Part: Twelve
Title: Stress Fractures
Genre: Gundam Wing
A/N: I uploaded this chapter at the same time that I did the one on FF.net, so there's nothing really to put here. I'm whizzing through this story right now, because I have the time to write it. Once next semester starts up in January, I won't have nearly as much time just to write, and so the updates will come slower, if I don't manage to finish the story up by then.

***

    The elevator door opens, and I stomp through it. Whatever the hell Lady Une has to say to me, better be damn important. I told her that I was taking a vacation… I told her that-

    My thoughts are brought to a dead halt as I look around the office.

    “What the hell happened here?” I say, incredulous and nearly shouting. My voice sounds like Wufei’s, a tiny voice in the back of my mind says.

    Aside from the holiday decorations, which are bright in evergreens and crimson reds, the office looks as though it’s been through nothing short of an Eve War, orchestrated by the five infamous pilots that I work with from time to time. The fluorescent lights are only half working, there are scorch marks where they either blew a circuit from overload or… something blew up… The windows of the offices are cracked like large spider webs in some places, and in others entire panes of glass have been broken, and the pieces still have yet to be cleaned up, I notice as my boots crunch some of the larger bits under them deeper into the carpet. The person to answer my question is the last person I expected to see here, today.

    “Funny you should ask that, Sally,” a quiet, sophisticated voice says from the direction of Trowa’s office.

    “Quatre?”

    The smiling, pale-skinned blond man nods once, his similarly pale, light hair flopping just a little to hide his aquamarine eyes for a moment before returning to it’s styled position. “I’m certain you’re surprised to see me here… after all this time.”

    “Yes,” I say, for the moment ignoring Julia, who’s just come up and is tugging on the sleeve of Wufei’s jacket, which, in my angry haste, I threw on again, not even bothering to do more than throw on a clean shirt and pair of jeans before lacing up my boots. “But I’ve got a feeling you’ll be around after I go up to speak with Lady Une.”

    He nods, motioning me to move down the hallway and go about my business. As I stride towards my boss’s office, I decide to let Julia speak, “What is it?”

    “How are you? When we heard the news from L2, and then Lady Une say that you had to be extracted…”

    I roll my eyes to myself and pin Julia with a glare. “I’m fine. I’m walking, talking, and breathing, aren’t I?” She backs up into the doorway of her own office and allows me to go on my way without any more of her molestation.

    I knock on Lady Une’s office door and her secretary, Missy, opens the door and then steps out, closing it behind her. The room is cold, and I stare at my boss.

    “You rang?” my voice is angry, bitter, and dripping with cynicism. She flinches a little at my tone, something that makes me feel pretty good. I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Lady Une flinch at anything, but then, according to Noin, she had a habit of twitching that was something like a flinch when Treize would reprimand her.

    “I’m sorry to have called you in, Sally, it’s just that…”

    I take a look around the room, finally, and notice that the chaos hasn’t even escaped her office, though most of the disarray lies in the thick stacks of papers on her desk and the missing window behind her. The air itself is cold, not just the atmosphere, I finally realize, and shove my hands into Fei’s jacket pockets.

    “Someone infiltrated HQ?” I ask, a little angry. What has any of this got to do with me? I was away… I’m injured…

    I’m really close to just going home and getting into bed, pulling the covers over my head and pretending like I never worked here. Then I’ll go to China…

    Thinking about that trip brings to mind a pair of kind and warm chocolate colored eyes that warm me up, despite the temperature of the air around me. I’m so lost in the imagined gaze that I miss part of Lady Une’s explanation.

    “… including your office, which was one of the more thoroughly ransacked when inventory was taken… for the time being, I’ve called everyone back to check in, and we’re suspending operations until the police finish their investigation.”

    “Who would want to hit a government office?” I muse aloud, before it hits me. “Wait a minute,” I cut her off as she starts to speak. “We’re suspending operations?” she nods. “What about…” my voice cuts off.

