The More Things Change: Chapter Eight, Part III

[pasha2009]

Title: The More Things Change

Rating: T

Summary: “Hours later Callie felt her best friend slip away silently into the cold and inexorable night while they were all still trapped amidst the wilderness. She held onto him, tighter now; somewhere a slight distance away Kepner was being mauled by the sinister gifts of the wild.” In a world where Arizona wasn't in Seattle when the plane crashed. Three years & PTSD, can she get Callie back?

Author: Pasha

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to SR and ABC. I make not profit. No copyright infringement intended.

Canon Till: 7 x 07

Pairing: C/A

Note: Thoughts,

Sarcastic remarks and Calliesque word jumbles are in ‘single quotes’.

Dreams and flashbacks are in Italics.

A/N: Alright, so I’m totally outfitted to write this thing! Coke and dry-salted chickpeas in tow, and the clock says three in the morning on a Monday. I hope you guys enjoy it; this one has a lot of small revelations to make a jilted lover even more jilted, but remember they have had time to get over it too, or maybe just process it.

Alright, so back to it!

Beta: Darkwlight on FF

Onward
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Still Last Night At the Bar (Flashback)

“No it di-id not!” - The brunette hiccuped and then erupted into a boisterous laugh. They were situated across the bar from each-other. Arizona stood behind the bar; sometime during the night they had reached an agreement that the blonde would be handling the liquor and the driving on account of the fact that Callie was really and suddenly into letting lose.

“Ahaan!” - affirmed the blonde with a willowy laugh that gave the other doctor a tiny pause. She stood there as if she had been struck. The mild and dying lights of the night were caressing the blonde’s sun kissed skin, and as a car passed by, its headlights most fortuitously turned around the corner and made a zipping pattern over the blonde’s cleavage.

Callie kept looking as the blonde went on animatedly telling her story. Her eyes alight with mirth and her hair sometimes catching the light as her hands gesticulated with a shadowy lightness.

The brunette was jolted out of her reverie when both she and the blonde were surprised into silence by her loud hiccuping.

“Oh, you poor thing…” - cooed the blonde as she turned around to pour her a glace of water. The brunette’s eyes lithely traveled to the woman’s derriere, and she let out a whispered “nah-h-ICE”! - The last syllable came out as a loud bark as she hiccuped again.

Arizona turned back to look at her - “sure” - she said genially - “I can put some ice in there… just, wait…” - she made a show of dropping in a few cubes as she turned around and slid the glass over the counter to the brunette.

As Callie drank the water, the clouds of booze-logic were intermittently dimming her usual powers of discernment and discretion; that almost impenetrable wall she couldn’t help but build around herself, cracked now and then.

Arizona for her part, looked immensely pleased with herself - “I’m totally good at this bar-tending thing.”

“Yeah, okay!” - The brunette scoffed; they both shut up for a bit.

“Are you going to?” asked the blonde.

“No… uh, I think they’ve” - Callie stopped again, waiting, but then gave a tiny belch. Her face went red as she looked to Arizona with a sheepish smile - “uh” - she brought her hand to her chest, gently rubbing - “sorry about that…”

“It’s… uh” - the blonde chuckled - “it’s fine, don’t worry… So they have…” -

- “Stopped, yes! ‘M cured of the hiccups…” - the brunette cut her off -

Arizona spoke abruptly, a suspicious glint in her eyes - “you remember that time in…” -

- “Arizona…” - Callie sighed.

- “Oh come on, you know?! You were going down on” -

- “Arizona, come on?” - Callie pleaded, a little embarrassed.

- “And you started having…” -

- “The hiccups, yes!” - The brunette cut her off - “I remember that! And I don’t think it is appropriate to” - she suddenly started giggling, giving Arizona complete whiplash.

“You are sooooo freaking drunk!” - surmised the blonde, with a look of bemusement.

“I know... I know!” - The brunette said between her giggle fits - “you said… ha… You said ‘don’t stop, holding your breath helps’”! - She laughed out in a loud yack.

