There’s still three days until I get on my shuttle to L1. Leaning in the elevator, I glance over at Wufei. He leaves in the morning. After the fiasco in traffic yesterday, since the water main is still giving the city public workers problems, I decided to commute to work. I made it in time to get my own coffee, and got here the same time Wufei did.

    Our hellos were warmer than the air temperature outside, but then I guess it isn’t hard, since it’s mid-January. He held open the door, and we walked each other over to the elevator. “New gloves?” he asked casually as I pressed the button to bring the snail car down to the lobby level.

    “I got them as soon as the cold snap hit,” I responded.

    “I’m going to get a new pair before Trowa and I head off to L2, any recommendations on where to buy them?”

    Pleasant, friendly conversation. No harm, no foul.

    I set my briefcase down, and slip the gloves off my hands. I feel his eyes on me as I move, and it’s a little unsettling. But, all in all, not an entirely unpleasant feeling. I stuff the brown leather into my jacket pocket, and find the rumpled letter I started to read on my way to lunch yesterday.

    In the confusion of the afternoon, I must’ve forgotten about it.

    Once we got back from lunch, our second meal together in two days…

    I started to pay this time, really I did… but Wufei wouldn’t let me.

    It wasn’t a date.

    He doesn’t… and I certainly don’t, date.

    No one else, and not each other.

    … once we got back, there was a message for me in my office, and while trying to defrost my numb fingers on my desk lamp, I nearly burnt myself. The message, of all things, was an invitation to a wedding.

    And not just any wedding, mind you, but Noin and Z-

    I suppose I should really start thinking of him by his ‘real’ name. Although if you ask me, anyone who runs around using a different name for fourteen years should plan on sticking with it for the rest of his life. Lucrezia and Milliardo’s wedding.

    Attached to the invitation was a letter, handwritten, from the woman herself. She said, basically, that she knew I wouldn’t likely be able to be there in person, and that she didn’t expect a wedding present or anything, but that she thought I should know what was going on with her life. It touches my heart, something that I am beginning to think is made of marble and granite, to think that she cares enough about me to send something like that, just for the hell of it.

    At the end of the letter, along with the expectations of a reply in general, she asked me if I was seeing anyone.

    I jotted out a quick immediate response to her questions, there were a few others about HQ and our coworkers, and said that a more personal response would follow. The date of the wedding was soon, far too soon for me to take time off and hop a shuttle or pilot one out to the terra project’s quadrant, so I’m pretty sure she never really intended for me to show up. It was scheduled for the fourth day of my investigation into Exian Corporation’s business dealings, and so I included in the short response that I would unfortunately be on assignment the day of her wedding.

    I think I made some inane joke about there being no rest for the wicked.

    I avoided her final question as though she never wrote it, the same way I avoided talking about it when we were partners.

    But I couldn’t get the question out of my head all afternoon, while I was trying to review the rest of my mission specifications and the data sheets that were included in the Exian file folder.

    I gave up and clocked out early, leaving to battle rush hour. I got home and promptly fell asleep.

    I shift the tall Styrofoam cup into my other hand and pull the letter from my pocket. Unfolding things one-handedly is difficult, but I manage not to spill any of my precious double-espresso hazelnut while I open the thing.

    So now, here I am in the elevator with another half-perused scrap of written, I glance at the page and correct myself, typed, correspondence, from someone. Wufei politely averts his eyes from the letter, but I know he’s not just staring out the back of the elevator.

    I get through the first paragraph, and the steaming elixir slips from boneless fingers and crashes against the floor of the elevator, dousing my right leg in the process.

    “Sally?” Wufei’s voice shows his concern, I note absently, my hand clenching on the letter. “What’s wrong?”

    My vision is going blurry, I’m not sure if it’s from the pain of the burns on my leg or the shock of what I’m reading. Wufei takes a step closer, and ventures to wave a hand in front of my eyes before bringing it to rest on my shoulder.

    I can smell his scent strongly, it contrasts with the coffee. He smells like green tea and tiger’s bone. Must work out before coming to work. No wonder he’s always so awake. His fingers tighten reassuringly, enough to bring my eyes up to his, but nowhere near tight enough to bruise me, and I feel myself falling apart as I stare into the mahogany pools of his eyes. “What’s happened?” he asks again, firmer.