    “All operatives will be accounted for, despite the hiatus,” Lady Une says firmly, standing and turning to face where her window once stood. “Wufei and Trowa will be back before I suspend everyone, Sally, you don’t need to worry about that…”

    I stand up. She’s disgusting me now. That’s a lie, and we both know it. If the situation was any different, I’m not quite sure what I would say to Lady Une, but as of now, I… My mind flashes back to the messages on my answering machine. I have other things to worry about. Wufei is a big boy, and he can take care of himself… if not…

    If not…

    I try, generally, not to think about ‘if not’s, because I don’t find them particularly productive. But then, thinking about Wufei, recently, hasn’t been very productive either. If he’s not ok, if he can’t… take care of himself in this instance… then I’ll rescue him after I’ve seen my father again. Something that my father said in his message… something makes him important, the way his approval was always important to me as a young girl. He is, afterall, family, if nothing else.

    Lady Une trails off without a further comment, her eyes evenly meeting mine. She knows that I see right through what will happen. She knows and she has decided she won’t lie to me about it. “If there is nothing else?” now it is my turn to be cold and formal, as she was with me on the phone from the shuttle.

    “Sally, I didn’t put the two of you together to see you loose him like this.”

    Those are the last words I expected to hear out of her mouth, but as I lift my eyes to meet hers, I find that her back is turned to me. She has nothing more to say. So I shouldn’t either. I turn and leave her office, feeling slightly sick to my stomach.

    Stranded.

    Alone.

    I stumble my way back towards my office, and find Quatre waiting patiently outside the door. He starts to speak, but I wave him off, choosing, instead, to head to the elevator. Absently, I see Quatre grab his coat, and follow me.

    I can’t be in this building right now. Not when the head of our organization is willing to write off two of her best operatives. Not when the voice I heard on the phone told me enough about myself in one forced, tense phrase to make the fact that I may never see the speaker again enough to make me want to march back into Une’s office and throw myself from her window…

    Not when… I’ve finally found…

    “Sally, wait up!” Quatre calls, shoving his way into the elevator after me. For once, it seemed to be waiting on me, as though it were right of me to leave at that instant. I have my back to the doors and my forehead against the glass back of the elevator, trying hard not to remember him in this space, trying hard not to remember him at all.

    I have other things to worry about, I remind myself.

    “What’s wrong with you?” he asks, laying one hand carefully on my shoulder, waiting for me to flinch or throw it off. “Sally?”

    “She’s leaving them to die,” I choke out, my voice alien to my own ears, and yet, at the same time, it is the same voice I have always had, the one that sneaks out from time to time when I’m being most myself, speaking with my heart and mind in the same thrust.

    Quatre recoils, shrinking backwards, “I… I’m sure that they’ll be-” but even he cannot finish his sentence, the ever-hopeful, ever-cheery Quatre can be reasoned with, and he knows that what I’ve said is the truth.

    My next words sound childish in my ears, bitter, and cross, even to me, “At least Trowa knew how you felt.”

    My eyes seek out Quatre’s reflection in the glass, the dark gray of the sky outside as the snow falls making it easy to seem him because of the interior lighting in the elevator. His pale skin is flushed with color, and he seems to be going red all the way up to the roots of his hair. “Wh-what do you mean?”

    “A little honesty is in order, Quatre,” I say, pulling Wufei’s coat around me. The elevator is stifling, the stale, recycled air filling with the scent of the medicated salve on my shoulder under my bandages as I adjust the coat, seeping straight through my clothes. “I’ve been working with Trowa…” the pause I leave adds his name so that I don’t have to, “since he came here… I know his new boyfriend, Jean, and I know that the two of you were together…once.”

    Quatre sighs a little, and then laughs, self-depreciatingly. “My wife still wonders what’s wrong with me…” he says absently. “She hasn’t figured it out yet.”

    “What good is a wife?” We’re having separate conversations, but it feels neither rude nor uncomfortable, “What good is anything? Life is short.”

