Huddled in a blanket in the sleeping cabin of the small shuttle Trowa commandeered in order to come and save me, I wonder what happened to Wufei, and why he wasn’t the one to come in and extract me. Normally, if one or the other of us has needed help, we’ve been sure to be on the team to go and help extract.

    But not this time. I glance up as the door opens, but my mind is not on the man that steps through the door. Instead, it’s on Wufei, who is absent.

    He may be bleeding.

    Hurt.

    I am bleeding, and hurt, but somehow it doesn’t seem important.

    I glance up, finally, and my eyes are focused on the events of the now. Something Heero said to me last night won’t let me focus on Wufei too much right now. He said something along the lines of ‘there’s only one way to know how someone feels, and that is to ask them yourself.’ I can’t ask Wufei right now, so I might as well get on with whatever Trowa has for me.

    Trowa glides in, cleaned up and looking none the worse for the wear, except for a bandaged forearm. “I see you’re awake.” It was easier to bandage him up than myself, especially since it was done on the go after we made our reports to the colony law enforcement. We moved quickly to get to the shuttle, Trowa’s urgency silent, but present in the air like the silence at the instant of an explosion.

    “What happened?” I ask, nervous about his nervousness. There is an emptiness in his normally passive eyes that scares me.

    “The headlines haven’t come out yet.” He won’t talk about his own mission, just yet, it seems. “Une says they’ll be delayed until the Commissioner of Arms’ Distribution files the case against Exian. Once they’re in court, it’ll be safe to -”

    “No. I want to talk to Lady Une,” I cut him off, my eyes boring into him. I will him silently to speak, but, as usual, nothing forces Trowa into action, nothing short of a natural disaster… or a war.

    “I figured as much. I’ll set up a laptop in here later.” He pauses to stare at me carefully, looking for signs of shock and fatigue, most likely, with a trained eye. “Do you need anything?”

    “A hospital,” I say evenly, “but I have a feeling I won’t be getting to one any time soon, so no, except some fresh bandages.” He nods, and without another word, he turns to leave, the doors wooshing shut automatically behind him. The medicinal smell Trowa wore into the room lingers after him in the stale, recycled air of the shuttle. I glance around, and feel like curling up and crying.

    How could this mission have gone so wrong, so quickly? What is it that Exian is connected to that involved that gunman knowing where Wufei was? And why won’t Trowa talk to me?

    I swing my legs carefully over the edge of the small bed, glancing across at the other one, and it’s obvious disuse. “Fei,” I whisper, “Fei, please be all right.”

*

    Once we land in L2, Trowa marches me towards the main spaceport without waiting for me to comment, bundling me into a long coat as we head out into the terminal in hopes of hiding my bandaging from the civilians. The hotel will have what little I left there sent back to Earth, undoubtedly, and now, apparently, it’s my turn.

    “Trowa-”

    “Here’s your ticket.” He shoves the paper into my pocket, and then continues to strong arm me towards the check-in station. “You’ll be flying into Chicago, that’s where your lay-over is. It’s only a couple of hours. You should be back in London by eight tomorrow.”

    “Trowa Barton, stop right there,” I say in the best commanding voice I can muster at the moment. He doesn’t. It’s hard to stop Trowa, about as hard as it is to stop an avalanche, or a flood. He’s like a force of nature when he’s got his mind set on something. And I’m too nervous to be truly commanding.

    “Keep an eye on Jean for me, I know he’s not as faithful as…” he starts to say a name, and I can see in his eyes who he means, but suddenly he cuts himself off and steps up to the counter with me.

    “As Quatre?” I ask quietly into his ear as he puts the ticket on the counter after taking it back from my pocket. He stiffens a moment and then continues to address the airline clerk.

    “My wife hurt her shoulder, and some business has come up that keeps me from going with her just now, can you be sure she’s comfortable?”

    The young woman makes an enthusiastic reply, and I glare coldly at Trowa. Not that we haven’t used the ruse before, but just now it hurts to hear someone lie about calling me their wife. He smells of ointment and bandages, from where I’m standing, his left arm around my waist securely, to keep me from trying to move away from him. Instead of fighting, I sigh and lean against him, letting my head rest on his breastbone for a moment.

    He lifts his hand to smooth my hair in the fraternal manner that he has with me from time to time, and the airline clerk narrows her eyes a little enviously. “Take care of him,” I whisper, looking up into Trowa’s eyes. He nods, once, and finishes talking to the clerk. I let the words drift past me. Obviously, it’s not safe for me to go with him to find Wufei, otherwise he wouldn’t mind me coming along, and I’m a little worried, and frankly pretty nervous, about the whole thing.

    But I’m injured, and I’ve got a report to make, and I don’t have the strength to fight with right now.

    He walks me away from the ticket counter, tucking the ticket into the inside pocket of the jacket he wrapped me in when we left the shuttle. It takes me a minute, my jarred senses fumbling for the reason it’s so familiar to me.