    He’s steady, which is more than I can say for myself. I am leaning bonelessly against the back of the elevator, and his grip on my shoulder is all that’s keeping me from crumbling into the steaming puddle of aromatic caffeine at our feet. The elevator feels small and cramped around me, the perfunctory ventilation barely letting in enough air to breath. It’s hot, but I’m freezing.

    I find my faltering, shaking voice, and manage to stammer, “My father…”

    He prompts me to go on, silently, his gaze rigid enough to keep me upright, and I hear the ding of the elevator somewhere far off.

    “He’s dying.”

*

    The doors of the elevator opened, and Wufei strong-armed me out, on the fourth floor, while a couple secretaries got in. He then proceeded to march me into the infirmary to have my leg looked at.

    I’m reclining in the infirmary now, staring up at barely lit paneled ceiling. White and shades of gray, a little black. There’s a cold compress on my leg to keep the swelling down, and Lady Une has come in to have a look at me already. I made a very bad joke about how coffee shops need to have warning labels on their products, and she smiled a little falsely before saying that she’d have fresh regulation uniform sent in for me to change into as soon as the doctor that had been called in to examine me said I could get up.

    That must be him now. I prop myself up a little more, and can see my face in the mirror across from the bed. Can that really be me? Pale skin, dark circles under the eyes, haunted expression? My eyes don’t look blue at all, right now, but instead some gloomy gray. Through the lighted doorway, I see the nurse conversing with someone… someone familiar.

    Wufei.

    He stayed…

    I start to sit up a little more, but a gentle hand on my shoulder stops me.

    “Mind if I have a look at the burn before you get mobile again, Preventer Po?”

    I blink, “Jerry… who called you in?” Jerry Summers is a college of mine from back in the Alliance days. He’s a damn good doctor, I just had no idea that he had been dog-eared by the Preventers as someone trustworthy enough to be called in on accidents and emergencies. Brown eyes, blond hair, barely five and a half feet tall, he reminds me of a picture I once saw of my mother and a young boy I can only assume was her brother. My uncle. Jerry’s always treated me as good as if I was family, but he’s nowhere near old enough to be that unknown uncle.

    “The nurse on duty, if you must know.” He lifts the paper-thin sheets back to reveal my bare legs, and winces slightly at the sight of my right leg. The flesh is all pink, when he removes the compress, but it doesn’t appear to be blistering at all. “It could be worse,” he says, “but then I’m sure if you’ve collected your wits back about you, you know how bad this is.” He starts writing things on a pad, “I’m going to recommend you not do too much walking around for a couple days, but other than that, if you let it breathe and put some of this prescription I’m writing you on it, you should be just fine by the end of the week.”

    “Let it … breathe?”

    He grins wryly at me. “Sorry, Sally, but I’m going to have to ask you to wear a skirt.”

    I roll my eyes tolerantly, remembering the old joke amongst us in the Alliance Medical Corps. It was a rumor that the reason I worked so hard to get promoted to Lt. Commander was so that I wouldn’t have to wear the skirts that the lower level doctors’ aides had to wear, which were nothing more than glorified nurses’ habits. In a way, it was true. The nurses’ habits did nothing for their figures, but the idea that a trained soldier should run around in a skirt while carrying a gun was utterly laughable to me.

    But it was only six weeks after I got that promotion that I quit the Alliance and went home…

    My vision is slightly blurry, but I bite back the tickle in my throat and smile at Jerry. “I think that it’s ok, but just this once, Jerry.”

    “That’s a good patient. And a good doctor,” he adds with a wink. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a clean uniform waiting for you outside, shall I have the nurse bring it in?”

    I nod, and he covers me back up with the sheet. He turns and steps outside, and I sink back down to the pillows for a moment, closing my eyes.

    This can’t really be happening.

    That stubborn old man won’t ever kick the proverbial bucket.

    …will he?

    The door opens, I hear the noise of the hinges as they squeak in the silence of the room. Someone crosses to the bed, and a folded uniform skirt is set on the end of my bed. “You’re allowed to return to your office as soon as you feel up to it, Miss Po,” the nurse says, stepping back outside without another word.

    I recline in the bed, and listen to the silence. The skirt must be almost brand new, I can smell it from a few feet away. Muffled voices from outside make their way through the door. The transmitted sound is low and muffled, but I can make out two distinct voices.

    I tune them out as best I can, and pull the paper thin sheets up to my chin, trying to get a little more comfortable on the thin, cardboard mattress. I close my eyes, and all I can see is my reflection in the mirror.

