Lucky (Survivors)
TITLE: Lucky
AUTHOR: Neolithicdream
PAIRING: Callie & Arizona
RATING: PG 13
SUMMARY: Just 3 moments in time post Crash and Amputation. First is within a year of Plane Crash, the second approximately 18 months after Crash, the third approximately 3 years of it. Sometimes you just are lucky.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Calzona or any of the characters mentioned in this fic. They are the property of Shonda Rhimes/ ABC etc... This fic is purely written for enjoyment and without intent or prospect of profit. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: Kudos as always to propgirl1 who deals with the mayhem. And for not running for the hills when I told her about the cows
A/N 2: I promise my New Year’s resolution will be to finish all outstanding fics and never to start one until rest are done L
Survivors (set about 18 months after the plane crash)
Arizona snuggled into Callie's arms, pressing her body tightly against her wife's warm one.
Some things had changed.
The way they slept being one of them. When she finally let Callie back into her bed, they'd realised that pretty quickly. If she slept on the left hand side then, when Callie was the big spoon, it was no longer comfortable, the weight on her stump simply too much. And that was her favorite sleeping position and giving it up simply wasn't to be countenanced.
So it was that Arizona Robbins a lifelong left-sider changed sides. It wasn't such a struggle for Callie as in truth she had never been fully committed to the right side anyway. She claimed to be equally comfortable on the left and the right. Arizona had just shaken her head in amazement at that one.
Still, while it had taken time to become accustomed to it, now sleeping on the right seemed almost, well, natural; just like pulling on her prosthetic in the mornings and taking it off at night.
Some things had changed. Some things had not.
She was still a kick-ass surgeon.
She was still a beloved daughter to the proudest and best parents ever.
Still a Mom to the most gorgeous little girl she'd ever seen.
Still a wife to the most beautiful woman she had ever known.
Some things had changed, Arizona thought, as she reflected on the past eighteen months; some of the hardest and darkest months of her life. And yet the important things hadn't changed at all.
She sighed even as she smiled, wrapping Callie’s arms even tighter round her as she did so.
"You okay, honey?" Callie's voice carried nothing but concern.
Arizona smiled again, before a fleeting thought caused a frown to cross her face. She had apologised countless times, for her behaviour in those first few months, even though Callie always said there was nothing to apologise for. Yet she knew differently. When the anger dissipated and the despair, when the acceptance came, with it so did the shame. She was not who she had been raised to be, she was not a good man in a storm. She was not.
"I'm sorry." Barely a whisper.
"Don't, don't..." Callie's reply was as soft as it was true “...come here." she turned Arizona in her arms, wiping away the tear before Arizona had even felt its escape.
"I'm so lucky..." Arizona replied, a smile had replaced the frown "...I think I might be the luckiest of us all."
At Callie's quizzical look she clarified "... Of the seven of us, from the plane."
Instinctively at the thought of the worst thing that ever happened to them Callie shivered but then responded. "The luckiest?” Her incredulity was evident. "Sure..." she said sarcastically "...I mean, you had it easy, right, you on that mountain for four days with a Pulmonary Embolism and, and splinting your own leg and, and...." the emotion was overwhelming.
A pale hand stroked her cheek, a feather like touch yet heavy with love.
Arizona, now settled into Callie's embrace, face to face then nodded with a smile, “Maybe, one of the luckiest anyway."
"Okay, I’m listening, convince me." though the way her eyebrows were orbiting the stratosphere and the shake of her head was proof enough that she'd take some convincing.
"Lexie died..." Arizona said flatly. They both stayed silent for a few moments in remembrance of the bright talented vivacious young woman. "....then the animals came and...God....she didn't deserve that."
"And Mark...." she grasped Callie's hand "I miss him too, ya know."
“I know you do, Arizona."
"He suffered so much out there, his heart was broken every which way, but he fought, so hard, to come back, to come home. He suffered through that hell, for what, just to not survive."
"Well, okay, I mean, yeah, compared to Mark and Lexie, of course you survived but the others..."
Arizona interrupted her "...and Jerry compared to him I'm..."
She noticed the confused look on Callie's face, "Callie! The pilot, Jerry, why do you always forget his n..."
"Hhmmfth...."Callie bristled. Try as she might she could not feel anything for that man, the man who drove her wife into the side of a mountain. Even if her wife called him her friend.
"Poor Jerry, he'll never get out of that wheelchair again and he told me how much he was looking forward to playing football with the twins and teaching them to fish..." Arizona trailed off. They had a bond, all of them, the survivors. They’d all gone through stuff no one should experience, had all lost so much.
"You lost your leg, Arizona, you..." as far as Callie was concerned her wife had suffered more than any of the other survivors."
