This is my love letter to you. Thank you for accepting me into this crazy Callie and Arizona world, thank you for loving them with me.
—It’s going to be okay. Breathe, let it out, let it go. It’s okay to let go of something you’ve held onto for so long when it’s no longer the thing you thought it was. It’s okay to let go of the bad, the pain, the anguish. Let go, remember the good, remember the good and never, ever, ever forget it. Just because something is over it doesn’t mean we forget, just because we have bad times it doesn’t mean we don’t cherish the good. We love, we love and we love. And we give thanks for all that we have had.—
This can’t be happening. Not again, not to them. Shootings in hospitals don’t happen twice - they don’t happen once to most people. But she isn’t most people. She’s the woman whose brother was a hero and all he got in return for his life was a flag. She’s the woman who got her dream grant in the same moment she found her dream woman. She’s the one who didn’t want babies and marriage but when she finally realised that she did, watched hopelessly as they were almost taken from her. She’s the one who’s plane falls from the sky, who learns to love her baby daddy and then has to learn to grieve for him. She’s the one who tells her wife that she is truly, uncontrollably in love with her and has to watch her walk away. Bad things happen and it always seems to be with her.
So of course there’s a gunman in her hospital. Her only saving grace this time is knowing that Sofia is safe at school and Callie is far, far away. The thought of watching the other woman stand in front of a weapon designed only to end life is something she cannot bare a second time, no matter how over they are.
So she waits. Curled up under a hospital bed, tears streaming down her face as she pretends the shots she can hear aren’t being fired at her friends.
She waits for it all to be over.
It’s so much longer this time, so much lonelier. It’s hours, almost a whole day before the hospital is released from lock down and they’re finally able to make the rounds, searching for those they love in the hope that everyone survived.
It doesn’t take her long to stumble across the crowd of people and she knows. She had known it earlier, felt it. Something awful had happened.
Pushing past, Arizona halts at the side of the bed, frozen to the spot amongst the strangers from other hospitals, volunteers, surgeons, working to save the life of her best friend. Reaching for a hand, April is barely conscious, in and out of awareness. Arizona doesn’t bother to hide her emotions, “I can’t lose anyone else, okay? Not one more person. So you live, April. Because I am waiting for you and Harriet is waiting for you and god, he doesn’t need you yet. Okay? We do. We need you. So you fight. You come back to us, April.”
Arizona watches, the last words she hears are from Jackson, begging her to live, telling her that he is waiting too. That they aren’t finished yet, she isn’t finished yet.
Arizona doesn’t want to be the one to tell him, but things often end before they’re finished and it doesn’t matter how much that rips your soul in two. She doesn’t say it, but she knows it. She thinks he probably does too.
None of them leave. They’re not in a fit state to try and help anyone, even themselves, but they have to stay together because it’s all they really have.
Except, these people aren’t her people. Some of them had been Callie’s people, some of them still were. But they had never been hers, not really.
She can’t help but wonder who’d have been here if she was the one in the hospital bed. Would they cry for her? Pray for her? Would they fight with all they had, because it was her?
Teddy, whose hand had stayed in hers the entire afternoon, she would always be her people. April, beautiful, kind, strong April, she would too. Alex too, the man she has grown to love much like the brother she lost. The rest, those she worked with every single day? She wondered would they care at all.
And she wondered, why did she stay? In a place where hallways are haunted by ghosts of people she had loved and lost, by should have, could have, would haves, what ifs and why nots. Did she stay because she liked it here? Or because the memories she clings to kept her alive? Maybe she stayed because the walls of this hospital held her every hope and dream and the loss of it tortures her every day. And maybe she thinks she deserves it.
She loved, she lost, she destroyed herself and she has no right at all to walk tall. Mark Sloan would tell her that himself.
She loved. She loved hard. But there’s no place for past tense here because she knows, for that women, for her and only her, it’s always present tense.
It’s a long while later before they learn that April is stable and it’s even longer before Arizona is allowed to see her. Her legs barley let her walk and she leans on the wall for a little support and relief from the pain her leg stills gives her on days like these.
When she reaches the room, Jackson is already in there and she can hear every word he is saying, imaging how it would feel if the right person said them to her and how she would never ask for anything ever again.
There would be nothing else she’d need.
She wants to feel bitter, but her heart is filled with happiness for her best friend because she deserves it. April deserves her happy ending and Arizona doesn’t. That’s why it’s okay. That’s why she can be happy for her, despite the pain she feels herself.
The conversation, the one she really should not be listening to, it sparks something inside her. A light she’d forgotten she had, a belief in something she’d long since given up on. The feeling in her heart that the world can be filled with rainbows and glitter and god damned happiness.
Finally getting to speak to April makes the knot in her stomach settle and she can breathe again.
“You scared us, you moron.”
April smiles, her skin pale and clammy, eyes exhausted and half closed.
Arizona perches on the edge of the bed, holding her hand amongst the wires, “lots of things aren’t finished, April.” It sounds like a confession.