Arizona turned beet-red as she remembered the incident with electrifying vividness. As Callie sobered and her laughing fit subsided, their eyes met in a moment of silent communion; they exchanged nervous smiles and Arizona slid a little over the bar and rested her head on her fisted hand, the other hand playing with the beer nuts. They were warm and grainy and reminded her of the first time her brother and his best friend bought her, her first beer. They’d told her that drinking is an art form, and must be done with the accompanying accouterments - by which the twerps meant beer nuts and a second hand stereo. The belching competition was really classy, but when they’d challenged each-other to pee their girlfriends names in the snow, she’d left deciding she had had enough culture for one night.

“I think I need a break” - Callie’s sighed admission pulled her back to the here and now.

“Hmmm?” - The blonde intoned. Whatever she’d expected from this night, ‘this - Callie, well, increasingly plastered and loose-lipped was not it!’

“From drinking?” - Callie asked, a tad irritated with Arizona for not having guessed what she meant - “I need a break from drinking…”

“Oh… Okay.” The blonde nodded.

Callie looked momentarily like she was considering a problem, but then suddenly broke the silence - “but you weren’t kidding?”

“About what?” - Arizona asked, now confused, she recalled that after-hours-and-in-the-barrel-Callie’s brain tended to flit, ‘a lot.’

“The cow and the” -

- “Oh yeah!” - affirmed the blonde with a mirthful smile.

Callie looked, almost sure she was being lied to - “even the part about the” -

- “Especially that part” - said the blonde, solemnly wagging a finger in Callie’s face.

“So, you‘re telling me” - the brunette asked, looking on to the blonde’s face as if she was solving some complex mathematical problem, while in truth she was looking to see for her tells - “that a cow? It did all that?! By its lonesome?!”

“Two words, Callie” - the blonde smirked with a quirk of an eyebrow - “The Exorcist.”

“Huh!” - The brunette’s eyes went wide - “wow!”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could have been there to see that…” - the brunette said wistfully, her eyes glued to the bar-top as she repeatedly scratched at a stain on it.

Arizona took in a sharp breath, feeling the almost innate and acute pain and vulnerability that one sentence was packed with. It broke her, somewhat; she had spent three years dreading the heat of Callie’s ire, when really it should have been this moment, and all the other tiny hidden ones that would be the worst of it. ‘Then again, maybe she should stop - stop thinking she knew Callie at all, anticipating her every mood and reaction like they were playing chess. She had been unfair to Callie… they had been unfair to one another, but she’d stayed away. She had and that was on her… That much she was aware of… it was on her.’

“I wish you could have too” - Arizona whispered, not entirely sure if she wanted to be heard.

The brunette looked up at her, meeting her eyes and gave her a nod and a hesitant smile.

A sizable silence stretched between the two as another lull in the conversation worked into the space between them. It was becoming glaringly obvious to the blonde that Callie was often fighting to maintain the now slipping visage of frigid rigidity under the garb of unwavering professionalism. The drinking and her muted and lingering pain over the loss of another friend, something that had not made its way into the conversation but was present all the same, seemed to work in Arizona’s favor. Callie was giving things away, things she guarded under the light of day and the busy halls of the hospital and crowded space of the cafeteria. On the other hand, the blonde did not relish the thought of using Callie’s state to draw her out… she felt…‘guilty,’ but decided to take every advantage her luck bestowed upon her. But, she would not under any circumstance take advantage of Callie, ‘not like… not like that! Never like that…’

“It’s okay” - the brunette sounded somber, like she had come to some understanding or made her peace with whatever it was she was talking about.

Arizona scrunched her brow, a look of confusion evident on her face - “what do you mean?”

“You don’t have to pretend…” - Callie hesitated, mentally chastising herself for having touched the topic at all - “nothing… I… Could you pour me another?”

“In a minute…” - the blonde’s curiosity piqued, it was evident both in her voice and in the way she clenched her jaw that she was not about to let this go. She picked up a beer mug and made a show of pointing at the tap with it - “first you spill, then I will.”

“It’s nothing really…” - the brunette insisted.

“Obviously, it is not nothing, Callie” - Arizona coaxed - “this helps us… talking helps” -

“We are not an ‘us’” - Callie said, resentment clearly flavoring the sentiment behind the pithy declaration.

