Without Darkness
Title: Without Darkness
Pairing: Callie/Arizona
Rating: PG-13 for language
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Shondaland.
Summary: An angsty post-9x01 snapshot based off of Jessica’s statement that without darkness, there is no light.
A/N: I’m throwing my proverbial hat into the ring of post-9x01 fics. I will warn you that it is angsty, so if you’re looking for something uplifting, this isn’t it. Like Jessica said in her interview, it’s not a story of defeat, and I’m not intending this to be a defeatist fic. It’s merely a snapshot of what I think Arizona might be feeling, before she recovers and deals with what happened to her.
A/N2: Big thank you to nerdfightergirl for looking over this and encouraging me to post it!
Without Darkness
Arizona’s mom had always said that without darkness, there can be no light. Her mom would say that at the end of that dark tunnel, there is a light, and it is a far sweeter, brighter, more magnificent light than it would be if you never walked through that tunnel. When Arizona’s father was deployed, her mother always reminded the children that his homecoming would be that much sweeter. When they had to move to yet another location and they had to leave their friends and their school, she always told Arizona and Timothy that they would just become even closer to each other and wasn’t that great? And she had been right. But then when Timothy, her best friend, died, Arizona started questioning her mother’s adage. Could there really be light again? Could light really be borne from such all-consuming darkness?
Arizona realized that yes, there could be light again. She had moved to Seattle, had met Calliope Torres, had fallen in love, and had become a mother to the most perfect little girl. And she had become a stronger, better version of herself.
Because of the darkness she’d been through, she was all the more appreciative of the light in her life.
Or at least she had been. Before her plane fell out of the sky.
o0o0o
“Arizona,” Callie calls softly, “Sofia wants to say hi!”
Arizona grunts from her position lying on her side in their bed. “No, she doesn’t. You want to ‘say hi’. Stop exploiting our daughter.”
Callie rolls her eyes and sighs. They’ve had this argument at least twenty times now. “It’s not exploitation, Arizona. It’s wanting you to be a damn parent to your child.”
Arizona rolls languidly on to her back, as if she cannot be bothered with this fight. “Okay, sure! Why don’t I go take her to the park? Or maybe I’ll take her on a hike. Oh, wait, I’m missing a leg.”
“Enough! Arizona, enough. You know that’s not what I’m asking of you.”
“What are you asking of me?” Arizona challenges.
Callie just huffs and marches out of the room, Sofia bouncing on her hip.
“Oh, really mature, Callie! Just walk away!” Arizona yells to her retreating wife.
Callie returns less than a minute later, this time without Sofia. “Where is she?” Arizona demands.
“Oh, now you care about your daughter? She’s in her play pen, Arizona. She doesn’t need to hear this.”
Arizona nods and rolls back onto her side, her back to Callie. She’ll be damned if she makes this conversation easy for Callie. Absolutely nothing in her life is easy right now, and it makes her feel just a little bit better to know that she’s not the only one suffering. Maybe that makes her selfish or vindictive, but she doesn’t have the energy to care.
“You want to know what I’m asking of you? I’m asking you not to disappear, Arizona. I’m asking you to fight. I’m asking you to fight for yourself, for me, for your daughter. I’m asking you to feel,” Callie pleads.
Arizona once again rolls onto her back and her head lolls listlessly to the side. “You think I don’t feel?” Her voice is low and Callie instantly regrets her words.
“No, I - ”
“I feel. I can’t stop feeling. You want to know what I feel?”
Callie nods, tears collecting at the precipice of her bottom eyelids. She blinks them back and whispers fearfully, “yes”.
“I feel pain, both physical and emotional. I feel anger, at you, at the doctors who took my leg, at God for allowing this to happen to me. I’m angry at everyone in the world who has all four of their limbs. And I’m jealous.” Arizona pauses briefly and Callie takes this moment to offer a small, supportive smile.
“That’s understandable, Arizona.”
Arizona laughs. It’s not even close to the joyous laugh Callie is used to. It’s dark and it’s low and it’s horrifying. “No, I don’t think so, Callie. You know who I’m jealous of?”
Callie shakes her head meekly. “I’m jealous of Lexie. And Mark. And Jerry, the fucking pilot.”
“No, don’t you dare start - ”
“You asked me to feel, Callie! Here I am, feeling! And it sucks! For one fucking moment, I’d like to stop feeling!” Arizona bellows. She sees the tears streaking down Callie’s cheeks and there’s some tiny part of her that feels guilty, but mostly she feels vindicated. “Mark and Lexie are in peace. How is it fair that I got left here to deal with the repercussions? How is it fair that Sofia started with three parents and is ending up with one and a half?”
“You’re not half a parent, Arizona,” Callie says haltingly through her tears. In the other room, Sofia begins to cry, presumably a reaction to Arizona’s outburst.
“Oh yeah? I’m not the one who’s about to comfort her, yet I’m the one who made her cry. How is that fair?”
Callie shakes her head and takes a few steps towards the bedroom door. “You’re still living, Arizona.”
“I’m existing, Callie, not living.”
A strangled sob escapes from Callie’s throat. She’s at her breaking point, too, but she’s not allowed to break. So, she swallows the ever-present lump in her throat and stifles her tears. Turning on her heels, she calls out sweetly to the innocent bystander in all of this mess, “It’s alright, sweetie! Mami’s coming!” Sending one last pitiful glance to her prone wife, she slams the door shut and attends to their daughter.
o0o0o
When Arizona finally listens to her parents’ incessant messages, she is unsurprised to hear her mother’s maxim: without darkness, there is no light, and I promise, sweetie, there is a light at the end of this very dark tunnel. Arizona laughs hollowly at the thought, before hitting 9 to delete the message, along with the other 20.
That light, that brilliant, magnificent, beautiful light, at the end of the tunnel? Arizona thinks it may just be an oncoming train. And when she feels the vestiges of her missing limb, when she listens to her wife’s gut-wrenching sobs from her spot on the couch in the living room each night, when she hears her daughter’s cries in the middle of the night and cannot get up fast enough to soothe her, she thinks about the train.
In those moments, she hopes for the train.