    This is Wufei’s coat.

    “No,” Trowa says, glancing up at the display over the passageway to try and find my gate, “Jean isn’t as faithful as Quatre.”

    His voice is bitter, and cold. Whatever happened between the two of them isn’t buried in Trowa’s heart as well as it seems to be buried in Quatre’s. That is, if he’s so happily married and having children… or on his way towards it.

    “But don’t worry about-” he cuts himself off as we pass by a security guard, eyeing the other man warily. Has he gone mad? Are the colonies so unsafe that he can’t even mention a name aloud to me in a public place? “About him,” he finishes.

    Before I quite realize what’s happening, we’ve reached the gate, and there’s a little time until my flight. He mumbles something, barely moving his lips, that reminds me no one is as silent as Trowa sometimes appears to be, but if I wasn’t tucked so protectively against his side I wouldn’t have heard the mutter of, “I’ll feel much better when you’re safe on Earth.”

    I lean into his side, closing my eyes. I don’t want to think about war anymore. Or about fighting. I’m twenty-seven, and my body is accustomed to bullet holes. I’m twenty-seven, and I feel like I grew up with a gun in my hands, with blood on my clothing. I’m twenty-seven, and…

    I pull the coat tighter around me and take a deep breath of its scent. Tiger’s balm and … deodorant? No, not deodorant. Around me, suddenly the brimming spaceport seems horribly empty, and the lean, strong side I’m leaning into feels like rock.

    I’m twenty-seven, and I feel like I’m the loneliest woman that still draws breath.

    “Why did you say that?” I ask, rhetorically. Trowa starts a little and glances down at me. Almost as though he forgot he was holding me so tightly to his side. He turns to look around again and doesn’t comment. “Why… why now?”

    “I can’t answer that,” he says, and as I stare up the few inches at his profile, it seems harsh and like every edge could cut, “but… I’ll do my best to be sure he comes back… to you.”

    “Trowa,” I begin, about to protest. I’m about to say something stupid… to deny it, perhaps, or to say that there’s no way that he could feel anything for me, but in the back of my mind, his cut off sentence echoes. His voice is quick, rushed, and yet it sounds impassioned, as though… “Sally, I’ve got to go… but I just wanted to say-”

    “I know how he feels about you,” Trowa comments, starting to guide me towards the boarding doors. His hand reaches inside the jacket and pulls out my ticket, and my identification, which he puts in my hand as he gently lets go of me. “Because it’s the way I feel about Quatre. Now,” he takes a step back, lifting one of my hands to kiss my knuckles, the ruse maintained, “get on the plane darling, I’ll be home shortly.”

    No more words. He turns, and walks away. I pause, confused by all of this, and then at the cough from the stewardess, I move up in line. I’m boarding the shuttle, and Trowa is disappearing into the small crowds at the entrance of the spaceport. Once on board, the flight attendant makes sure I’m comfortable, offering me some pain medication, and then I ask to make a phone call. Cell phones aren’t permitted while the shuttle is en route, so I’ll have to use one of the shuttle phones to make my call. A preoccupation from before I left on this mission comes back to me as I think about home once again, about London, and my apartment…

    My father.

    More of Wufei’s words come back to me. “I wanted to apologize… My actions were… inexcusable.” And I nearly break down.

    “Misses Po… are you all right, ma’am?”

    “Fine,” I reply, wiping my eyes and wincing a little at the stiffness in my shoulder. The first thing I’m doing in London, if I don’t pass out in Chicago from shock, is get myself in to see a doctor. “Can you repeat those instructions?”

*

    Needless to say, Lady Une was highly displeased with the outcome of the mission, and my response to the idea of the cover-up. It wasn’t her idea, apparently, but the Commissioner’s office’s directive.

    The expression on her face is tight and angry, but not with me.

    “If there’s nothing else, Sally…” she begins.

    “Sorry to take up your time, Lady Une, but there is something else.”

    “Oh?”

    “I need some time off.”

    Her brow furrows slightly, “How much time off?”

    “My father is dying, Lady Une, I can’t exactly say.”

    “How…” I watch realization dawn on her face. I take it that Wufei… didn’t tell her a thing about why I spilled the coffee all over myself then. Her expression clears and saddens almost instantaneously, and she nods. “Is there anything I can do?”

    “Not really. But I’d appreciate it if it didn’t get out to the entire office where I’m going.” She nods. “Thank you, ma’am.”

    “The sorrow, it will pass… eventually,” she adds.

    Am I even sad?

    Before she can break the connection, I ask, “Lady Une, about Trowa and Wufei’s mission,” I suck up my courage and stare her straight in the eye. “What’s going on?”

    “We’re not quite sure,” she says, in what we operatives call her ‘tight-lipped’ voice. “The mission has been compromised.”