Arizona took a moment to recover from the sudden harshness that etched itself into the brunette’s voice. The ebb and flow of Callie’s latent anger and feelings of betrayal kept them spinning like a boat without a rudder on a tempestuous and vast ocean with land nowhere in sight.

“That may well be, Calliope…” - she sighed - “but we could be… an ‘us’… again?” - She said tentatively, cautiously, expecting Callie’s abject denial and outrage. What came next served only to throw her off again.

“Don’t…” - vulnerability, there it was again, slow to surface, hard to read, Callie was like a magnificent, wounded animal, beautiful even when she was drowning - “don’t say that!” - Her voice rose, sparking the air between them with a hurt that had festered for so very long.

“Callie, I don’t underst” -

The brunette cut her off, letting the veneer of her dispassionate self finally fall by the wayside as she spoke next - “Teddy told me you didn’t even want to move in together! That you looked unsure! So why should I even” -

“When?” - The blonde barked, incredulous - “when in hell did she tell you that?!” ‘Arizona was going to kill that woman, slowly and painfully!’

“A few months after you left…” - the brunette replied as she stood up off the bar stool and stepped back a few paces to put some space between herself and the blonde.

Arizona realised what the move was meant to do, but she didn’t try and get closer to Callie. She needed to give her that space; she needed to respect that space. Callie was already doing and saying more than she had been comfortable with, to push her anymore would just be wrong.

“I didn’t…” - the blonde hesitated - “God! Callie, it was so long ago! It isn’t even important!” - She implored.

The brunette stopped pacing and just quirked her eyebrow at her.

“Right…” - Arizona gulped - “I was just… just having a bad day. You wouldn’t…” - she stopped, thinking back to what exactly it was that had irked her into uncertainty; the moment of recollection evident on her face as she suddenly began again - “you wouldn’t paint the walls again, change the colours or whatever, so I just… freaked. For like a second. It was just… she just caught me at a bad moment…” - she insisted.

“But that’s not all, right?” - The brunette went on; to Arizona it felt like the inquisition had only just begun - “you told her you were afraid I would ask you to marry me… or… or God forbid, I started a conversation on… on…” - the brunette hesitated and quickly began losing steam -

- “Kids?” - Arizona finished for her sensing yet another subject of unease and maybe pain for the brunette.

“Yeah… that!”

“Callie… I… you are right… but, we had only just talked about maybe wanting kinds, and do you honestly believe we were ready for marriage then?!”

“I was!” - Callie’s prompt comeback took her by surprise - “I was…” - Callie nodded, this time her voice calmer, but equally insistent - “I found myself looking into ring shops all the time and I thought…I thought this is it…” - Arizona began rounding the bar, she walked and took a seat on one of the bar stools, feeling like she’d been punched in the gut - “I thought I was done looking, and so I found myself staring into ring shops” - the brunette shrugged.

“What?” - Arizona breathed out; she could feel her eyes begin to sting.

Callie began to speak again whilst walking to a spot behind the bar and pouring herself some beer from the tap - “look” - she said with practiced nonchalance - “not like it matter anymore, right?!” - She smiled deceptively, making the blonde momentarily believe her, but, for whatever reason, Arizona saw through her this time.

“Bullshit, Calliope…” - her tone was so matter of fact it was disarming, managing to piss the brunette off.

- “You have no right!” - Callie pointed at her with the hand she was holding her beer mug with, beer splashed on the counter, some spilling on the blonde who to her credit did not jerk back. This was a game of chicken, Arizona knew as much, she had to stand her ground.

“You have no right!” - The brunette thundered again - “you come back here, after three years! Keeping a promise to a bunch of strangers while everything here went to shit!” - She banged the mug onto the table and folded in onto herself. She took her head in her hands, her face complete hidden from the other women as her words made their way out, muffled but echoing - “You never thought to come back…” - she looked up, her eyes tearing into Arizona’s soul.

Arizona looked like she was about to say something, but the brunette never gave her a chance - “you stayed away, even after the…” - she gulped air into her lungs, beginning to get tired and feeling drained from the emotional toll this was taking on her - “even after the crash!” - She whispered the last word.

