New Beginnings - Secret Santa vic
Prompt: Canon, reaction to whatever happens in the midseason finale. What happens immediately after Callie and Arizona's final scene together?
“Well, that was unexpected,” Arizona remarked once she had caught up to her wife in the reception room.
“I know, right?” Callie’s eyes glistened slightly with excitement. As much as she felt bad for her friends, she couldn’t help revel slightly in the gossip…especially given that she wasn’t in the center of it. Callie had always found a guilty pleasure in delighting in the hospital gossip. It was something she had been thrilled to find out Arizona shared. “I wonder what’s going to happen with them.”
“Yeah,” Arizona agreed softly. She hoped April would find her happiness, whether it be with Matthew or Jackson, of course, but she was more concerned with whether her own marriage would survive.
Plucking two glasses of champagne off the catering table in front her, Callie offered one to her wife, who gladly accepted it. “I feel kind of bad that we’re eating all of this when there wasn’t a real wedding,” Arizona observed.
“Hey, April expressly instructed all of us not to let this go to waste,” Callie said with a shrug, grabbing a mini-quiche off a tray as it was carried past her. Arizona watched as her wife gleefully bit into the quiche, laughing softly too herself. Despite all the thoughts rumbling around in her brain, she couldn’t deny how much she loved seeing her wife being silly and goofy. “By the way,” Callie continued in a conspiratorial whisper, leaning into her wife, “you were the most beautiful one up there.”
Despite herself, Arizona lowered her gaze and blushed. “Callie…April looked great.”
“Sure, but you…” Callie was cut off by the room falling silent when April appeared in the entranceway. She still wore her wedding dress, but her braids had started to untwist, her makeup had started to wear off, and her face had reddened.
“Oh ha ha, let’s all stare at the crazy bride who has no groom. Actually, she has no fiancé or boyfriend, because he left me. Yep, that’s right. So I’m just getting some alcohol, don’t mind me! You guys go right ahead and enjoy the party.” April’s arms were flying about by her side, her hair becoming even more unkempt.
As April stepped further into the room on her way to the bartender, the guests began to murmur again. April breezed past the two women, and Arizona turned to Callie, jabbing her thumb in April’s direction. “Maybe I should go take care of…that. You know, be a good bridesmaid.” Anything to make it so I don’t start crying in front of you, Arizona thought with a self-deprecating laugh.
Having overheard on her way past, April whirled around. “No! You two need to talk.”
“Oh, April, we’re fine. It’s not…” Arizona muttered weakly.
“You are going to talk and be honest,” April retaliated, pointing at Arizona. “And you,” she said, turning quickly to face Callie, “are going to listen, really listen.”
“What’s going on?” Callie directed her question toward Arizona.
“Otherwise you guys are going to end up like me and Jackson and Matthew. A whole lot of no communication leads to a wedding that never happens! So, go! Communicate!” Without letting them respond, April raced off to find a couple bottles of wine she knew were stashed behind the bar.
“You want to talk? But I was going to make a toast…” Callie said idly, not really thinking about what she was saying. If the situations were reversed, Callie knew she’d have been pissed. But the toast was important to her, because it wasn’t just about the research; it was about starting a new life with Arizona. And maybe her wife would be embarrassed by the big, public show of affection, but Callie needed to do something big to get through to Arizona; she couldn’t always be this helpless.
Arizona bit the inside of her cheeks, doing everything in her power not to roll her eyes. Instead, she took Callie’s hand in hers. “Come with me?”
The old Arizona probably would have demanded that Callie come with her, clutching her hand and dragging her if necessary. But new Arizona was timid and walked on eggshells.
Dismissing all thoughts of her toast at the hesitance in Arizona’s voice, Callie squeezed her wife’s hand. “Of course.”
Arizona led her wife through the throng of wedding invitees, taking her out of the reception hall and into the room she had shared with April and the bridesmaids just an hour before.
