Wintersong (1/1)
Title: Wintersong
Pairing: Callie/Arizona
Rating: PG13ish.
Summary: Angsty. Arizona's point of view, plus what happens after that door closes during 7.10: Adrift and at Peace. I decided to set it to Sara Bareilles' "Wintersong" because that is an amazing song, and I think it works so well with this piece. This is my first song fic, so please enjoy it. And listen to the song if you haven't before. And, Arizona's speech is as good as I could hear it. I listened a bunch of times, but if I'm off, I really do apologize. Please enjoy. This story all but wrote itself.
This is my winter song to you
The storm is coming soon
It rolls in from the sea
I was sick. Sick since I'd gotten on that plane to Africa. Sick since I worked all those weeks at the clinic. Sick. It wasn't a medically diagnosable illness. More like an ache. A soul-bruising ache that overcame me. Everything was bleak. I was in a haze. I was going through the motions.
It was five days before Christmas when I decided I couldn’t bear it any longer. Five days before I all but begged for a replacement. Five days before I packed my bags and went home. Home was a conditional word. I wasn’t sure I’d have a home when I came back. What if Callie had… She couldn’t. I could feel her so tightly in my bones that it suffocated me. She had to be there. It hurt to breathe, so all I did was cry. Cried for everything I’ve ever kept inside. I’m like that. I keep it all inside and then burst like a faulty dam.
And, then, there’s no telling when I’d stop.
Seattle, blanketed in fresh powdery snow, welcomes me with the coldness I assume I deserved. But I’m not sure how I let this happen. I had dreams; dreams are important. Ever since I was a child my dream was to help people, to become a doctor. And I’m a damn good doctor, I know this. I thought Carter Madison, Malawi, all of those things... were just parts of my dreams. I thought that achieving those things were what would make me feel the most fulfilled. And I was fulfilled, but just partly. There was still that gaping hole inside my chest.
I didn’t know real fulfillment until I’d met her, that broken woman crying in the bathroom and trying her best to keep the faith, to keep afloat. I never expected to fall for her like I did, to be so in love with one single being. I would say it was unconditional love, the all-forgiving kind. I’ve never felt more at ease, at peace. Calliope Iphigenia Torres was an elixir for my soul. She healed me as much as I healed her.
I hadn’t told my father that I’d quit the program in Malawi. I’d up and left like it was a bad yoga class, and I didn’t feel like being there anymore. My replacement, Dr. Fritz, had been a close-second to winning the grant. He was a great man, from the thirty minutes I got to spend with him briefing him on patients, on where I was leaving him off.
And then, I was off. Off to a woman who was not going to be happy to see me.
My voice a beacon in the night
My words will be your light
To carry you to me
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love
The flight was an unmemorable blur. I drank whisky to try and numb my raw throat. Tiny bottles of Jack Daniels scattered like fallen soldiers on my tray table. I thought of Danny. Danny would have loved Callie, so much. I shed a few tears at the cold pang of reality, knowing they’d never meet. I tried to sleep, but was tormented by terrible, horrible dreams. I was happy when we landed back in Seattle. I’d never been happier to be in the Sea-Tac, or in a taxi, or out in the freezing cold. I’d shipped my luggage back since most of my possessions were in storage. That way I could go straight to her.
This is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
‘Cause you’re not where you belong
Here inside my arms
Her building is the same, outfitted for winter with strands of half-working icicle lights on the awning. I followed a couple carrying groceries inside the door and climbed the stairs with them. They, too, opened the big fire door with the painted on "5" and went down the hall. They walked in the same path as me... right to Calliope's doorstep. Except, Calliope Torres didn’t live there anymore. Of course! How could I have been so dense? I turned around and faced the other door, the one that would make the most sense.
Mark Sloan’s.
I still believe in summer days
The seasons always change
And love will find a way
I press my ear to the door. I hear rustling, and I knock. So weakly I barely hear it. That’s when I hear her voice.
"Mark?" She sounds a little annoyed. "Did you forget your keys?" But she laughs, a little.
Her face drops when she opens the door and realizes it’s me.
"So picture this, I go to Africa and everything is great. And the people are so nice, and the clinic is amazing, and I’m doing work that actually feels important. Like, I can actually see that I’m making a difference with people except I’m crying , like, constantly. And then this guy that I worked with at the clinic kept asking what was wrong. And I told him ‘I miss my girlfriend, like, I really miss her.’ So then he asks me if I wanna go back...if they could replace me. And then I open my mouth to say ‘no,’ but what comes out instead is this ‘yes.’ Yes. So they did. And then I came back. I came back."