    But eventually, I give up trying to sleep. I had too much of that cup of scalding coffee before it spilled on me to get any rest now. Gingerly, I sit up, and swing my bare legs over the edge of the bed. I unfold the skirt and stand myself up into it, slipping it haltingly over my burnt leg.

    My boots, I find, were stowed under the bed by some thoughtful person, but one of my socks is soaking in toffee colored liquid, so I sigh. I glance at the only other item on the bed. The dumbest looking leggings in the world were politely folded underneath the skirt.

    I contemplate slipping them on, if only to have something keep my foot from chafing in the combat boots I have to wear with my uniform, but the nerve endings in my burnt leg take that minute to remind me of the abuse I’ve just inflicted on them, and so I tuck the leggings into my jacket and hobble over to the sink to wring out my sock before putting it back on.

    No other mirror in the room, just the one next to the door, and so I avoid looking myself in the eye. This entire situation is too incredible, too outlandish.

    What’s going to happen is that I’ll call home, and my father will answer the phone. He’s going to berate me for not calling him sooner, and then we’ll have an awkward conversation for about five minutes. It’ll end, the way they always used to, with him asking if I’ve found a husband yet.

    My mother used to say that since she wasn’t Chinese enough to be the acting mother of his children, so that my father had to take on the roles of both parents. She said that father thought that we would loose something of ourselves if he didn’t do what he did.

    I think he was just raised too stringently.

    My brothers never had this problem with my father. Lin and Samuel were my father’s favorites. He knew how to be a parent to them. He once told me that my brother’s were shadows of people, because of something he did wrong earlier on in life, but that I was given a whole soul, a warrior’s spirit, he said. I was the child that would truly determine the future of his family, and that it was the will of his ancestors that it be so. He seemed sad when he said this.

    I guess I can understand why. Lin and Samuel both look more Chinese than I do. They can both speak Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. Lin knows Hakka, Taiwanese, and Shanghai as well. Samuel, though he doesn’t speak Taiwanese, speaks Hokkien. I can name half a dozen languages that I can read and write, but I’m barely able to speak Mandarin, and the most I can say in Cantonese is “hai gum seen -1-”, “bak chee -2-”, and “ban yeh -3-”. Nothing that would help me survive if I ever had to do more than impress someone with a common phrase or two. The only reason I know any of those phrases is because Lin used them when referring to the blind dates my father set up for me, and when I asked him, he kindly translated the words.

    I slip the chill, damp sock on and shove my foot carefully into my boot, muttering another phrase that pops into my head, “Ho fan ah,” I spit, turning to look at myself in the mirror. I can’t see much, just the outline of my body in the darkness. The window blinds are half closed, and with the overcast sky, not much light is coming into the room. I reach over and flip on the light, and blink, my face almost nose to nose with the mirror.

    “Wow,” I stand up straight, slowly, so as not to aggravate my burn, I look over myself in the mirror. This must be why Noin consented to wear the women’s uniform that the Preventers issue. I turn to the side and am shocked.

    Unlike most uniform skirts, it’s neither matronly nor is it too tight to work in.

    I guess that’s one I owe Lady Une. After working in that outfit she had in Oz, she must’ve learned a thing or two about comfort and flexibility.

    I glance at the bed, and reach over to pick up my jacket. The smooth material feels pleasant under my fingertips, and the familiar smell of myself on my jacket make me smile a little. As I lift it from the infirmary bed, though, I feel a slight chill. That letter in the pocket almost seemed to be waiting for me, before, to see what I would do. How I might react, like a good daughter or a bad one.

    I slip the jacket on, and zip it up as far as it goes. For once, I hope I responded how a good daughter would. I reach for the doorknob, and can’t, for the life of me, figure out why.

***

-1- 'hai gum seen' is a Cantonese phrase roughly translating to a departure message. One of it's usages is when a date drops you off.

-2- 'bak chee' is a Cantonese phrase for idiot. Re: Baka in Japanese, I think.

-3- 'ban yeh' is a Cantonese response to bullshit. It means something along the lines of "(you are being) pretentious".

The translations and Cantonese were taken from the site Hok Yeh Hai Si Hau La Leng Chai. It's one of the sites I use for research in foreign language. As the languages mentioned in this chapter are liable to show up in other chapters, expect more translation notes.

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