DISCLAIMER:: not mine. belongs to abc studios and shonda rhimes

A/N:: i return home later this afternoon, after a long flight back. i will post an update for matters of the heart sometime today or tomorrow. as for this story, this is the grand finale, as of right now. may be added to later.

-/-

Three Days Ago- Seattle

Mark hadn't seen her this bad. He had known about the cancer for nearly a year, almost as long as Arizona had. In all that time Callie had remained strong. There were moments when she faltered but she had been a fighter. She had always fought back. But today she seemed so defeated there on her hospital bed. Evidence of the war raging inside her was apparent all over her body. She had lost a huge amount of weight. Where there had once been the voluptuous curves he knew well, now bones were pressing through flesh trying to break free from their skin prison. Her hair, once silky, had lost its luster. It had thinned from the stress. She looked almost half a person, and yet, even now, he was aware of her beauty. Her eyes still sparkled with the warmth of a life well lived, for Callie had spent her life doing what she loved. Most surgeons would feel betrayal in the end, an anger that hands and science that had saved so many had failed to save them. But that was not Callie. As she chatted casually with Arizona, he knew she was at her end and as he caught her eye and she smiled and he saw in that moment that she knew it too. Death had been knocking on her door for almost a year and she was finally going to let him in.

"Hey Mark." She weakly waved him into the room.

"Hey. How are you feeling?" He took the seat Arizona vacated as she left the room to give them privacy.

She didn't answer his question. "I need to ask you a favor."

"Okay."

"Can you get Erica here? There's something I have to say to her."

-/-

"Absolutely not!" Derek's face flushed.

"Now Derek, that's unfair." Meredith put a hand on his shoulder.

"He cannot call her Meredith."

"She did leave Dr. Torres. It was a cold insensitive thing to do." Bailey voiced her agreement with Derek.

"But it's what Callie wants." Dr. Altman, the new cardiothoracic surgeon, pointed out.

"Dr. Torres doesn't know what she wants. Her mind is clouded." Derek shook his head.

"You don't get to decide that!" Meredith stood her ground.

"STOP!" Mark's face was red. "I come to all you for help and all you can do is argue. Callie doesn't have time for this."

-/-

It only took one glance in the room, one look at the girl on the bed, to know Erica would be too late even if he called her. There was no time left.

"Were you able to get in contact with her?" Callie's voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

"Yeah. She's on her way, next flight out. She'll be here Callie. You'll see her soon."

For a moment her smile became so big and the life flooded her eyes and he caught a glimpse of the Callie Torres he had known. The bold, brash, beautiful surgeon who had lived life loud.

Mark sat down next to Callie on the bed and took her hand. "Tell me what you're going to say to her when she gets here. Practice on me."

Callie glanced at him for a moment. She took a deep breath. "It's been a long time. It's cliché to say that, especially since I'm the reason for our time apart. I can't apologize for what I said to you two years ago in Baltimore. I meant all I said that day. But I think you should know the reason I left without a word. It wasn't because I felt betrayed, though I did, it was because I didn't want you to have to deal with this."

Callie knew there should be tears as she said this, but she was dried up now. She spent too much of her life crying and she wasn't about to spend the end of it that way too. "There are two truths I know. First is that you loved me. I felt that love every moment we were together. You never had to tell me, I just felt it. Second is that I love you." Callie paused to cough roughly into her hand. Mark held her through the fit until it had subsided. She continued as if her lungs hadn't interrupted her. "I know I shouldn't have, but I let you become my everything. I thought my love would diminish with time, but it hasn't. Maybe that makes me pathetic, at times I have thought that, but mostly I think it speaks to my depth. That my heart, fragmented as it is, can still love that much. It amazes me. I can't remember how many days, weeks, months it took me to stop thinking of you every second. Even then I realized there wasn't much else I wanted to think about. I went through grief and back again and for a time I even came to believe that I imagined our time together. Those were the dark times.

"I had a good life without you. I say that with no malice, just as a statement of fact. And now as my life is at its end, I'm going to say the words I never allowed myself to: you were and still are the best friend I've ever had. You are there, in everything I've done, my driving force. If there was one thing I was sure about in this life, it's that I was meant to know you, to love you, if only for a while." Tears pooled at the corner of Mark's eyes and he blinked them away before they could fall and disrupt Callie. "I used to pray to God, even in the times I questioned His existence, that I would die, gladly succumb to my illness for just one more day in your arms. You took away my pain. I will always be in love with you." Another fit of coughs gripped her, this one longer and more severe. Her chest heaved when Mark helped her back onto the pillow. "Maybe it's petty to confess all this on my deathbed but it doesn't change the truth. If I do make it to a better place, Heaven or whatever is beyond death, and they ask me what I liked best, my answer will be you. You were always the best part."

-/-

The next few hours, the significant people in Callie's life filed in sporadically to pay their last respects. No one stayed very long and little was said, but Callie seemed to relax more and more with each visit. Finally it was just her and Mark again. Arizona, who had stayed by her side, even as she continually asked when Erica would get there, had gone to get Mark something to eat. He hadn't moved from the spot on the bed where he lay next to Callie, holding her hand.

Another violent fit raked Callie's body. When it subsided, she had grown noticeably more pale and tired and Mark knew the end had finally arrived.

"Mark."

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

"For what?"

It took a long time to gather enough breath to speak again. "For holding my hand while I die."

Mark had to turn his face away from her to hide the tears that sprang into his eyes. His best friend was dying, and he was going to hold her as she left the world.

Nine minutes later Callie Torres smiled for the last time. "Mark, look. I think I see her. She made it. She's here."

Mark looked towards the empty doorway of Callie's room. He knew the mind could play tricks in its last moments. "I told you she'd make it."

He looked down into frozen eyes, the sparkle finally gone from them. Callie's chest no longer heaved, breath no longer pushed its way out from traitorous lungs. She no longer suffered, the pain had gone from her body. She was gone.

Across the country Erica Hahn cried out in her sleep.