Chapter Nine

The end of one chapter

*Flashback* The White House, Washington DC - 2020

"Hey, you know the world is falling apart and all I can think about is kissing you. And I don't know how I feel about that." Callie said shaking. None of this fitted inside her head. She hadn't banked on the world falling apart and she hadn't banked on a perky elementary school teacher being alone in the world with her. She closed her eyes gently and let her breath fall out of her mouth.

Arizona smiled her best smile and gazed over the brunette. She hadn't banked on Callie either but she figured she must've gotten lucky in the karma department when she ended up as one of the last two people on Earth, and the other happened to be a blatantly gorgeous bisexual Latina. She was in lesbian heaven, and the White House.

"Callie?" She said, meeting black chocolate eyes as Callie tensed around her fingers.

"Yeah" Callie felt her eyes flick upwards into sky blue ones, her face revealing a wealth of nervous feelings. She was avoiding the other gaze, and a part of her relented for a second. She'd never kissed a girl before.

"It's ok. Just stop for a minute. There's no one else here, just you and me. Just kiss me." Arizona replied, the tip of her tongue flicking over her bottom lip and quivering as she closed her eyes and waited for their lips to touch.

Callie lips were softer than spun sugar. Her hands drifted down from Arizona's face to her waist, pulling her in deeper.

Seattle, Washington - September 2022

As they drove late into the evening, Callie spotted him on the horizon, a man in dark clothing, standing his hand held to his head. He was trying to see through the rain and headlights. "Stop, stop, Arizona there's a person in the road." She screamed, grabbing the blonde's hand as the car with came to a screeching halt. Callie opened the passenger door and rushed out into the road, nevermind that it was raining. "Hey!" She called out. Mark just stared at her, he pulled his hand away from his head and stared down at her, deciding what his first action should be.

He let a single weeping groan out of his mouth and launched himself at her, crushing her in the weight of his muscled upper body. He found himself actually crying, perhaps it was the emotion of finding new people or it was the overwhelming feeling that he wasn't going to be alone anymore. This was a do-over, this was his opportunity. If the group didn't let him back in, then he thought about Meredith's face when he'd left, she'd looked so mad. And in the month that he'd been with them, he learnt to understand she was the one in charge, Derek did what she said, and the others followed along because it was easier than challenging her.

"Hey there, it's ok. Are you all alone out here?" Callie began to say as she pushed away from him, backing away a little as Arizona got out of the car. Mark nodded, but Arizona remained unconvinced, she wondered whether they should trust him straight away, but then she saw Callie's face, the look of joy she had, glee. There was something else behind the face, but she'd inquire about it later. "I'm Calliope Torres, but you can call me Callie, and this is Arizona." Callie said, pointing behind her at the blonde, who gave a loose smile and waved. "You wanna come back to ours. We found a place near here whilst we searched for people, cause we saw your billboards, you know the ALIVE IN SEATTLE ones. That was a good idea by the way." She continued, Mark just nodded along and let himself be pushed into the back seat of the car.

He settled himself in and let a wave of release wash over him. Callie seemed nice enough and if she didn't question that the billboards were his then who was he to challenge her. "So you ladies come from far?"

"No Mer really, it's lovely." Cristina said, piling aubergine pasta into her mouth as she tried to appease Meredith's terrible cooking. It looked horrible, and had a sort of filmy slime texture, but the overall taste wasn't too bad. After the whole debacle with Mark leaving had settled down a little, Meredith invited Cristina and Owen over for a dinner party. She wanted things to go back to the way they had been, when there were four of them and her and Derek hadn't argued over Mark. She couldn't help it, she had a grudge, Mark had stayed with them for a month and was always taking liberties, he took the cow. That had been the dealbreaker and she wasn't about to give him special treatment.

Owen pulled a bit of a face at the meal, but decided to keep his thoughts to himself, they'd all noticed how on edge Meredith had been over the last few weeks. In truth, she was stressed out about not being pregnant, she thought there was something wrong with her. It wasn't a rational fear to think it was superstitions that were going to work, and she didn't even think about giving Derek a fertility test. Cristina didn't want kids, she hadn't told Owen this yet, she was keeping it to herself for the minute because it was all going so well without that particular complication. Meredith knew this, they'd talked about it, in their twisted-sister way, but she didn't think Cristina would understand.

Back at Callie and Arizona's place, which turned out to be a villa on the edge of the city, Mark had shown off his cooking skills and made something much more edible than Meredith's vegetable attempts at pasta. Callie had her own motives for wanting them to get to know Mark, the last two years with Arizona had been nice. They rarely argued, but then there was little to argue about when there were no people getting in the way. No jealousy, no affairs, no hope of anything other than each other and complete economic freedom.

But the virus came with its own drawbacks. Callie wanted children too, she'd been with a few guys in the past but nothing concrete, nothing serious. She'd even been married once, but that fizzled into nothing when he cheated on her. Then the virus came and everyone died, there were no more parents or her sister, or even that douche Greg she'd loved once. Then came travelling the country and Arizona, and her bisexuality, even though she had no way to check. In a way there were many things for her to be excited about with Mark. If he was the last man on the planet, she was lucky he was good looking. There were news things to hope for in her life, new things on the horizon of their future. And something made her latch onto him like a leach, she was so excited about the prospects that she didn't notice what it was doing to Arizona.

Arizona was so gay, she was lesbianic. A man like Mark didn't turn her head, she was wary of his smiling charm and the way he seemed to have Callie wrapped round his little finger. She saw motives that weren't there, and spent most of the evening in sulky suspicion with her arms folded across his body. She didn't like what he was doing to them. They'd been happy hadn't they? Because it sure looked like Callie wanted more.