Call of Duty

Part: Seven
Title: Gunshot
Genre: Gundam Wing
A/N: Flashbacks and timeholes abound. Be warned, and be wary.

***

    I find myself pinned down. On one side there is gunfire, and on the other, Allan’s innocent face. Heero was right on the money when he warned me that Jarod Kierns was a man who would know how much he had gleamed out of the Exian database and would act accordingly. Allan, for his part, knew next to nothing of his company’s indiscretions on peace.

    It’s why I bothered to yank him down behind the hutch built into the wall with me when the shooting started. Even though it cost me the use of my right arm. A bullet through the shoulder, one that I’m doing my best not to focus on.

    “This is crazy, you know that, don’t you?” Allan says in a shrill whisper. “You don’t have a gun, and there are so many more of them -”

    I reach over, putting weight on my pained arm, and slap him across the face. Indignantly, he glares as the red imprint of my hand starts to grow on his face. “Shut up and let me think,” I say in a cold voice. They don’t know I’m unarmed, unless they just heard him say so. I glance up at the clock. Trowa and Wufei should be in looking for me soon. If I can only hold out until then…

    No, holding out is secondary. My first objective has to be escape, or I won’t survive. I glance around the area and notice the recessed doorway leading somewhere. It’s ajar.

    “Investigator, there’s no use hiding. If you come out now, with your hands up, we won’t harm you. We only want to ask you a few questions.”

    Yeah right. If I can get through that door…

    I look over to Allan, distracted, I only meet his glance as he makes his decision. A fatal one. I make a move to grab him, but it seems like I am moving in slow motion, and he at double speed. My injury must be slowing me down. Or maybe I was never as quick as I thought I was.

    Time seems to freeze for a moment. Allan meets my eyes and smiles faintly. His smile is very reminiscent of Wufei, for an instant. I feel a twinge of regret, and berate myself for thinking of Wufei at a time when I should be worried about survival. There is what seems to be an eternal moment of silence, which is finally broken into a million shards by the report of a gun.

    My first thoughts are that I never meant for this to happen. Not any of it. I wasn’t supposed to find something that would get anyone killed, not at all.

*

    I wake up, and look out the window. He’s gone, today, I think to myself. Hopped a shuttle this morning for L1 and I won’t see him for the better part of a month, if my own mission goes well. If my mission goes badly, however… I’d rather not think about that right now, so I don’t think I will.

    So I’m going to do something to distract myself. I’m going to go exercise. I sit up in bed and notice that I’ve beaten my alarm clock up. It’s not quite six a.m. I throw back the sheets in a frustrated gesture and stalk to my closet, pulling on some clothes. I stop by the full-length mirror before pulling on my sweat pants. I don’t recall ever enjoying mirrors. When I look into them, I see my mother’s reflection instead of my own, sometimes. We have the same eyes, my father and brothers always remarked when I was younger. It wasn’t true, of course, her eyes were much like Zechs’, and mine are slightly dirtier than hers, bearing slight flecks of brown in the irises, but it is nice of them to say that.

    Other than my eyes, I can’t say anything bad about my reflection. Working for the Preventers really keeps you in shape. At twenty eight, I can finally say that I’ve got the muscular body of a soldier… and the curves of a super model. I don’t mind mirrors, if I’m not looking at my face.

    Sometimes I think that what my father and brothers really meant was that we have the same expressions, or perhaps, the same expressiveness to our eyes. I do believe my mother exemplified the idea behind a ‘cold gaze’. Whenever we did something wrong, as children my brothers and I were more afraid of her finding out and giving us a look than of our father’s punishment. And that, if nothing else, I’ve inherited from her.

    Staring, transfixed, into the mirror, I mull over the previous evening. I’m not sure quite how I feel about Wufei, but I feel better, somehow, after my short visit with Heero. He’s a good listener, as good of a listener as anyone could ever hope for. And, for the most part, most likely because of his own sins and transgressions, he doesn’t judge. I must say he’s a better confessor than anyone else I’ve ever known. Than any priest, anyway.

    Thinking of priests makes me think of Duo, and of the puzzling situation between the two of them. I can’t think of anything that would make Heero so reluctant to talk about his former… whatever…

    I pull on my sweatpants and head out of my apartment, locking the door behind me. I’m not going to work today, I’ve decided, I’ll go in tomorrow, since I leave the day after. Instead, I’m going to go for a long jog. I check to make sure I’ve got everything, including my cell phone, and clip my keys onto a lariat, which I tuck into my sweatshirt.

