I wake up to the sound of my cell phone ringing at me. Rubbing my eyes, I glance at the clock. It’s seven a.m. I roll over, trying to ignore it, but in the end, the incessant ringing wins and I just wake up. “Hello, Po here.”

    “What hotel are you staying at?” the voice on the other end of the line is clear, sharp, and exacting. Exactly like the man that’s using it.

    “Heero? How did you-” I cut myself off I called Heero a day ago, unsure if he could make it up here in time for me to still have access to the computers I need him to look over, “On second thought, I’d really rather not know how you got here so fast. I’m staying at…” I glance with bleary eyes at the stationary next to the phone, “the Continental,” I pause and take a second to chuckle at a hotel in the colonies being named ‘Continental’, and then shrug when I hear his responding noise, low in his throat. Again I’m reminded of how he sounds, and get a flash of him whispering something in the same voice. Down girl, I tell myself, utterly confused. “Room 1531.”

    “Want to let the desk know I’ll be coming up? I’d hate to have to break in.”

    “Sure, where… where are you calling from at the moment?”

    “I’m at the space port, I just got in.”

    “You sound horribly awake for someone who just got off a shuttle flying to L1, how long have you been awake?” He chuckles a little, and a chill runs down my spine. “What?”

    “You’re just like Duo.”

    I blink, again wondering how I keep finding myself wrapped up with a man I haven’t seen in four… five years. “What do you mean by that?”

    “You’d bother to exchange pleasantries with someone who’s only waiting to hang up the phone before coming to see you face to face.”

    I grumble a second, seething, and hit the end button on my cell rather angrily. I look around the relatively tidy room and try to ignore what happened the night before. Allan had insisted on walking me up to my hotel room, and presumed that I would let him in, as though the politeness I’ve been showing him has been encouragement to more than a business relationship.

    It was all I could do to keep from hitting him and tossing his unconscious body out an airlock somewhere. But I have to remember that I work for the Preventers, and that sort of action is frowned upon. So I just politely declined offering him coffee, or water, or anything, despite the fact that I don’t have to pay for anything in this hotel room, or that I have someone that I…

    I cut off my own thought, again asking myself what Wufei was starting to say when we got cut off. I know that I’m probably getting my hopes up a little too high by thinking that he would be saying what I hope he might be saying. I can’t even really let myself imagine that he would say that, because I couldn’t accept him if he did propose something to me…

    We work together.

    I roll out of bed, disgusted with myself for obsessing about him when I’ve got a job to do, and step into the bathroom for a quick shower. There’s no way that Heero can get here faster than I can get ready.

    None.

***

    “Very smart.” More footsteps. “You’ve probably already figured out that I can’t let you leave here alive. But I’m not expecting you to make it easy for me.” He pauses, “I’m glad you aren’t.”

    There is a faraway noise at the door. “One of yours, no doubt, causing trouble.”

    I press my hand even tighter over my shoulder. My arm is getting cold, numb, and my grip is slipping. Not good. My sleeve is soaked down to the bicep, and I’m sweating.

***

    There’s a sharp rap on the door outside, and I brush my hair back from my face, sweeping invisible strands that have escaped my braids back and into place before I rub the lotion into my hands and go out to answer the door.

    Unfortunately, as I lean forward to look through the peep hole, I see the one person I’d rather see fall off a cliff while lit on fire with gasoline and methanol than at my doorway is on the other side, with a heavy sigh, I open the door.

    “Hello Allan.”

    He smiles and motions that he’d like to come inside, but I shake my head. “I’m waiting on someone. A specialist I had to call in,” I add, eyes challenging. He regards me innocently, and my confidence, for a moment, waivers. He seems utterly unperturbed by these proceedings. He hasn’t seemed upset despite what I’ve done over the last five days, he’s… actually been rather helpful.

    We stand in the doorway and something in the back of my mind reminds me, ‘He may just not know anything.’

