Callie had assumed that staying away from her house for three weeks would be enough. The police had arrested the two men in her house the morning after; both of them had survived, although it was touch and go for a while for the man Arizona had shot. The police had not been able to identify the two men and had therefore sent the case to the regional headquarters and let them take it from there. They had also made sure to have extra patrols around town to look out for anything unusual going on, and put a surveillance car by Callie's house in case someone would show up.
Callie looked out the living room window and waved to the officer in the surveillance car. It would be there for at least a week after Callie had moved back in the police had promised her.
Callie walked into the kitchen and leaned against the counter. She closed her eyes and took in the silence of the house. How can silence be so loud, she wondered.
She hadn't heard anything from Arizona since she had walked away from Callie that night outside her mother's house. She knew she wasn't suppose to try to contact her but she had to at least try: Arizona could be dead and Callie wouldn't know about it. She got Joanne's number from her phone bill, but when she tried calling, the number was no longer in service. She didn't even know her last name, which meant she couldn't even try to get hold of Arizona's parents. Callie tried to convince herself that maybe it was for the better.
Callie hadn't told her mother and Mark all the details about what had happened, just that they had been attacked and that Arizona had to leave because she was the one the attackers were looking for. They hadn't asked her more than she had wanted to tell them either, and she was very thankful for that.
She was more truthful to them, however, than she had been with the police. She had decided to stick with Arizona's original story, or at least what Callie had thought was Arizona's story. She had told them about Arizona being in bad shape, and that she had told Callie it was her boyfriend who had hurt her. So, Callie had naturally wanted to help her. It wasn't until they were attacked that she had understood Arizona had been lying. The police didn't doubt her story; another perk of living in a small town: people knew you and that meant you could rely on your reputation.
Bailey had told her to take as much time off as she needed, but Callie would rather get back to work as soon as possible to get her mind off Arizona. She noticed that her colleagues tried to be encouraging, but Callie found that the only one she could relax around was Alex. They spent most of their breaks together. Mostly discussing Alex's dreams and his various dates.
Other than work, she tried to hang out as much as she could with Mark. At least he would make his best to make her laugh, and feel good. Nevertheless, there was no avoiding going back home and facing the quiet of her house. She tried to avoid it sometimes by asking Mark if she could stay at his place for the night, or doing the same at her mother's. She never told them the real reason for wanting to stay over; it was either she was too tired to walk home or that it was just easier to stay there since it was already so late. Callie figured that both her mother and Mark knew exactly why she wanted to stay, but she was glad they played along.
Callie had been living at her house for about three weeks, and had started to feel a bit better, that is, not thinking about Arizona all the time. Most of the people around her had stopped being overly sensitive when talking to her, which was also nice. Still, she had taken on more shifts at the store to occupy her mind further.
Callie was doing the last hour of her last shift for the week at one of the back shelves, stacking jars of assorted jams, when Alex walked up to her and told her someone was asking for her at the register. She thought it might be a customer that wanted to complain about her service, but then Alex added: "It's that old friend of yours from college."
Callie looked up at him in disbelief. "What?!" But she didn't wait for him to answer.
She made her way to the register but stopped in her tracks when she saw Arizona standing there. She hadn't seen Callie yet. She stood there with her hands in her pockets, looking casually around her. Then she locked eyes with Callie.
Callie widened her already big smile when she looked into those blue eyes. Arizona walked up to meet her. Callie plunged forward to give her a hug. Arizona laughed at Callie's fierce hug, but she also made sure to squeeze Callie tightly against her own body.
They parted their bodies, and Callie just stared at her. Then it dawned on her: why hadn't Arizona told her about coming, or at least told Callie that she apparently was out of harms way?!
"Why didn't you tell me you were safe?!" Callie wasn't smiling any longer.
Arizona looked around her again. "Can we take this outside?" She suggested.
They walked through the lunch room and then outside where Arizona proceeded to tell Callie what had happened after they had parted ways.