I pause, kind of exasperated, hoping she heard me. My heart is hurting looking at her. My glowing, beautiful Calliope.
"You look really pretty," I add at the end, staving off the tears for now.
Her face changes, darkens. Her eyes look at me in a way that suggests this may have been a more appropriate speech six weeks ago. She wavers in her mind. She looks so wounded as she slowly shakes her head.
She closes the door in my face.
They say that things just cannot grow
Beneath the winter snow
Or so I have been told
I hear the chain lock fall into place, hear her voice tortured into a gut-wrenching sob. I hear her against the door, beating on it with her fist. She’s so angry with me. I would be so angry, too. I cry silently. It hurts so much to cry. My head is burning with pulsating heat and pain while my throat is rubbed raw from all this abuse.
"P-please," I mumble against the door, barely squeaking it out. I never beg. I don’t. I’m not the begging type, but only for this woman will I make an exception.
She cries harder when she hears that, and I let her for what seems like hours, but is, in reality, only about ten minutes. Ten minutes of listening to her cry without opening the door and holding her makes me feel evil, vile. I’ve done this to her. I’ve made her this way. I left her. With her beautiful eyes and beautiful soul.
They say we’re buried far
Just like a distant star
I simply cannot hold
I’m not leaving. Not now. Not this time. I did that once, and I’ll never do it again. I am supposed to be the good man in the storm, and now I am the coward. I will never be the coward again. I just want to touch her again. Hold her in my arms.
...Give her the hug I failed to give her in the airport, when I left her, crying.
"Calliope," I whisper, hoping, praying.
"Ar-Arizona..." She replies after awhile, then falls into more silence.
"Please, please know... I’m... s..."
"No. No you’re n-not sorry. You can’t be. You left, and I never heard from you. Never. Not an e-mail, not a call. I cut my hair! I lost my home. I gave it all up because of you. You turned me on my axis. Flipped me around. And then, you never called. You... you just abandoned me." She chokes on her words.
I die inside.
"It was too hard... I didn't... I didn’t want you to know how much... I missed you so much, Calliope. I can’t... I can’t be without you. I can’t breathe without you."
It hurt to breathe, to talk, to feel. To know she was four inches away from me behind that door. All I wanted to do was to tell her that I wasn’t going to leave. I’d be there, now. I’d never leave her side again. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Ever.
"You left. You... just left. That’s all. You left. I..."
But she didn’t have to say it. Everyone always left her. George, Erica, even Addison in some regard had left her. And now, I was added to that ever-expanding list. I should have known better. I really should have known. But I was selfish and foolish and only had my dreams in mind. What I didn’t realize that she, too, was part of my dreams. She was the nucleus to my dreams. She was it.
I’ll be your harvester of light
And send it out tonight
So we can start again
I have no excuses, no rationale where I could be in the right in any regard. When she opens the door, hours have passed. I’ve dozed off outside of her door, propped up against it, waiting. Her face is red and puffy from crying. Mine is washed out. My hair is dirty. I need a shower. I need cleansed.
Calliope Torres, would you be the one to do that for me? Purify my mistakes. Absolve me?
She has lost weight. Her collarbones look jagged underneath that off-the-shoulder top. Her eyes are losing life. She looks broken. I fixed her and I broke her in a vicious cycle. But, I’d broken myself, too. Her heart is on her sleeve, bleeding.
Her arms slip around me roughly as she pulls me to her. She cries into my hair, pounding her fists against my back. It hurts. It hurts so badly, but I take it. I’ll be her whipping boy for as long as she needs me to be. I hold her, tightly, feeling so far away from her despite the proximity. Her sobs break my heart.
If there is anything left to be broken.
"I...I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you," She admits after awhile of us holding each other in the doorway. "When you first left, I was underwater. I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning. But, then I learned to breathe, shakily. And now I’m breathing. And you’re here and I’m drowning again. I’m drowning."
"I didn’t think you would, but I needed you to know, Calliope. I don’t. I don’t know…I don’t want to leave you. This is where I need to be." I whisper since that’s all I can do for now. My voice is ruined. "I don’t want you to drown. I want you to be with me. Not drowning."
She pulls back to look at me, lower lip quivering despite her best efforts. She presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth.
Then she closes the door, behind me.
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love...