“I… I…” - the blonde started, she was breathing quickly, blindsided by Callie’s painful accusations, more so by how apt they were - “I thought… I thought if I came back… you wouldn’t let me in… I would have to watch you… like that… from a distance… and I wouldn’t be allowed to do… anything…you’d… you’d hate me… Wouldn’t you have? Hated me?” - She ended, lamely.

“Huh…” - Callie scoffed - “maybe” - she sighed - “maybe I would have hated you… but… but you would have been there…You would have been there…”

- “I know…” - the blonde sighed her agreement - “but, Callie… it does matter!” - She said fervently - “because… I… You were still waiting for…” - she hesitated - “hoping I’d be there” - she finished, knowing what would come next.

“It would have hurt less you know?” - The calmness in Callie’s voice threw her into another tailspin.

“What do you… what do you mean?” - She asked with a sea of anxiety lurching in her stomach.

“Nick.” - One word, one very potent, near disastrous mistake on Arizona’s part.

Arizona knew Callie. No matter what the trauma, what the changes? She knew some things would be near unforgivable or maybe completely so. Deception would be on top of that list.

“Callie…” - her voice trembled - “I know… I know I was wrong to…” -

- “Yes you were!” - The brunette cut her off - “it was low of you, Arizona… to think so little of me… Was the thought of talking to me so painful that you had Nick and Teddy lie to me?!”

“I just… I just wanted the best for my friend, Callie…” - she swore - “please! You… You have to understand! If you could do anything” - the blonde hesitated - “anything to have Mark back…” -

- “Don’t” - Callie hissed at her, leaning forward on the bar top her eyes alight with silent rage - “you wanted to talk? We are talking… but Mark is… he is mine to keep… Do not bring him into this. Say his name one more time tonight, and I will leave so fucking fast your head will spin…” - ‘Vicious… Callie was vicious right now’ - “get it?!”

“I…uh…” - the blonde faltered.

“Answer me!” - Callie barked; the end of her aggression nowhere in sight.

“Yes!” - Arizona squeaked.

“Good…” - Callie retreated back, picking up her mug and draining it.

“Callie…” - she chanced speaking again after watching the brunette gulp down almost the entire mug in a matter of seconds - “you have to believe me” -

The brunette talked over her - “I don’t have to do shit!” -

- “Calliope… I only wanted what was best for him!” - She insisted, a little louder now - “and I didn’t want you hurting or distracted, because…” -

- “You weren’t planning on coming back” - she was cut off again.

“I was!” - Arizona fought to talk over her - “I was… just… just not yet! All those kids… they depended on me, Callie! It wasn’t just being a doctor, I had to be a social worker, an aid worker, a relief worker… it was… I couldn’t drop it, I made a commitment!” - She stopped, waiting for an answer.

“You could have called! We could have been talking, meeting up maybe…”

“Now who’s being naïve?!” - Arizona accused.

“You know what?!” - Callie scrunched her brow while she blindly and with dissipating dexterity, poured herself another beer - “fruck you!” - She stopped, looking a little confused - “fruck you? That’s not… fruck you!” -
The brunette became increasingly frustrated - “fruck… fruck it! Screw you!” - She nodded, now satisfied - “Screw you for leaving! And screwing you for coming back!” - She bellowed.

“I know…” - Arizona began - “I know I screwed up with Nick! I know that, Callie, I” -

- “You sent him to me! And you had him lie about the referral, Arizona! And the guy was a hippie idiot!” -

- “Hey!” - The blonde’s protest was short lived.

“He was!” - Callie countered - “a complete imbecile! He talked about his best friend, ‘Thomas’” - she air quoted the name - “and then gave me the designation of the ranger troop Tim belonged to! He always answered your calls with a loud - ‘Yo! Pheonix!’ Not really that hard of a code to crack, if you ask me! And he thought non-bathy yoga with smelly people would cure his cancer! I had to amputate! He was” -

- “an imbecile…” - Arizona agreed; she had no choice but to agree.

“And you had Teddy lie to me!” -

- “I… I am so, so, so sorry Callie! I’m sorry that I left, that I didn’t comeback, I’m sorry. But I’m…” - she bravely moved forward taking Callie’s hands in her; the brunette’s hands twitched and went rigid, forming a fit inside Arizona’s but she didn’t retract them - “there is no good enough excuse… except that it was my duty. They were my duty, my responsibility, and” -

- “I wasn’t…” - Callie finished.