    “So if you’ll excuse me…”

    There’s the noise of a throat clearing from behind Allan and to one side. I can’t help the smile that comes to my face as Allan turns to find himself face to face with Heero Yuy. He’s dressed his part, as I hoped he would, wearing a business suit with a tie that’s pristine, and a pair of glasses with thick black rims. He adjusts them and offers Allan a hand shake, which the disturbing lackey takes and looks overconfident afterwards.

    And here I thought Duo was a good actor. Apparently Heero learned more than I thought he did from his lover. I think about that for a moment as Heero brushes past Allan and into the suite behind me, and I say to Allan, “I’ll be by around,” I check my watch, “One. If you would like to meet us at the front lobby, I’ll need access to archives and accounting.”

    He is supposedly a facilitator, after all.

    I close the door and turn, seeing that Heero’s barely got a slightly smug expression on his face, and he sets down a small bag on the couch, and a briefcase on the coffee table. “So what are we looking at?”

    “And you’re just like Wufei,” I comment, stepping over to retrieve my own briefcase and the paperwork that’s inside there.

    “What do you mean by that?”

    “The minute you do see someone, it’s right down to business,” I say, setting the files in front of him. The look he gives me is vaguely mischievous, and the closest thing to a grin I’ve ever seen him wear on the serious and strong face of his.

***

    “Oh? You thought we wouldn’t know you’d sent for backup?”

    I guess I’m lucky. I should be thankful I didn’t go into shock. I’m not quite sure what it means, but I guess it’s got something to do with being shot enough times that my body no longer registers the shock of it.

    Disturbing indeed.

    I remember mentioning that to Allan, before he… before he got shot. I mentioned Wufei, and that I’d called in backup.

    “Don’t think that will help you. Your precious…” he pauses, “Wufei,” and the way he says that voice scares me deep down, “is a bit indisposed at the moment. No one is coming to save you, Investigator. Why not just make this easy on all of us involved and show yourself?”

    Still his muffled footsteps on the unpadded carpet. I search the wall behind me for some sort of escape route. If only I had a gun or… something.

    A knife.

    A chair.

    Heero.

    Not that I think he still keeps up with the old line of work, but I don’t doubt he’d be able to think of a way out of here.

***

    “So knowing what you know,” Heero says sidelong to me as we walk back towards the hotel from the car that brought us back from the headquarters. “Watch your back, Sally.”

    I glance at him, “You don’t think-”

    “Kierns is no fool. I’m beginning to wonder if he isn’t a part of some bigger picture that we are missing… He’ll know, soon, that we got into the real records hidden under the surface.” He laughs a little self-deprecatingly, “I’m good, but I’m a little rusty. It’s what happens when you don’t keep up-”

    “Perishable skills,” I offer, leaning forward to press the button on the elevator. He nods. “When do you fly out?”

    “In the morning, I think,” he says as we both glance around the lobby a little anxiously. “Mind if I sleep in your suite tonight?”

    “Not at all,” I say with a heavy sigh. The elevator doors open and I step inside. He follows, quick on my heels, and I hit the button for the fifteenth floor. I lean back against the polished metal on the inside of the elevator and glance at my reflection in the mirrors on the side, and find him staring at me. “What?” I ask quietly.

    “You haven’t looked me straight in the eye since I got here,” he says, folding his arms a little uncomfortably in the suit jacket. He’s not used to wearing something so formal, I can tell. I wonder what he does for a living, now.

    “Haven’t I?”

    “It’s Hilde, isn’t it?” the words shock me, and I turn my head to look at him. His dark, almost fathomless blue eyes are staring at the marble floor of the elevator, and he doesn’t look up at me for a long minute.

    I start to speak, but he cuts me off.

    “And that comment I made about you being like Duo.”

    “Actually, it isn’t so much…”

    “Then it’s Wufei,” he finishes simply, turning to press his back up against the elevator a foot or so away from me. I start to speak, but he cuts me off. Again. “You shouldn’t worry, he’s nothing like me, when it comes down to it.”