    The jog is uneventful. I make it all the way to Headquarters, nearly a mile away, and lean over, panting for breath. I didn’t realize I was going to jog so far, in the cold, and I stare up at the building. For twentieth century modern architecture, it’s not half bad.

    It’s a style that has endured. I head up the front steps, remembering my laptop, which was left behind in my hasty retreat yesterday. A battered old Preventers baseball cap on my head, I pull it low to hide my eyes. The doors of the elevator open on the proper floor, and I step out, shoving my hands into the pockets of my zip up sweatshirt, eyes low.

    I make it to my office, and am opening the door when the first voice catches up with me. “Hey, you! How’d you get in here?”

    I turn and give the speaker, Julia, a flat look. She blinks, taken aback.

    “Sally?”

    I nod, wordlessly, and push my door open, heading inside and hoping, fervently, that she doesn’t follow me.

 

    No such luck.

 

    “Why aren’t you in to work today?” Julia asks, leaning against the doorway and running her fingers through her platinum bangs. No, Julia, reminding me that I’m not as blond as you are isn’t going to ingratiate you to me at the moment, or make me any more inclined to speak.

    “I’m leaving day after tomorrow on a mission.” I grab my briefcase, with my laptop, “I’m not required to be in until I get back.”

    “Oh, is that because of the accident you had in the elevator yesterday? We heard all about it… I wouldn’t have been so forgiving, if it were me.”

    I pause, half bent over to take something out of my bottom drawer. “Forgiving?”

    “If Chang spilled coffee all over me and gave me third degree burns, I think I’d have clobbered him.” She sees the tight set of my lips and adds quickly, “Even if he did help me to the nurse’s office afterwards.”

    “Where…” I struggle to keep my voice controlled, “Where did you hear that?”

    “Everyone’s talking about it.”

    “Everyone?” I ask, feeling an old familiar twitch start in my eye.

    “Yeah, Jake down on the second floor told us all about it.”

    “Right,” I mutter, slamming my drawer.

    Julia jumps as I straighten up, the noise and the look on my face making her almost take a step back. “Let’s set one thing straight, shall we?”

    She swallows, but nods.

    “Wufei had nothing to do with the coffee that got spilled on me. It was my own fault. I happen to be having a particularly bad week, and picking on my friends isn’t helping any, as for being mad at anyone,” I shove the papers into my briefcase and take a step forward, closing the distance between the two of us. “The only person I’m mad at right now is all of you gossip mongers.”

    I put one hand on her collar bone and shoved her out of my doorway, a little forcibly. She stumbled and ran into the wall across from my office, giving me a deer in the headlights look. Julia can be all right sometimes, but she has never been able to trust Wufei, after what happened during the Mariemaia Incident. I’m not sure why I can, personally, but I can, and I’m sick and tired of hearing people run around behind his back and badmouth him. I slam my office door behind me and lock it, turning and leaving the floor without further comment.

    Julia collects herself enough to call after me, “Good luck on your mission,” as the elevator doors close. I glare at them, and her through them, as long as I can bear to be that angry at her.

    Originally, Wufei and I were partnered together because he was a rookie, and, in a sense, I was a senior operative. Lady Une sent me to be the one to extend the invitation to join the Preventers to him, for good reason. He was very difficult to work with, back then. He wouldn’t speak much outside of simple, formal declarations. ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ with the occasionally long sentence of, ‘that’s illogical’. He used to snap things in Chinese that ended with the word ‘onna’ - woman. I was never quite sure whether he meant them as being directed towards me, he used to be very fond of using that impersonal way of addressing me, or in general.

    Looking back on it now I have to wonder if he wasn’t ‘speaking’ with Meiran.

    The other operatives were scared of him, and mistrustful. The later, obviously, hasn’t still been quelled in everyone’s hearts. Julia’s not the problem, she’s just the semi-innocent victim of gossipmongers. But that she became such a victim is a problem. He was partnered with me for a year and a half, an epoch of annoying non-communication, before I finally snapped.

**

    “Yes,” Wufei said, sitting down to fill out his paperwork at the desk across from mine. It was the third word he had said that morning, and the first had been a gruff ‘hello’, while the second was a ‘no’ when I offered him coffee.