Arizona had been on the run for a day or so when she had tried to contact Joanne again; this time she succeeded. It turned out Joanne had understood pretty quickly what the dates on the files had meant (Arizona quickly filled in Callie on the files Joanne had sent her). It was nothing more complicated than the fact that filing them under the same date, would avoid getting noticed by the system's own consistency checks, which would normally lead to a red flag being raised in one of the departments, for further investigation. The reason Joanne could figure that out and not Arizona was because Joanne had started her career in the department that dealt with most of the filing systems.
Joanne had, subsequently, decided to take matters in her own hands. She used the contacts she had with people in the higher levels. They, in turn, had put together a team to investigate who was involved in this conspiracy. That meant that Arizona had to stay away for quite some time, so the people looking for her would not suspect anything, and run away themselves.
Arizona wanted to contact Callie but didn't want to risk anything before the right people were caught. When they were finally caught, she had to come in and be debriefed, and go through evidence, and later, a trial.
Callie had listened very intently to Arizona's story. "So, the trial just ended?" She wondered.
"Not exactly. I did my last day about one week ago." Arizona admitted.
Callie didn't understand. If the trial had been over for Arizona since a week back, why hadn't she tried to contact Callie?!
"But then, why didn't you call me, or send me a message?!" Callie couldn't hide her disappointment.
"I'm sorry but there was so much to do after the trial." Arizona offered.
Callie still didn't understand. "Even if you did have a lot to do, you could have sent me a message, you know, just dropped a line or two."
Arizona looked a bit embarrassed by Callie's comment. "I also wanted to come see you in person." Arizona offered. "And in my defense I had a lot to get in order for my possibly new job." She said with a happy tone.
Callie felt like a fool. Here she had been moping around, worrying about Arizona's safety, and she on her end hadn't even had the time to write her a message telling Callie she was alright, because she had had so much to do?! Was this how much she mattered to Arizona?
Arizona could see that Callie wasn't very pleased about what Arizona was telling her. "Don't you want to know about my new job offer?!" She tried. "I had to pack all of my stuff in case I needed to move to a new place, hence the lack of time." She added when Callie didn't say anything.
Callie decided there was no reason to be rude, so she put on a fake smile and asked Arizona what the new job was. Arizona smiled. "It's here!" She exclaimed in a proud voice. "Well, it could be anyway." She murmured as she didn't get a reaction from Callie.
"Well that's gr... What?!" Callie had already prepared an answer, so she started saying it until she registered what Arizona had said. "What do you mean here?!"
"I mean here in this town. I haven't signed any papers or anything just yet; I wanted to run it by you first." She arched her eyebrows in anticipation.
Arizona had had a lot of time to think about her future, and Callie, the last few weeks and decided – like she had told Callie – that there was no place she'd rather be.
Callie couldn't help herself, but put her hands to her face and started crying. Arizona put a hand on Callie's shoulder worried that she had hurt her feelings. "Callie, I'm sorry, I should have told you right away but I wanted to it to be sort of a surprise. I'm so stupid!" Arizona felt so bad.
Callie put down her hands, and Arizona could see that she was actually laughing, although tears were streaming down her face at the same time.
"It's happy tears." Callie explained.
Arizona started laughing too. "I guess you approve then?!"
"I do!" Callie said, and then went in to give Arizona a kiss.
It had been about a week since Arizona had moved all her stuff into Callie's house. The local police office had gotten need to know information about Arizona, just to clear her name.
Since Arizona didn't mind changing her job description a bit after what had happened, it meant that she could work more from home. The only thing was that she had to come in every other month to attend meetings with other staff-members, as well as go to certain conventions around the country, but those didn't happen very often.
Arizona had never been happier. She hadn't known what it was she was looking for, and she would never have believed it if somebody had told her, but this was it; this was exactly what she had been looking for all along. She loved sharing a house, and her life with Callie.
Callie couldn't be happier either. Her house that she not too long ago dreaded to come home to, was now the one place she really loved to be, because it meant that she got to be with Arizona. The silence was no longer loud; and the silence she shared with Arizona was an easy one.