    “Not everyone knows about the two of us, and she can’t quite understand what my problem is sometimes, why… why we’ve been married for four years and she’s yet to get pregnant… why it’s taken me so long to get around to creating an heir for Winner Corp…”

    The elevator dings, second floor. Jean steps into the elevator, tie loosened, shirt half untucked. “Hello Jean,” I say, my voice curiously empty. The shock of today is hitting me harder than it normally would. I’ve simply had too much stress this week. First the mission on L2, then Heero’s little ‘lesson’… getting shot… coming home to… the equivalent of a natural holocaust in my life…

    And now this.

    Quatre gives Jean a calculating gaze and falls silent, his inner monologue returning to his mind. But I can read it across his face, So this is my replacement, he sums up the other man’s stature, his face, the traits that might have attracted Trowa to him. There is silence between the three of us in the elevator, Jean having returned my greeting already. I haven’t introduced Quatre, and Quatre hasn’t taken the initiative. I vaguely notice the atmosphere in the elevator has turned a little frigid, and if I didn’t know better, I could swear Quatre’s eyes are green… Under the blond man’s intense scrutiny, Jean fidgets, shifting from foot to foot and watching the display over the door expectantly.

    “Quatre,” I ask idly as the elevator stops on the lobby level, “What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since…”

    He waits for me to precede him from the elevator, and explains as we head outside, buttoning up our coats and slipping on our gloves and wrapping up our scarves. My head is spinning, and my eyelids are heavy. “Winner Corp is responsible for the security company in charge of the building… when I heard what had happen, we sent and investigator… the report should be on my desk at the main office in the morning.”

    “But that doesn’t explain why you chose to come, personally,” I add. I’m not quite sure where I’m going, and the words he’s using to respond to my queries are going swiftly past my mind, like a shuttle moving at light speed. We take a few steps, slowly, and I feel the entire world start to tilt. Quatre puts a hand out to steady me by taking my elbow. The edges of my vision are dimming…

    Quatre ushers me into a limousine, which I hadn’t even noticed was waiting for him at the curb in front of Headquarters. “Let’s go somewhere else and talk… it’s too cold to stand around outside here and do it…”

    But the minute we get into the limousine, I feel the surrounding darkness coming swiftly closer, and then, as though I am a small animal and it a large dragon, the darkness swallows me whole.

*

    I taught myself, long ago, to forget my dreams. It is smartest, easiest to live as uncertain a life as I do, that way. If you don’t remember what your mind finds important to remind you of, you never have to think on it, right?

    But some things it is impossible to forget. And I’m afraid the dream I’m having is one of them. The whole of my vision is in black and white, and I cannot see myself. But the place I’m in is achingly familiar. I move towards the house, and just as I am about to get through the front door, it opens, and a smaller version of myself, comes running out the door, dressed in formal school clothing, with my hair in two proper braids, trailing down my back. My brothers, Lin and Samuel, are nowhere to be seen, but the memory of them lingers just outside the scope of my vision. It’s a memory I can well remember, the sight outside the front door almost every morning, because the two of them would walk me to school, to be sure I got there safely, before heading off to their own respective schools.

    We were never in the same school, my brothers and I. I always wondered about that, but, as most of my youthful questions, they went unanswered in favor of being ignored by my father. If I asked questions, he would notice me, so it was oftentimes much easier just to keep silent.

    The sequence replays itself, innumerable times, until I notice something, as I watch my young dream-self leaving the house. The repetitious sequence is not the focus of this dream. Startled, I turn around and find that I can see my body. I lift my hands and find them before my eyes, doing what I command my dream-body to do. Almost immediately after I can see myself, I feel another presence.

    “Who’s there?” I call out, making no effort to cover my body as I feel a slight breeze wash over my skin, letting me know that I am, in this dream-state, nude.

    The answer does not come in words, but instead, as I look around me, the image of myself at varying ages leaving for school, I see, first, a bulge in the image, and then it folds, and through the image another form starts to materialize. Nowhere near as well-kept as I am sure my dream-self is, the other body seems to materialize only partially, and then, with wounds and gashes.