    I slammed my folder, under the weight of my hand, down on my desk. The impact very nearly sent my steaming coffee toppling right over into my lap, but it steadied itself, only releasing more curling wisps of fragrant steam and a few drops onto the finished wooden tabletop. Startled, he nearly jumped in his seat, and looked up at me.

    “All right Chang,” I was still calling him that at the time, a personal-revenge against his single word speech. “I don’t know what your problem is, but since you don’t answer, I’m going to make this simple. Start talking, or I’m asking to be reassigned.”

    He looked up at me, brown eyes wide and uncomprehending.

    “Don’t even give me that. Whatever test you want me to pass, I think by now I’ve passed it. There’s no need to continue with this farce. I know you can speak, I’ve heard you. Open your mouth and use it for what it was meant for, Wufei.”

    When he still didn’t speak, I shoved my chair backwards and stalked out of the office. I was waiting outside of Une’s office when he caught up with me.

    “You’re very demanding,” he muttered at me.

    “You’re infuriating, I hope your new partner is as patient as I am.”

    Une watched from inside her office at the exchange, I now know. She didn’t open the door because she wanted us to sort it out. Again, actions that suspect she saw the two of us in some sort of deeper relationship than we ourselves ever did, before.

    “I’ll resign first,” he responded, folding his arms on his chest.

    “Resign,” I taunted, crossing my long legs. He remained undaunted, and we stared at one another for a long moment. He was the one to crack first, a slight twitch of his eyebrow, and I knew I wasn’t going to ask to be reassigned anymore than he was going to resign.

    “It’s going to take time,” he said, lowering his arms, and in so doing, his defenses.

    “I’m willing to help… and to wait.” He nodded grudgingly, looking very uncomfortable in his uniform. He had recently hit a growth spurt, the one that took him from eye level to a few inches taller than me, and he had yet to receive his new uniform, so his clothing was too small for him. “But I won’t take this silent treatment from you.”

    He nodded again, “And the rest of the force, either, I gather.”

    “What do you mean?”

    He gestured around with a trained hand, an economic flick of his wrist, and I noticed for the first time that he and I were alone in the small area outside the office. “I know what they say about me. I’m not deaf.”

    “Just mute,” I muttered, accepting the hand he offered me to help me out of the chair. He smirked a little at the joke, the first crack of his sense of humor I had then to see.

    “Chang the Terrible strikes again,” he muttered, disdainfully. I knew it was not a nickname he enjoyed. “Dragon’s venom in my veins.”

    We turned, together, to head back to the elevator, and our floor, where our office was abandoned, and open. I paused, as he was about to step into the elevator, and stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Not everyone thinks that, you know.”

    “Who doesn’t?” his tone was gruff, bitter, jaded. “I even drive my partner to extremes.”

    I ran a hand over my hair, trying to tuck the escaping strands back into the braid on the side of my head, but they came right back down, tumbling into my eyes. “Not because of that though,” I responded, stepping past him into the elevator.

    “Why then?” he jumped on the question, tactlessly and bluntly.

    “Because I’m tired of seeing you pretending to be Pandora’s box, Wufei.” I said, knowing, and forgiving, of his lack of contact socially. First a gundam pilot, second a human being, Duo commented about Wufei once. “Opening up won’t destroy the world.”

    He blinked, and then a calm expression, a warmly calm expression, spread across his features. It was the first hint of a smile I had ever seen on his face, and I liked the look of it.

**

    Even after the outburst, I think as I head back down the front steps with my briefcase, and laptop, securely in hand, it hadn’t been smooth sailing. He still hasn’t lived down the overbearing and scary reputation, and Trowa doesn’t help matters much. The two of them seem to share some sort of telepathy that no one else can intrude on, when they work together. Undoubtedly born of working together… but it may also come from some sort of a shared experience. I hail a cab and head home, suddenly feeling weary, possibly from the medication and the exertion, and maybe just from thinking too hard.

*

For the record, the beginning of this chapter is relating to Sally's own mission. When I started these next chapters, I couldn't bring myself to follow the path of the story linearlly through time, so the day or so after Wufei left is now being told in flashbacks. It's an odd way to write, perhaps, but it's what I came up with for this section.

***

6; Hard Truth | 8; Phone Tag