“No!” - Arizona jumped in - “that is not it at all! I… uh… I knew… everything that was going on with you…” - Callie looked at her with rapt attention and utter curiosity - “…especially after the crash… the moment they found you, I knew… and I thought… I thought you were okay…” - she breathed, thinking how stupid she had been -

“I thought you were okay physically and so…” -

- “so that was enough…” - Callie cut her off - “by your standards?! That was good enough?!”

“Of course not! I was going to come… to… to hop on a flight to Seattle and rush over here, but then… there was an emergency, a fire at the school nearby, and by the time I was done… I started… I started…” -

- “Thinking?” - Callie asked with a knowing smirk.

“Yeah” - Arizona said in a whisper.

“That was always your problem…” - Callie stood up straight, extracting her hands from the blonde’s hold while Arizona internally lamented the loss of contact - “you always thought too much” - she shook her head, pulling in the last of her beer.

“And now you do…” - the blonde ventured.

“Hmmm?” - Callie asked whilst putting her mug down.

“Think” - Arizona said - “you think too much. You measure, and calculate and weigh and… you never just react, you… you used to be visceral… I … we… everyone loved that about you!”

“Sure they did!” - The brunette scoffed.

“We did!” - Arizona insisted - “we do! But you? You hide! You” -

- “Do you know what my first thought is when I wake up in the morning?” - The brunette stopped her mid-sentence.

“What?” - Arizona asked suspiciously, a little taken aback by the forlornness in the other woman’s.

“When I wake up, I think - I wish it was me…” - Arizona’s gasp was near deafening in the silence - “… I think, I wish I were dead instead of…” -

- “Callie… I…” - Arizona’s voice shook with fear, anxiety; with anticipation for whatever was to come next.
‘Did Callie try to… but, that’s impossible right?’

- “I’m not suicidal” - Callie was quick to say it, before she’d be misunderstood - “I just… I wished it was me, but I know I need to keep going. I have known for a while.”

“Why?” - Arizona’s question prompted a look of incredulity from Callie; the blonde having the decency to look sheepish, continued - “I’m glad you did… keep going… do keep going, I just want to know…”

“Because…” - Callie hesitated, trying to find the best way to put into words how she felt - “…because April and Mark? They don’t get to… because it would be disrespecting their memory” - her voice cracked - “if I don’t live… they would have traded anything for this… for life…” - she cried.

Arizona nodded her understanding, both of them crying silent tears.

“So, it doesn’t matter that you were scared that I wouldn’t… I don’t know… that I would be angry… everything seems stupid now; pointless and small. The truth is we fell out of the sky and you found a way to stay out of it, so…” -

- “This is not living…” - Arizona cut her off, her heart was full of a chilling kind of dread and unease, it felt like Callie was about to wrench her out of her life forever… she had to stop this - “it isn’t!” - She insisted.

“Don’t tell me how to handle this! You don’t have a clue how I” -

- “Because you won’t tell me! You won’t tell anyone! You hide! Like a freaking ostrich with its head in the sand! You could be thriving, we could be together, we could be happy, we could be” -

- “I can’t give you what you want!” -

“You won’t even fucking try!” - The blonde countered.

“I don’t know what you want from me! I don’t know what the hell you want from me!” - Callie cried.

“Everything!” - Arizona sighed with undeniable reverence in her voice - “I want everything from you. We’ll ruin each-other, you and I… we’ll just… we will!” - She said like a prayer. The insistence behind it, the earnestness with which Arizona said it, took Callie completely by surprise.

“I can’t…” - the brunette shook her head as she trembled visibly - “you are asking too much… I can’t… I can’t…” -

- “Then…” - Arizona hedged, careful of Callie’s shaky state - “then… start by… by being my friend.”

Callie looked up, a shocked expression on her face - “Arizona…” - she sighed… -

- “Don’t” - the blonde began - “don’t think… just, let me do this… for you, let me be your friend, Callie, please!” - She softly implored, her voice begging - “let me do this! I can do this!”