"I can walk, with my latest leg I can run a marathon...." she scrunched up her nose in mild distaste, running to answer a 911 page she understood, running for pleasure now that was just weird.
Callie suppressed her giggle at the mere thought of her exercise-phobic wife lining up to run 26 miles.
"Okay, fine but Yang and Grey and Shepherd...."
Arizona sighed. She knew that it was hard for people to understand, even Callie. Maybe especially Callie as she had been there every step and misstep of the way.
She pulled her closer, re-positioning them so that she lay partially across Callie, her left thigh strewn across Callie's legs. Callie's right arm instinctively wrapping around her waist, her left hand gently massaging the muscles of her upper thigh. Arizona sighed in comfortable satisfaction. How could Callie not see that by just being here in Callie's arms made her the luckiest woman alive.
"Derek had to break his own hand to extract it from a piece of fuselage, Callie and...
"Oh boohoo! He's back doing ground-breaking surgeries and..." Callie retorted. Derek Shepherd was a great surgeon and a good friend but he was a Diva. Arrogance came with the package if you were a surgeon but Derek was as arrogant and self-centred as they came. Besides for all the hard work she had put in to save his career there was always the guilt. No longer paralysing but still guilt. Guilt that while she was saving his hand her wife was losing her leg.
"Only because he had an astoundingly talented surgeon." Arizona smiled lovingly at her wife. She used to think she was this perfect miraculous woman, but then real life had exposed Callie's many imperfections. As a result Arizona now found her even more wonderful.
"He had it worse out there than me though." Arizona's voice had dropped to a bare whisper. "Meredith was with him and..."
"Yes, yes ...he had her with him, you were..." Callie's voice wavered as it always did when she thought back to her wife's ordeal on that cold mountain "you were all alone."
"Oh Callie, don't, don't cry..." In the dark months after the amputation she had been so absorbed in her own loss, her own pain that she simply didn't see, didn't acknowledge Callie's pain, even her right to pain. It had taken time but finally she saw it and the sheer force of it had nearly broken her again. Wasn't that what love was though? A preference to feel pain oneself rather than see a loved one suffer?
"I wasn't alone, not really. Mark was there and..." she paused; his loss was still raw, for both of them. "....we talked about you and Sofia and...I wasn't alone. But Derek...he had Meredith there and...”
"Exactly! Wouldn't it have been easier if I was there?" she didn't understand.
"No! No! Jesus Callie, No!" Even in the semi-darkness Callie could see Arizona pale, horror stricken at the mere thought. Distress evident in her tone. "The thought of coming home to you was what kept me going, if you had been out there hurt, suffering, I couldn't bear that. I knew you were safe. I knew Sofia had you and wouldn't be left all alone if, if I didn’t come home but, but he didn't know that, he didn’t know that Meredith would survive, and he didn’t know if his little girl would be an orphan or......" Arizona shook her head as if to forcibly remove the thoughts.
"And Cristina...she was immense out there, taking care of everyone. I mean her bedside manner sucks in the Hospital but..."Arizona smiled at the memory "...she was exactly what we needed out there, like a drill sergeant; no self-pity allowed, checking on Mark's statistics, picking the bugs out of my leg..." she squeezed Callie's hand in reassurance. The mere mention of the leg was enough to cause Callie's breath to hitch. "By the time we were rescued, she was like the Walking Dead, I'm not sure if she slept much at all those four days. And when she came home there was no-one."
Callie nodded. Back then it was painful just being around Hunt and Yang never mind being them.
Arizona continued "Jerry had his wife there waiting in Boise, Meredith and Derek had each other, I had you but Cristina she was alone." She shook her head “I wouldn't have made it without you."
Callie stayed silent, not entirely convinced that the others had it worse than her wife or even close to as bad. Still if she'd needed proof that her Arizona was back, and she didn't, not any more, then this was it.
"And Meredith? I suppose with her broken toe, she had it worse than you too?"
Arizona sighed but stayed silent.
"Honey?"
Arizona laid her head on Callie's chest and sighed again, swallowing hard before she spoke.
"She lost her sister, maybe she had it worst of all."
Minutes passed before either spoke. Thinking of another beloved sibling. Thinking of all the loss, all the pain. Arizona moved position again, this time grasping Callie's left hand to reposition it back on her upper thigh. A move that had become shorthand for 'my leg hurts, help' and Callie worked her magic kneading the tense muscles back to a relaxed state.
If it wasn't for the gentle massage she was still receiving Arizona might have thought Callie had succumbed to sleep. Still, when she spoke it was with a barely-there whisper.
"I have Sofia and I have you. I have my family. I don't think I'm the luckiest. I know I am."
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