    It takes me a long moment to realize that the image of a body I see before me is familiar, someone that I know, but after that first long moment, I know exactly who it is.

    “…Fei,” I say, my voice steady, and yet unsure. In response, he groans, and lurches forward, like a puppet cut from his strings, and I move swiftly to catch him. “Oh, no,” I breathe, unsure of what to do with him now that I am holding him. His body has no weight, only mass, and a faint, flickering warmth to it, that is suggestive more of feverishness than of health.

    In the background, the images change, and I see things that I have imagined happening to him. Wufei and Trowa cornered, the cut off telephone conversation… Trowa’s grim and hopeless rescue attempt of his partner…

    But these images are faster. Wufei’s dream-self seems frail, and light, and he slowly becomes transparent, and finally vanishes from my arms.

    The image in the background is of the last kiss we shared, and it is bright, and blinding. I blink my dream-eyes, rub them…

*

    And as I open my eyes, for real this time, I find myself in a familiar room, staring at familiar things. Quatre is there, speaking quietly to a doctor who is packing up his things in the corner of the bedroom, and I hear a few snippets of words, “Just too much stress, from what I can tell… better in a few days… she needs … and rest. Plenty of it…”

    My eyes are heavy, but I am afraid to close them, for fear of what images will come… My arms are warm, my chest feels heavy, as though I were really just holding Wufei in my arms, cradling him against me and shutting out whatever pain he’s feeling. I want to call out for him, but I cannot find my voice. Quatre leads the doctor from the room, and I hear the noise of the front door opening and closing. Then there is silence.

    The apartment is still, and quiet. The deafening ring of the silence in the air disturbs me, and I hum, softly, longing for some sort of noise. There needs to be some noise… no one in this apartment is dead, or dying, nothing bad has happened here…

    And yet, even as Quatre steps into the room, crosses to sit by the bed, and takes my hand carefully, I feel the stillness in the air, the stagnant feel of water that has no outlet, the lukewarm temperature of milk left out on the counter for too long. I can taste it in the back of my throat, and it is sour. I still feel queasiness in my stomach, and a sharp pain in my forehead.

    “Try to relax, Sally,” Quatre’s voice is gentle, and I feel something… a cool, soothing shaft of light, as I close my heavy eyelids experimentally. What he’s saying seems so … right.

    He’s still talking, but my eyes drift closed a second time, and darkness takes me again. Only this time, there aren’t any dreams.

*

    The next time I wake, it’s dark outside. Quatre’s not in the bedroom, but I can hear the television going in the main room, which means he’s probably in there. Experimentally, I sit up, and let out a small yelp. I haven’t taken the medication I was given for the pain in my arm, and my body’s protesting.

    Quatre comes to the door of my room and makes a ‘tsk tsk’ noise. “Who told you that you were allowed to get up?”

    “I did,” I respond, looking up at him challengingly. He grins in response, and helps me to sit up properly. “There’s… medication on the kitchen table. I need some… and a glass of water.” He nods, and disappears out of the room, without so much as turning on the light beside my bed. I stiffly set up a pillow at the head of my bed, and prop myself up on it.

    My head is much clearer, and Quatre’s got some explaining to do.

    He steps back into the room, already talking, “I hope you don’t mind that I had you brought here,” he says, pulling a chair over from the writing desk in the corner after he hands me the glass of water and the bottle. “But when you fainted, I wasn’t sure where else to take you.”

    “That’s fine… but Quatre, what are you doing here?”

    He chuckles again, while I struggle with the bottle and then take my medication. After I’ve taken the pill, he says, “When I heard that there had to be an investigator sent to look at the Preventers Headquarters… I thought it would be a good excuse to see you all… it’s been rather long since any of us have spoken.”

    “Is that supposed to be our fault?” I ask quietly, “Even if we had tried to call you… would we have gotten through?”

    Quatre finally turns on the bedside lamp, a warm amber glow coming to the room and catching beautifully in his pale blond hair. He’s always been a handsome man, Quatre has. And kind.

    “Probably not,” apparently I’ve overlooked his honesty as well.