Pairing: Callie/Arizona
Rating: PG13ish.
Summary: Angsty. Arizona's point of view, plus what happens after that door closes during 7.10: Adrift and at Peace. I decided to set it to Sara Bareilles' "Wintersong" because that is an amazing song, and I think it works so well with this piece. This is my first song fic, so please enjoy it. And listen to the song if you haven't before. And, Arizona's speech is as good as I could hear it. I listened a bunch of times, but if I'm off, I really do apologize. Please enjoy. This story all but wrote itself.
This is my winter song to you
The storm is coming soon
It rolls in from the sea
I was sick. Sick since I'd gotten on that plane to Africa. Sick since I worked all those weeks at the clinic. Sick. It wasn't a medically diagnosable illness. More like an ache. A soul-bruising ache that overcame me. Everything was bleak. I was in a haze. I was going through the motions.
It was five days before Christmas when I decided I couldn’t bear it any longer. Five days before I all but begged for a replacement. Five days before I packed my bags and went home. Home was a conditional word. I wasn’t sure I’d have a home when I came back. What if Callie had… She couldn’t. I could feel her so tightly in my bones that it suffocated me. She had to be there. It hurt to breathe, so all I did was cry. Cried for everything I’ve ever kept inside. I’m like that. I keep it all inside and then burst like a faulty dam.
And, then, there’s no telling when I’d stop.
Seattle, blanketed in fresh powdery snow, welcomes me with the coldness I assume I deserved. But I’m not sure how I let this happen. I had dreams; dreams are important. Ever since I was a child my dream was to help people, to become a doctor. And I’m a damn good doctor, I know this. I thought Carter Madison, Malawi, all of those things... were just parts of my dreams. I thought that achieving those things were what would make me feel the most fulfilled. And I was fulfilled, but just partly. There was still that gaping hole inside my chest.
I didn’t know real fulfillment until I’d met her, that broken woman crying in the bathroom and trying her best to keep the faith, to keep afloat. I never expected to fall for her like I did, to be so in love with one single being. I would say it was unconditional love, the all-forgiving kind. I’ve never felt more at ease, at peace. Calliope Iphigenia Torres was an elixir for my soul. She healed me as much as I healed her.
I hadn’t told my father that I’d quit the program in Malawi. I’d up and left like it was a bad yoga class, and I didn’t feel like being there anymore. My replacement, Dr. Fritz, had been a close-second to winning the grant. He was a great man, from the thirty minutes I got to spend with him briefing him on patients, on where I was leaving him off.
And then, I was off. Off to a woman who was not going to be happy to see me.
My voice a beacon in the night
My words will be your light
To carry you to me
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love
The flight was an unmemorable blur. I drank whisky to try and numb my raw throat. Tiny bottles of Jack Daniels scattered like fallen soldiers on my tray table. I thought of Danny. Danny would have loved Callie, so much. I shed a few tears at the cold pang of reality, knowing they’d never meet. I tried to sleep, but was tormented by terrible, horrible dreams. I was happy when we landed back in Seattle. I’d never been happier to be in the Sea-Tac, or in a taxi, or out in the freezing cold. I’d shipped my luggage back since most of my possessions were in storage. That way I could go straight to her.
This is my winter song
December never felt so wrong
‘Cause you’re not where you belong
Here inside my arms
Her building is the same, outfitted for winter with strands of half-working icicle lights on the awning. I followed a couple carrying groceries inside the door and climbed the stairs with them. They, too, opened the big fire door with the painted on "5" and went down the hall. They walked in the same path as me... right to Calliope's doorstep. Except, Calliope Torres didn’t live there anymore. Of course! How could I have been so dense? I turned around and faced the other door, the one that would make the most sense.
Mark Sloan’s.
I still believe in summer days
The seasons always change
And love will find a way
I press my ear to the door. I hear rustling, and I knock. So weakly I barely hear it. That’s when I hear her voice.
"Mark?" She sounds a little annoyed. "Did you forget your keys?" But she laughs, a little.
Her face drops when she opens the door and realizes it’s me.
"So picture this, I go to Africa and everything is great. And the people are so nice, and the clinic is amazing, and I’m doing work that actually feels important. Like, I can actually see that I’m making a difference with people except I’m crying , like, constantly. And then this guy that I worked with at the clinic kept asking what was wrong. And I told him ‘I miss my girlfriend, like, I really miss her.’ So then he asks me if I wanna go back...if they could replace me. And then I open my mouth to say ‘no,’ but what comes out instead is this ‘yes.’ Yes. So they did. And then I came back. I came back."