“Maybe…” - Callie whispered.

“Yeah?!” - Arizona asked excitedly as she ran around the counter, standing face to face with the brunette.

“I said maybe” - warned the brunette.

“Oh Callie!” - The blonde jumped, her arms stretched out, moving in for hug. But she was blocked on both sides by Callie’s strong OrthoGod-Surgeon arms, as the brunette groused - “I. Said. Maybe.”

Arizona backed off, happy to get just that much - “yeah… yeah…”- the blonde nodded - “right…of course… we’ll do this your way!” - She still couldn’t keep the smile off her face and out of her voice.

Callie gestured for her to go back to her seat on the other side of the bar as she spoke - “now… I don’t want to talk…” - she said, sounding drained - “I don’t want a peep out of you!” - Arizona nodded, near comically - “I want to drink till right before I drop, then you’ll drive me home…” - Arizona was about to speak, but Callie spoke as a preemptive measure - “the address is in my phone, the password is… it’s the same…” - she said, suddenly shy.

Arizona smiled, feeling oddly comforted, but Callie glared at her with such intensity that it did not last long.

“And…” - the brunette continued - “you can take the guest bed.”

Arizona nodded again.

“Now, where did you keep the whisky?!”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Now We Resume Our Regular Programming (Present Day at Callie’s)

“So?” - The blonde asked; expectant, as they both now sat at the breakfast bar.

“Mhm…” - Callie replied, managing to rile up the other woman.

“That’s all you have to say to that?”

Callie just shrugged her shoulders, knowing full well it was driving the other woman up the walls, all the while she was smirking into her tea.

“So? You don’t remember any of it?”

“I remember some of it…” - answered the brunette.

“Which part?” - She pushed - “like… like the friends part? Do you remember that?” - She asked not so subtly.

“Some of it, I guess…” - the brunette smirked - “the part where I asked you to shut up… that rings a bell” - she said as she started loading the dis washer - “and the part where you put me on the couch…” - she said accusingly.

“Right” - Arizona scratched her head, a sheepish look on her face - “right, yeah, you just dropped there, like a sack of yams…” -

- “flattering!” - mused the brunette.

“Right…” - the blonde blushed - “I am sorry, you know?” - She said suddenly serious -

- “I know” - Callie replied.

“For more than the couch… I am sorry for” -

- “I know” - the brunette said knowingly.

“So?” - asked the blonde, trying to overcome the sudden wave of awkwardness they seemed to be drowning in.

“Friends, haan?” - Callie asked skeptically.

“Yeah” - Arizona beamed.

“Okay…” - Callie nodded with a hesitant smile - “friend” - ‘God! That was weird on her tongue!’ - “Please leave now so I can get some sleep and work on Esmeralda.”

Arizona gave her a questioning look.

“My new vintage Jag…” - Callie replied.

“Oh” - Arizona nodded - “can I watch you work on…” -

- “Nope…” - Callie replied as she started to forcibly walk her out of her house, picking up her purse and coat on the way, and giving Arizona the keys to her T-Bird.

Arizona began walking to the car, feeling a little disheartened, when Callie’s loud voice suddenly stopped her.

“Hey, Arizona?!”

“Yeah?” - She asked apprehensively as she turned back to look at the brunette.

“I’ll see you at work?” - Callie asked, her face not giving away a thing.

The blonde cracked an understanding smile, eyes a-glinting, and dimples popping into place as she covered her eyes from the sun - “yeah!” - She laughed - “I have your car after all!” - She shouted glee evident in her voice as she held up Callie’s keys to make her point.

“Yeah, okay…” - Callie said lamely as she watched the blonde almost race to the car with pep in her step.

Callie breathed out loudly as she walked inside and closed the door by leaning back on it. She shook her head as she realised she was smiling a small goofy smile. ‘Callie Torres did not do Goofy!’ She mentally chastised herself, but smile, she did as she pushed off the door with one last thought about Arizona. She quietly laughed the word “Dork!” into the air, feeling a lightness she hadn’t in a really long time, as she pushed off the door to go about her day. She only hoped that this feeling, this happiness, whatever it was… wherever it came from… that it would last.