    “What do you mean, ‘he’s nothing like you’? The two of you are-”

    “We’re different people, Sally.”

    “I know that!” I nearly snap. I don’t think I’ve ever raised my voice at Heero before. It doesn’t necessarily make me feel good to do it now. Not over him. “But you’ve got to admit you have similar dispositions, at times. And you’re both very closed off.”

    “We’re all closed off,” Heero says, turning to me for a moment. The elevator stops and the doors open. “Wufei… Trowa… Quatre… Duo,” he hesitates for a moment on that name, as though tasting it. He still loves Duo, no matter what happened between the two of them, I know it. “Even you.”

    “I know I’m closed off.” I turn and step off the elevator, leading the way down the hall to my suite, “Don’t you think I know that? I never said I wasn’t.”

    “But you implied it,” Heero says in a neutral voice.

    “The only thing I meant to imply was that Wufei won’t open up.”

    “He doesn’t know how,” he replies simply, waiting as I open the door. “It takes time, and someone who is willing to teach you.”

    “Who’s going to teach me?” I mutter, flopping exhaustedly on the couch. I didn’t even bother to lock the door behind us, but thankfully Heero does, and then turns towards me.

    “I could, if you like.”

 ***

    I keep my head low and crab walk as best I can along the cabinet towards the desk where Heero started all this trouble. He steps out in front of me so quickly that I almost run into his legs. He holds his gun aloft, aimed directly at my forehead.

    Slowly, I back up, moving away from him slightly. Not quite far or fast enough to be considered an attempt at escape.

    “Can you stand?”

    I look up at my executioner and feel a calm pass over me. Somewhere outside I hear more commotion, gunshots. I do not respond to his question, but sit back on my haunches. The coppery stench of blood mingling with sweat as it trickles down my arm is one of the little things I notice. A wound I’ll never feel. Just like how I’ll never be able to tell Fei how…

    The gunshots cease.

    “Whatever happens, someone is going to die today,” the gunman says.

***

    It was last night when he said that, and this morning he left. I walked into the office building feeling like there were a million knives waiting around every corner to leap out and stab me, and Allan kept close to my side when I didn’t bat him away like I normally would have.

    “Something’s different about you today, Investigator,” he mentioned, leaning close to me, “Do I sense a change of mood?”

    We were just out in the hallway from the archives and accounting department, and that was when the first bullet was fired. It came so quickly that I barely had time to react to the sound, and narrowly missed having a wound in more than just my shoulder.

    Like my head.

    Allan looked completely surprised, and so when I heard the next gunshot I grabbed him and dragged him along behind me as I ducked into the accounting department reception area. It was, unsurprisingly, empty, and so I forced him down into the little alcove while I quickly called to Trowa and Wufei for backup.

*

    I nod, and he takes more careful aim with his gun. Something outrageously automatic, with a silencer and a laser sight. I want to close my eyes. I don’t want to look up the barrel of his scratched up weapon, pewter gunmetal scuffed from long use.

    But I can’t.

    My eyes are locked open, empty of myself. I have never believed in heaven, but I can hear the voices of angels coming from somewhere, if I pay close attention.

    He closes his eyes in preparation of pulling the trigger, and time slows for me again. Just as before, it’s shattered by the report of a gun. The gunman falls sideways, his motion following the trail of blood out of the side of his temple, and the gun falls from his fingers. Reaching forward with my left hand quickly, I grab the gun from where it fell from his limp fingers and whirl on the doorway, in the direction of the shot.

    Trowa, in little better shape than I, a bloody hole in his right forearm and some wound on his left side, is the angel whose voice I heard. I lower the gun and Trowa stumbles into the room.

    “Where’s Wufei?” I ask in a hoarse voice.

    “L2,” Trowa responds, offering me a hand up off the floor. Once on my left, the two of us move in recon formation out of the records room.

***