“Jackson and I are.” Arizona can feel that that’s true. Or that April believes it to be at least. “He’s saying all these things he thinks are true but really he’s just, he’s scared to be lonely. I don’t want to be someone’s option because they’re scared to be lonely. I deserve better than that. So does he.”
“You’re leaving. I didn’t mean to listen in, I just, you’re leaving?”
The red head nods, looking up at the ceiling as a feeling of relief washes over her.
“Good things don’t happen here. This hospital is toxic and we force ourselves to stay here because we think we owe it something? Out of some misguided idea that we can hang onto the past, to all the things it’s taken from us? We deserve so much more. You deserve so much more, Arizona. It’s time to stop hurting ourselves and just… let go. It’s time to let go.”
Tears stream down Arizona’s face, hearing the words she’s needed to hear for such a long time. “I love Callie.” Saying it aloud was beyond freeing.
“I know. You always have.”
“Then tell her. It’s too short, Arizona. It’s all just too short.”
“What if she doesn’t love me?”
“You really think she ever stopped?”
Arizona stood up for a second, trying to find a minute of sensible thought in her head, “I’m not scared to be lonely, April. I’ve been lonely most of my life. I just… I love her and even if we can’t be together, even if we’re another you and Jackson, I want to be near her. Close to her. I want us both to raise our daughter in the same state. I want to go to New York.”
The smile on April’s face was bright, fierce, knowing, “so go. Leave and don’t look back, Arizona. This place is… it’s had it’s time. It’s okay to accept that.”
Letting go is hard. Leaving something behind is even harder. Things, people, life, they change. You just have to remember you’re always going to be okay. Sometimes memories are all we need.
“But what if she doesn’t want me there, April? What if it isn’t okay?”
April just smiled, “I’m pretty sure it will be.” She nodded to behind Arizona and the blonde turns, a tiny breath leaving her mouth as she does.
“You’re… you’re okay. I was on the plane and I couldn’t find anything out and it’s been hours, hours since I heard anything about it and no one answers their phones in the middle of a mass shooting, do they? But god, you’re okay. It happened again. It happened, to you, again. And you’re okay.” The hours of terror and worry were obvious in Callie’s eyes, across her face. The pain, the tears, the distress, it was plain for anyone to see.
“You’re okay. And you love me.”
Arizona wanted to deny it, wanted to pretend she’d moved on, learnt to be okay, but lying wouldn’t help anyone now.
They’d somehow made their exit from April’s room, leaving the exhausted woman to have a few moments to herself without hospital drama that followed them everywhere.
“Leaving here was the best decision I ever made.”
That pain, the way your stomach drops when you hear something that physically breaks your heart? It was all too familiar to the blonde. She could only nod, words not possible.
“You were right years ago. We should never have bought this place. We should have left, taken Sofia and gone anywhere. Far, far away. Seattle Grace, Grey Sloan? It’s… it’s a home of brokenness, patched over with moments of love and hope and good.
So much good, too. But April is right. It’s okay to let go. You once said as long as we had each other and Sofia, we could go anywhere we wanted. It doesn’t have to be too late if we don’t let it, Arizona.”
“We deserve to try.” Callie whispered after her long speech, blue, damp eyes staring into her own.
“Do I deserve it, Calliope? Do I deserve you?”
Taking two familiar hands, watching the way they fitted together, Callie could only smile, “we deserve each other.”
And so they left. Hand in hand, they walked through the hallways of the place that was no longer their home and out into the night. Into a future neither could be sure of, but both desperately needed.
They stopped only for a second, as Callie turned to Arizona, smiling, “I love you too.”
They didn’t settle immediately, which surprised most. Choosing to home school Sofia for a year turned out to be the best decision either of them had made. They visited endless countries, lives packed up in bags on their shoulders, learning how to intertwine again as they adventured through cities and coasts and endless mishaps.
Arizona Robbins had been a good man in a storm once. Turns out, she still was. She loved hard and true. She was dedicated, head strong and fierce yet almost tragically fragile and inherently gentle.
She was sunshine and magic and she was a survivor.
Calliope Torres walked tall. Taller than ever. Her heart often led when her brain should but she fought and she fought and she fought for what was right. She was more delicate than badass yet bold in a way most could dream of.
The two somehow fit, as though they’d never been apart. Eventually settling in LA and opening their own clinic, building a home, raising a daughter, surviving it all.
They knew most people had learnt the lessons they had. Jackson had soon followed April. She’d soon realised he’d follow her anywhere.
Teddy returned back to Germany, back to the job that had filled holes burnt into her heart. Soon she discovered it wasn’t a lover she craved, but a child. Arizona and Callie we’re proud aunties to her son, no matter the distance.
Jo and Alex had loved and fought and finally, finally married. Raising twin girls far away from the hospital they’d grown in themselves.
Some stayed, some had ghosts too big to ever walk away from. And in the end, that was okay too.
Letting go means different things for different people and Callie and Arizona knew that they could let go of anything, as long as they had each other.
They were made for each other.
None of the rest of it mattered.