    “Are the two of them being extracted?”

    “We’re waiting on confirmation from Trowa on Wufei’s coordinates before we send anyone in.”

    I nod, quietly, and a voice interrupts on her end. “I’ll see you when you get in to London, Sally,” Une says, turning to look at the out-of-site speaker. “See yourself to a doctor in Chicago, and take some time to rest up… unless nothing abnormal happened that you think is necessary for us to know…”

    “The gunman… the last one… he knew Wufei’s name, and that I had backup coming…”

    Lady Une seems to ponder that for a minute and then nods. “That may be of some use. I’ll need you to come in and fill out some paperwork, but other than that consider yourself officially on sabbatical, Sally.”

    I nod, half of me saying that I should salute her, and the other half of me says that I should offer her some sort of empathy on whoever it is she lost… and then I think about it a little more, and just nod. I wasn’t ever any great fan of Treize.

    His men tried to kill me a lot. Not that I can blame them, I was standing in their way, but the principle of it all keeps me from reciprocating her empathy. We cut the transmission, and I replace the phone in it’s cradle while the screen before me goes black. I pull the jacket a little tighter around me, hoping to find some hidden fountain of warmth its owner may have left for me, but in the end it’s only the same lifeless material it was when he bought it. I fold my arms and try moving my feet to keep circulation going well, and the stewardess asks me if I would like a blanket. There’s a queer expression on her face. I wonder if she can smell the blood on my bandages, the death and gunpowder that clings to this coat wherever it goes…

    “No, thank you.”

**

    It was raining, and we were in Moscow, on assignment to investigate a gang that was getting a little too powerful and a little too vocal with their protests against the peace being enforced upon the people. It’s something I’ve never been quite sure if I agreed with about the Preventers. Peace, like all things, must be chosen, and when we take that choice away from the people…

    Are we any better than dictators that have come before us?

    I was rather silent, and Wufei, for once, was rather cold. Even though normally he is impervious to the world around him, the iron man was feeling a bit touched by the weather. Moscow in early fall isn’t particularly temperate, and I’m sure Fei, colony born and raised, would be glad that we’d be leaving the area before the real coldsnap of winter came to the town.

    “It’s ridiculous,” I recall him grumbling, “Why is it that you’re completely warm and I’m so frigid I don’t have to iron my shirts anymore?”

    I chuckled a little, not bothering to hide it behind my hand. “Well the coat helps,” I said, pulling the hood a little farther over my forehead to fight the invading raindrops that were getting blown into my face. Wufei, unlike me, was wearing only his standard issue Preventers jacket, which wasn’t, at the time, very thick or insulated. Since then there have been need-enforced improvements in its design, but at the time he was getting drenched because of the lack of lining or waterproofing on the material it was made of. I had on a three-quarter length black hooded trench coat.

    He looked at me enviously, and I looked away, unsure of how to deal with him looking so closely at me. When you work with someone, it’s easy to spend a lot of time not looking at them. The idea that he was staring at me was mildly disturbing, and a little unwelcome. I’ve come a long way in my opinion of him since then.

    “How was I supposed to know it rains in Moscow? Do I look Russian?”

    I was tempted to comment, but as I glanced back at him, the look on his face made me stop. I went back to scanning the street we were walking down on our way back to the hotel we were staying in during the investigation, and I saw the shop and the display in the window.

    “Come on then,” I said, veering to cross the little street. He gave me an incredulous look and I frowned, stepping into a puddle in order to grab his arm and drag him after me.

    “Where are you taking me, onna?” he grumbled, but followed along after me anyway, unresisting. We had been partners about three years at that point, and he was just starting to let other people touch him. Even after I blew up at him and threatened to stop being his partner… it was a long battle to keep him from flinching at contact.

    But slowly he softened his rocky exterior towards me.

    “You’re cold, right?”

    “And?” his condescending tone almost made me shove him back into the little river running in the gutter of the street, and wait for a car to splash him there, but I didn’t. At the time I thought I was showing marvelous restraint, now I know I was just scared that he’d scream. He’s got this voice, when he screams, that scares me more than getting shot… but then whenever he screams at me he always seems to have his heart in his throat.

    “You’re going to buy yourself a new jacket.”

*

    He fought me on that one, violently, almost. But after I had the head of the store set his jacket aside to dry out, and slipped the long trench coat on his shoulders, he stopped protesting so much. I encouraged him to buy the coat… the scarf he bought himself. It was beautiful, white, long, and it had small tassels on the ends that were soft as… something very soft. On occasion he’s wrapped it around my neck when my face was so cold it was turning colors of it… but it’s one thing, along usually with the coat, that he rarely parts with.

    That he’s parted with it now speaks too much for me to understand. I’m afraid to think of the circumstances under which he let it go, and so I curl up as best I can in the seat and surrender to unconsciousness.

***