Summary: Confessions post 9.23 and what may follow.

Disclaimer: have no (Shond)ownership of the characters and shows, simply giving some rope to my imagination.

A/N:

This will be slow, I like to write in a languid sort of manner, perhaps it comes from writing poetry usually, and not prose.

I do hope to continue this, if reviewers seem interested at all. But, it seems to work by itself as an open ended one-shot as well.

For those of you who hope for better line spacing, I apologise for the clutter, somehow the format never seems to translate here, but FF has a spacing option where the reader may adjust the line spacing themselves.

A/N 2.0:

- I do urge you to let me know if you find any mistakes, but if you check my profile, you'll see that I'm from India, and here we use British English, so some spellings will be different for those of you who who write in US English. So, mind that if you decided to comment on stuff like that, 'cause I can't, you know? Change that.

- Thoughts of the characters, internal monologues, quandaries in the mind and of the heart, sarcastic comments, original-ish phrases etc are in single quotes.

- Dream sequences or waking illusions (if any) are in italics, but that'll be fairly obvious when you read it.

- Articles and prepositions are my friends, but sometimes when we fight, they leave the page. They'll come back once I get around to reconciling with them. Which I will. I edit and re-edit like a maniac.

Alright! That's enough!

Enjoy, dear readers.

"So, you're sure?" She asks, finally looking up from her lap. In the last half hour, her lap had become insanely interesting, and not in a fun sexy way; it was more in that she couldn't look into those blue eyes which were sure to be pleading with her brown ones. Those eyes would do their own talking, never to be denied, but Callie was hoping this was one of those rare moments where the definition of what a joke is was evading her otherwise brilliant wife.

If this wasn't what it was, if t this very moment she wasn't stuck in an almost Ibsonian play, convincing her partner that she did in fact give herself over in the most intimate way to an almost stranger, if she were on the outside looking in, Arizona was sure there would be something painfully comical about the whole thing. But, there she was, there they were, stuck in an expressionistic storm.

Every scary little thing that rattled inside her mind and heart, that came in the way of her loving Callie with everything she ever was - it was all becoming apparent. It became violent and almost tangible in every electrifying touch she'd shared with Lauren.

There was this all consuming burn Arizona felt in Lauren's presence; she was suddenly younger, everything was momentarily brighter and so she gave into it. It felt like jumping off a high rise; the fall creating a hollow in her stomach, the wind tickling her exposed skin, rushing all over her. It was beautiful and exciting until it wasn't, until the ground became visible. And, then it all came rushing in, who she was; a mother, a wife, brilliant, married to someone who didn't think to question why she loved her, or how she loved her, someone who only knew that she loved Arizona and everything else was inconsequential.

Yes, she was sure. She was sure that it happened - she was sure that she'd just hit the ground, they all had.

"Yes, Callie. It happened." She sounded calm. Arizona sounded calm, almost... cold. She should be saying more, shouldn't she? But Arizona didn't quite know what to say. 'Sorry' seemed so trite, 'I love you', 'it meant nothing'? Which stinking flower was she supposed to present to her wife out of this rather impressive bouquet of rotting old cliches? The truth of it was that Arizona did love Callie, but in everything that had happened something between them had shifted and they never stopped to fix it, she never stopped to fix it.

How many times could they do that, really? And she was ashamed to have to acknowledge it all the time, 'I'm broken, we're broken, I'm damaged goods' - She was afraid to lean into these feelings. When would she live if she was always stuck in her head?! So, she ignored it, and put on a beautiful show until it all became too thin to endear to the naked eye and too heavy for her to keep at it.

Someone pulled in a shuddering breath. At this point, it could be any one of the two women sitting in the tiny office. Callie was going to have to look at Arizona at some point, she decided to rip it all off like a nasty band-aid.

She giggled a little to herself. She laugh-scoffed at the fact that now they would have to talk incessantly, which they could have done if Arizona had come to her before she 'mistakenly' decided to give into her attraction for the other blonde minted in the shiny brilliance of Hopkins-acquired-awesomeness. They would be good together, annoyingly trailing rainbows behind them in the halls when they'd passed through; giant shapely barbies. Callie wished she wasn't so irrevocably, irredeemably, stupidly in love with one of them.

The ball was in Callie's court, at least that's what it felt like, but really she despised being bullied into playing at all by her wife, by the 'wife steeling baby fixer', by the freaking situation! She dared to look at Arizona a second time in all the time that had gone on since this entire thing started.

"So, what do you want to do now?" asked Callie. "Do you want to be with her now?" Her voice cracked on that particular question; god, a yes on that one would be like a cold spike through Callie's warm fluttering heart.

"NO" came the answer, prompt and firm.

"Do you still want to be with me?" This all seemed wrong, to her, to Arizona too, really. Should not Arizona be asking that question? Should she not be begging her wife to stay? But, the question was followed by a silence that inked the air around them with a slow poison.

"I... I don't know. I want you, I want us, you Calliope, and Sophia. But, what if we try, I try and you can't forgive me? You have to try with me." Now she pleaded, tiny cracks in the stoicism that let Arizona breathe, they were becoming visibly apparent to them both. "Could you do that? Eventually? Could you forgive this? Me? Could you forgive me?"

Could she?