled the assassin, all her power went into uninjured shoulder driving the woman backwards until she felt the jolt of pain run down her spine as they made contact with the wall. Callie took a step back and tried to throw another punch even though her body was getting weaker by the second due to the pain. With an outstretched arm she grabbed Callie's fist mid punch, twisting the woman's arm around, she then twisted Callie's arm behind her back. Pulling the limb upwards brought searing pain to the brunette as she was slowly lowered to the ground in agony. Towering over the woman Hahn brought Callie's arm a little higher and as she leant over to whisper into her ear their bodies flush together. Callie could feel Hahn's breasts press hard on her back and it physically made her skin crawl. As she whispered she made sure to dig her finger and her thumb into the open wound on the brunette's shoulder.
"You should know that I'm going to make good use of you, I'm quite sure I can fuck the memory of that little blonde lab rat right out of your pretty little head." Callie looked over toward Tim as the two men continued to wrestle about the floor trying to get to the weapon first.
The floor was cold and the polished surface was doing nothing for the two men trying to maintain any sense of stability. The two of them continued to reach for the gun with each attempt one of them knocked it further out of outstretched fingertips, just ghosting the edge always so near…but not close enough.
Avery didn't want to be here. The shit they had him doing the last couple of days rocked him to the core. Yet here he was rolling on the floor like a kid in a playground trying to stop the other kid from stealing his toy. He wanted to just give up and let Tim win but he knew that would probably result with him having a bullet in some part of his body. He had tried to say a few times to Tim that he didn't want this but the other man obviously wasn't interested in listening and certainly not to him. Avery just needed to get the gun as far away from Robbins as possible, hopefully then Robbins would realise the soldier's intention. Avery was close, he had managed to get his foot to the gun he just hoped that Robbins would realise that this was intentional. Drawing back his foot he sent the gun scuttling down the hall. Tim's head quickly snapped in the direction the gun went before bringing his eyes back up to meet the flashing, pleading bright blue eyes of the soldier underneath his clenched fists.
Callie's eyes were heavy as she started to feel as though she would fade out. The pain was taking over, as Hahn continued to dig her fingers in deep to her shoulder wound. There was no way Callie was going to give the woman the satisfaction of begging for the pain to stop no matter how bad it was. She was running on empty but she managed to gather enough strength to bring her head back hard connecting with Hahn's nose, the assassin let go of her grip and Callie fell onto the floor face first.
Hahn staggered backwards clutching her nose as blood cascaded from her damaged face. Callie had managed to fracture the assassin's nose. Trying to stop the flow of blood she let her temper get the better of her as she took a kick at Callie's head, the force of contact rolled Callie over onto her back and her blood started to pool around her on the white background. As she looked up at the blurred vision of the assassin above her Callie could feel Hahn's blood splash on to her face. She started to lose consciousness thinking that at least she went out fighting and that she'll be with her love once again.