    “What made you want to see Trowa so badly?” I ask, biting my lip after I ask the question that’s been eating at the back of my mind.

    Quatre meets my eyes, in the warm glow from the lamp, and slowly gets to his feet. “You’re heading to China?” he asks casually. I don’t wonder where he heard that. I’m sure Lady Une informed my coworkers that I’m taking time off, and probably that I’m going to be going to China as well. Having spent any time in the office at all today, with Julia or even Vladimir, he’s been informed exactly the truth that they know.

    I’ve never been as comfortable with Quatre as everyone else was. Much like Duo, but not his type, being a woman, I suppose, I ‘seek to know too much’ at times. I ask people questions, and like the impetuous spirit that my father and Wufei both seem to agree that I have, I expect answers, blunt and honest ones.

    “To see my father… before he dies,” I say, calling Quatre’s attention back from the window as he glances out the blinds. The stricken look that he gives me as he turns back in my direction is enough to stop my words in my throat, and there is silence in the room for a long moment.

    His voice is soft, and more consoling than anyone who’s yet spoken to me about that turn of events, though his words have nothing to do with it, as he asks, “Do you have your plane ticket?”

    I shake my head, looking away from him. It was angering when Wufei forced me to realize that this was really happening, and comforting when Heero spoke to me on L2 about it, but this… honest sympathy… and an unquestioning empathy…

    It’s almost painful to have someone know so much about you.

    “If you like… I can be sure that you get one…”

    “I…” I start to speak, but stop myself. Do I really want Quatre’s help? So… out of the blue, as it were. A man I haven’t seen in years, suddenly coming to the rescue? “I’d hate to bother you,” I say. A test, simple and methodical.

    I swallow a lump in my throat. Something logical enough to make even… him proud. Quatre shakes his head. “No trouble,” and as I search his eyes I see that he means it. “You’re hesitant,” he says, as though he can read my mind. “I know we were never the best of friends, Sally,” he says, turning back to the window, not to escape my eyes, but as though he’s searching for something out there, “but the wars were hard on me… no harder, I suspect, than for anyone else, but I was not prepared to deal with them properly… and…”

    “Quatre,” I say quietly, a sudden warmth in my chest, “you don’t have to apologize.” He lets out a breath he was holding, and retreats from the window a step, towards the door.

    “I should probably go, and let you rest.”

    “He’s going to be fine,” I say, my voice steady, stable, and reassuring. I recall Trowa’s parting words to me, in the L1 spaceport, and his lack of self-concern. “I’ll do my best to be sure he comes back… to you.”

    Even if Trowa thinks there’s nothing for him to come back to… other than Jean… the fact that Quatre’s here… means that he’s wrong. And if Quatre’s feelings are as strong as I suspect they are… he’ll know.

    Quatre pauses, halfway to the door, and turns hopeless eyes on me, “Do you really think so?”

    I nod.

    He lets out a short breath, and in it I hear a word I haven’t heard for a long time, “Nanashi…” No name.

    Trowa’s name before he was… Trowa Barton. I only know because once, on a mission that he and I were assigned to together, he was wounded, and started talking in his sleep. Trowa trusts me, but he doesn’t confide in me. I somehow think that it’s not something wrong with me, just something he can’t do. I doubt Jean’s ever heard him called that… ‘Nanashi’…

    “I’ll be sure you have plane tickets in the morning,” Quatre says, stepping through the doorway and out into the living room. When he returns he’s got his coat over his arm and is wearing a vaguely concerned expression. “Try to get some rest… I’ll lock the door on my way out.” He is straightening his coat, a waist length wool camel colored number with two rows of buttons, and pulls on a pair of brown leather gloves. “If there’s anything you need…” he reaches into his pants’ pocket and pulls out a card and a pen. The card he turns over and writes something on, he takes a deep breath before saying, “this is a number you can get through to me at.”

    He sets the card next to the lamp, and retreats from the bed, out the doorway into the living room. The television shuts off, and then the living room light. I hear the sound of the outer door close.

***