I'm Always Thinking (About You)

I'm Always Thinking (Of You)

A/N: This is part 3 of the Always Series, but can be read as a standalone. I hope to continue it in the series.

***

"Teddy." Cristina sighed as she finally, finally saw the blonde.

"I'm here." Teddy smiled shyly. "Uhm – what's happening?" Teddy was nervous as she greeted Cristina. "What was so important that you had to drive down here in the middle of the night for?"

"I..." Cristina hesitated, then she took a step forward. Seeing Teddy for the first time in weeks, at least in person, was like a breath of fresh air. Teddy gave her direction. She knew what she wanted to say, if only she could get the words out right.

"I have a signature move." She began. It hadn't been the way she had wanted to begin; it hadn't been the way she had planned it, going over and over her big speech in her head during the car ride, but it felt like the right way to begin.

"I have devoted my life to cardiothoracic surgery. I can suture through the myocardium without even needing a patch. I have a signature move." Cristina repeated, surer of what she needed to say after each world left her lips.

"I eat, sleep and breathe cardiothoracics. I am a cardio God." She chuckled to herself, a manic kind of laughter that unsettled even herself. There were tears in her eyes as her vision began to blur through her crazed laughter. "And I am alone." She spoke with a kind of finality, the echo of it rumbling through her chest. Even the words themselves felt as lonely as she had been, all those months ago.

"I go to bed and I think about my technique. And I am alone. I wake up and practise my method. And I am alone." She began to pace the floor, unable to look at Teddy as the words she had been itching to speak for so long bubbled up and out of her in a helpless, desperate sprawl. "My 3D hearts are working. My centre is thriving. And I am alone." She stilled, as though the realisation had just come to her. "Except." She muttered to herself, facing Teddy without a care in the world as to how mad she looked – her hair in wild, tangled knots, tears and ugly snot streaming down her face, freer than her words and mind had been in a long, long time.

"Except – when we're together." She smiled finally, her freedom spreading through her slowly, feeling like the hum of electricity. It started in her chest, bubbling out to her smile, through to the edges of her fingertips and tingling right down to her toes. "I used to think – when I was with every other person I have ever been with, that I was the problem. I was uncommunicative." She repeated the words so many of the others – the befores that didn't matter at all now – had spoken to her with angry, guttural breaths. "I was distant. I was thinking about my signature move. I was, ultimately, alone." She breathed in finally, the sharp air ripping through her lungs as if it were the first time she had ever truly breathed.

"But with you." She smiled, cupping Teddy's cheeks tenderly. The poor blonde looked so bewildered, so utterly lost in Cristina's crazed ramblings, yet she smiled back, her eyes shining with that tender kind of fondness that Cristina found herself aching for. "I can talk about it all. Anything and everything. I can compare techniques and hear about your surgeries and tell you about mine. I can do what I love. And – and I can talk about it with the woman I love." She smiled, wiping away the shining tears that had begun to fall from Teddy's wide eyes. "And I am not alone. I am me. Cristina Yang – Cardio Goddess, Builder of Hearts, World-renowned surgeon. And I am in love with you, Teddy. I'm so in love with you. And it is so important that I did drive across countries through the night just to be able to see you and tell you."

"Cristina, I-" Teddy began, but Cristina shook her head, interrupting her.

"There's – there's more. I'm leaving." Teddy sucked in a breath, her eyes never leaving Cristina's. "Meredith is – well, she isn't okay right now. She needs the sense knocked into her. And Addison Montgomery flew across the world just to get me to kick Meredith in the ass and make her realise that she's just as in love with Addison as I am with you. So I'm leaving. For L.A. And maybe I can convince Mer to go back to Seattle, too... I don't know." Cristina shook her head, her thoughts a jumbled mess. "Maybe I could move my research back there. We could both go back to Grey Sloan. We could have a life together, Teddy. No more hiding." Cristina smiled, the tear tracks on her face a distant memory. "Look, I know. I know you feel the same." She was so sure. She was surer than she had been operating in the dark. She was surer than she had been of any other choice she had ever made in her entire life. She was sure. "So come with me?" She asked nervously. She looked into Teddy's eyes and hoped to be reassured. But instead of love, and trust she saw hesitancy.

"U-unless..." Cristina's hands fell from Teddy's face, crumpling in the air just below her jaw. She didn't belong on Teddy's skin. "Unless I'm wrong?" She questioned the ground between them, unable to look into Teddy's eyes. The eyes that had been hesitant.

"Cristina..." Teddy finally spoke, stepping forward, trying to take her face in her own hands, the way Cristina had done for her.

But her voice wasn't hopeful. It wasn't reassuring. It was empty and it was sad.

"I'm wrong, then." Cristina smiled darkly, shrugging off the edges of Teddy's touch, and stepping back to her car, the cold, morning air finally settling in on her skin as she shivered, realising what she had done.

"I guess..." she kicked the ground, opening the driver's side door. "I guess this is goodbye, then."

"Cristina." Her name blew out of Teddy's mouth in one sad rush of air. But she didn't stick around to hear it. She didn't want to. It would hurt too much.

Instead, she drove back to Zurich. She had a flight to catch.