She dropped Callie’s hand and turned to face the full-length mirror the four women had been using earlier to primp and get ready for the wedding. Without looking at Callie’s reflection, out of fear that she would lose her nerve, Arizona loosened the tie around her pink dress and let the flimsy material fall off her shoulders and down to around her waist.
Callie stepped forward instinctively. “Not that I’m complaining, but uh, are you sure you want to do this here? At April’s wedding...well, non-wedding?”
Arizona remained silent as she allowed the dress to slip off her hips and fall to the ground in a pool around her feet. Before Callie could react, Arizona bent down and pulled her prosthetic off her leg; she was becoming such a pro at it that she could now keep her balance while standing. She rolled the fitted sock off her residual limb, rubbing the slightly reddened flesh gently.
She stood, balanced on her one leg, in front of the mirror. Sucking in a deep breath, she dared a glance at Callie’s perplexed reflection. “There was a time that I couldn’t look in a full length mirror. Well, actually, I couldn’t really look below my waist at all. Because if I didn’t look, I could pretend my leg was there.”
“Oh, Arizona…”
“But it’s not there,” Arizona continued, interrupting Callie; she knew that if she let her wife talk she would completely lose her nerve. “I know that now. I know that when I look down there, it will be missing. And you know what’s so amazing about that? It doesn’t make me ashamed anymore. I don’t look in a mirror in disgust anymore.”
Arizona leaned against a chair to keep herself upright as she continued. “And this is who I am. It’s not who I set out to be and it’s not who you fell in love with. But this is me.”
“Arizona, you’re still the person I fell in love with…” Callie tried.
“No, I’m not. And that’s okay. Callie, why do you think I cheated on you?”
Callie swallowed back a thick lump, averting her eyes momentarily. Although she was trying with all her might to move past her wife’s infidelity, hearing the words spoken so nonchalantly was a little too hard to bear. “I, uh, try really hard not to think about that, because I’m afraid the answer might kill me.”
Arizona shook her head sadly. “Lauren, and Leah for that matter, didn’t know me when I had two legs, but she was interested in me. She wasn’t trying to fix me. She wasn’t searching for a piece of me that no longer existed. She wanted me and she wanted me the way I am now.”
“Arizona, I want you the way you are now…”
“No, you want to fix me. You said it yourself, that your research is to get me back to the way I used to be.”
Callie remained silent, knowing that’s exactly what she had said and unsure how she actually felt.
“I am in love with you, Calliope. And I believe there might still be a part of you that is in love with me. But I need to be enough for you. I have to be enough for you. I need to wake up every morning knowing that you want to be with me now, not holding on to the memory of your complete wife. I’m just getting back to the point where I don’t think about the fact that I lost both a leg and a baby in one year and how that makes me less of a woman. I don’t think like that anymore, and I need to know that you don’t think of me that way, too.”
Arizona sighed and flopped down into the chair she’d been leaning on, still watching her own underwear-clad reflection in the mirror. The silliness of taking off her bridesmaid’s dress in the middle of the wedding reception finally dawned upon her, but she had been desperate. “There may not be a whole line of women wanting to be with me anymore, but there are at least a couple women. The problem is that there’s only one woman I want to be with. So, I need to know, am I enough?”
“There are women lining up for you, Arizona.”
Despite the heaviness of their conversation - or, rather, Arizona’s speech - Arizona had to smile. “That’s not really my point, but I appreciate it all the same.”
“You want to know whether I think you’re good enough,” Callie stated needlessly. In truth, she wanted to give herself time to come up with an answer that could truly encapsulate all the complicated emotions she felt.
“Yeah…I guess I do,” Arizona said slowly, unsure if she really wanted the answer. “No, you know what? Not here. Not like this. I don’t want you to answer out of fear that you’ll lose me again or out of obligation because I’m sitting in my underwear begging to be enough for you. I want you to mean it.”
o0o0o
“Good morning,” Callie said sweetly as Arizona stirred next to her.
“Mmm morning…too early,” Arizona grumbled, pulling the sides of her pillow across her face to block out the light.