I pause, kind of exasperated, hoping she heard me. My heart is hurting looking at her. My glowing, beautiful Calliope.
"You look really pretty," I add at the end, staving off the tears for now.
Her face changes, darkens. Her eyes look at me in a way that suggests this may have been a more appropriate speech six weeks ago. She wavers in her mind. She looks so wounded as she slowly shakes her head.
She closes the door in my face.
They say that things just cannot grow
Beneath the winter snow
Or so I have been told
I hear the chain lock fall into place, hear her voice tortured into a gut-wrenching sob. I hear her against the door, beating on it with her fist. She’s so angry with me. I would be so angry, too. I cry silently. It hurts so much to cry. My head is burning with pulsating heat and pain while my throat is rubbed raw from all this abuse.
"P-please," I mumble against the door, barely squeaking it out. I never beg. I don’t. I’m not the begging type, but only for this woman will I make an exception.
She cries harder when she hears that, and I let her for what seems like hours, but is, in reality, only about ten minutes. Ten minutes of listening to her cry without opening the door and holding her makes me feel evil, vile. I’ve done this to her. I’ve made her this way. I left her. With her beautiful eyes and beautiful soul.
They say we’re buried far
Just like a distant star
I simply cannot hold
I’m not leaving. Not now. Not this time. I did that once, and I’ll never do it again. I am supposed to be the good man in the storm, and now I am the coward. I will never be the coward again. I just want to touch her again. Hold her in my arms.
...Give her the hug I failed to give her in the airport, when I left her, crying.
"Calliope," I whisper, hoping, praying.
"Ar-Arizona..." She replies after awhile, then falls into more silence.
"Please, please know... I’m... s..."
"No. No you’re n-not sorry. You can’t be. You left, and I never heard from you. Never. Not an e-mail, not a call. I cut my hair! I lost my home. I gave it all up because of you. You turned me on my axis. Flipped me around. And then, you never called. You... you just abandoned me." She chokes on her words.
I die inside.
"It was too hard... I didn't... I didn’t want you to know how much... I missed you so much, Calliope. I can’t... I can’t be without you. I can’t breathe without you."
It hurt to breathe, to talk, to feel. To know she was four inches away from me behind that door. All I wanted to do was to tell her that I wasn’t going to leave. I’d be there, now. I’d never leave her side again. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Ever.
"You left. You... just left. That’s all. You left. I..."
But she didn’t have to say it. Everyone always left her. George, Erica, even Addison in some regard had left her. And now, I was added to that ever-expanding list. I should have known better. I really should have known. But I was selfish and foolish and only had my dreams in mind. What I didn’t realize that she, too, was part of my dreams. She was the nucleus to my dreams. She was it.
I’ll be your harvester of light
And send it out tonight
So we can start again
I have no excuses, no rationale where I could be in the right in any regard. When she opens the door, hours have passed. I’ve dozed off outside of her door, propped up against it, waiting. Her face is red and puffy from crying. Mine is washed out. My hair is dirty. I need a shower. I need cleansed.
Calliope Torres, would you be the one to do that for me? Purify my mistakes. Absolve me?
She has lost weight. Her collarbones look jagged underneath that off-the-shoulder top. Her eyes are losing life. She looks broken. I fixed her and I broke her in a vicious cycle. But, I’d broken myself, too. Her heart is on her sleeve, bleeding.
Her arms slip around me roughly as she pulls me to her. She cries into my hair, pounding her fists against my back. It hurts. It hurts so badly, but I take it. I’ll be her whipping boy for as long as she needs me to be. I hold her, tightly, feeling so far away from her despite the proximity. Her sobs break my heart.
If there is anything left to be broken.
"I...I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you," She admits after awhile of us holding each other in the doorway. "When you first left, I was underwater. I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning. But, then I learned to breathe, shakily. And now I’m breathing. And you’re here and I’m drowning again. I’m drowning."
"I didn’t think you would, but I needed you to know, Calliope. I don’t. I don’t know…I don’t want to leave you. This is where I need to be." I whisper since that’s all I can do for now. My voice is ruined. "I don’t want you to drown. I want you to be with me. Not drowning."
She pulls back to look at me, lower lip quivering despite her best efforts. She presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth.
Then she closes the door, behind me.
Is love alive?
Is love alive?
Is love...