“But it’s Christmas,” Callie said, placing a soft kiss on Arizona’s cheekbone.
“Oooh, Santa came!”
“Um, Arizona, I distinctly remember Santa being suspiciously blonde and blue-eyed. And female.”
“Hmmm that might be so…my stomach does hurt a bit this morning from all the cookies.”
“Come on, you goof. I have a surprise for you.”
Finally rising, Arizona pulled on her robe from where it was draped over a chair in the corner of their room. “I’ll get Sofia and meet you out there?”
“Don’t get Sofia just yet. This one is just for you.”
Arizona cocked her eyebrow, wondering what her wife had in store. She followed Callie out of the room, laughing when her wife ran over to the tree and picked up a set of two small boxes, one slightly bigger than the other. On top sat a huge silver bow, far larger than the boxes themselves.
“You’re not enough for me, Arizona,” Callie started, as she handed Arizona the boxes. She nearly laughed when Arizona’s face fell completely, but she kept her wife out of her misery. “Enough is such a poor choice of words to describe what I feel for you. You’re far more than enough.”
Arizona silently accepted Callie’s words, unwrapping the top box with an odd mixture of trepidation and excitement.
“I know I’ve been wrapped up in my research, and I know sometimes I seem oblivious to your needs. I was never trying to fix you, Arizona. I just wanted to make your life a little easier. To give you back what was taken from you…what I took from you.”
Arizona nodded, as she lifted the lid of the first box; she should have known Callie’s recent oblivion came from a place of guilt. She stared curiously at what lay in the soft cotton bed of the first box.
“It’s a key.”
“I can see that. Is it…a house key?”
“Well, yeah. But it’s symbolic. I know you’d kill me if I went out and bought us a house without consulting you first.”
Laughing slightly, Arizona nodded. “You’re damn right.”
“Open the second one!” Callie urged with a grin.
The second box held a shining silver necklace with an intricate circular diamond-encrusted pendant. “Oh, Callie, it’s beautiful!” Arizona gushed.
Callie held her hands out to take the necklace from her wife. After waiting for Arizona to turn around so that she could clasp the necklace around her neck, Callie spoke. “Together these symbolize a start to our new life, a life that starts now. A life in a new house that we will pick together, where we will have at least one more kid - a child we can have when we’re both completely ready. As for the necklace…well, I don’t want to go back to wearing the heart necklaces. Those were from a time before. We might be a little battered, both physically and emotionally. But we are who we are and one day soon, we will realize we’re better for it. I loved the Arizona I met at Joe’s, but I loved the Arizona who stood before me, vulnerable and scarred, yet beautiful and confident, in a back room at April’s wedding, even more.”
Gulping back her tears, Arizona leaned in toward Callie, closing the already small distance between them. Their lips met in a gentle kiss. Before Callie could deepen the kiss, Arizona pulled away. “I don’t know how you found it in your heart to forgive me, I really don’t. But it’s something for which I will be forever grateful. I am more than a little excited to start this new life with you.”
Arizona chuckled to mask the tears threatening to spill down her face as she finally realized the enormity of the past two years and the utter desolation she had felt when she thought she would never have her wife back. Callie brought her hand up to Arizona’s cheek, swiping at an errant tear with her thumb.
“What do you say we go get our little munchkin and let her open the fifty presents her grandparents spoiled her with?”
“That sounds perfect,” Arizona said with a laugh, grateful that Callie was not judging her for the sudden onslaught of emotion.
Arizona watched from the living room as Callie woke their daughter up, excited squeals of “It’s Christmas!” and “Santa came!” emanating from both mother and daughter. As Callie helped Sofia walk through the doorway, she urged her daughter to “go see Mommy!” Arizona gleefully hugged her daughter, wishing her a merry Christmas. From over the top of Sofia’s head, Arizona met her wife’s eyes, the two of them sharing a look - a look that revealed the excitement of many more Christmases to come.
