CHAPTER 7


Wufei was married? But he only looked to be the same age as the girl in that picture! She wondered where the girl was now, if the two were still married, or divorced, or even had children...

No matter which answer was the right one, she couldn't figure out why in the world he was down here and guarding her, if he had a wife.

Then maybe he didn't have a wife. Quatre had told her that he had been disinherited when his ardently pacifistic father learnt that he was fighting. Maybe this girl was the same, had refused to see Wufei because he fought in the war. Maybe he had snuck away in the middle of the night, as Quatre had, and was now dead to his family because of the dishonour...

Dorothy groaned inwardly as she was reminded of her mother's trashy romance novels. None of these ideas sat very well anyway, but neither did the idea of Wufei as a husband.

The very thought made her smile. Wufei as a husband? It was a ridiculous idea; he'd be a terrible husband! He was rude, inconsiderate, overbearing, domineering and a million and one other unpleasant adjectives. Dorothy pitied the poor girl in the photograph if she'd even for a short time experienced the nightmare that it was to live with Wufei.

However...

Dorothy remembered the way his body arched and twisted as he danced with his katana in the sunrise. She had been lost in his movements, hypnotised in fact. Since then, she had noticed that he displayed this graceful strength at all times, and sometimes had to snap herself out of a trance when watching him gut a fish or uproot a potato.

He was more than capable of protecting her life with his own, and more than willing to do so. Even when she had been acting like a brat, he had resigned himself to bleed to death just to make sure she was warm. He was strong too; she would never forget how close he had come to killing her when he was delirious on the train.

But he wasn't stupid, which she would expect from someone displaying the brute strength of Chang Wufei. He could hit, but he could also think, and often referred to books far too advanced to be light reading for a seventeen-year-old. Dorothy ought to know; she had read them herself. He wasn't a sheltered academic though, and was more than capable of fixing the roof, cooking a meal or building a chicken coop.

Examining Wufei objectively, she began to see what that girl in the picture had apparently seen. Chang Wufei would be a good husband. Is, she corrected herself. He is a good husband.

She suddenly felt unaccountably jealous of that girl in the photograph.

"Dorothy."

Imperceptibly, she slipped the wallet under the mattress and untucked some of the sheet as she turned. "Yes?"

Wufei, who had consumed her thoughts for at least ten minutes, was standing in the doorway and frowning at her.

"What are you doing?"

She lifted the loosely flapping sheet corner. "I just thought I'd do some laundry."

His brow furrowed even further. "You've been perfectly content to do without so far," he commented.

He was right; neither of them had the energy at the end of the day to do laundry, so they'd taken to simply airing their few clothes out every night in preparation for the next day.

"For you, not me," she said sweetly. "You do realise you're scaring the fish away with that smell, don't you?"

He snorted in derision, but walked away as she had hoped he would. Dorothy breathed a sigh of relief, and returned her attention to the wallet. She had been preoccupied with the photos before, but, now she came to look, could see that it contained a lot of money, enough to buy them a house six times as good as the one they had, and eat six times as frequently. She knew that this wasn't all of it either; only a fool would keep all of their money in one place, and Wufei was no fool.

And neither was she. Carefully, she tucked half the notes into a pocket, the other half sliding into her bra cups in case of emergency.

She was ready to go.





Wufei returned to the house in the early afternoon. "I'll be out in a bit!" he called to Dorothy before settling down for a cold shower. It was extremely refreshing, and rejuvenated his aching muscles. While he missed the luxury of a warm shower, he had also scolded himself for being so soft, and had come to appreciate a cold shower in the way he used to.

He smiled as he remembered Meiran's scorn when she found out that he preferred warm water. "You will never be a warrior!" she had spat. "You are so weak you can't even bear the water of nature!"

"Nature made hot springs," he had reminded her, much to her disgust, and had continued to soap himself in it. She had stormed away, letting him think he had won, before disabling the house's hot water minutes later.

At the time it had seemed so ridiculous and offensive, but now...

Dorothy wasn't preparing vegetables in the kitchen. He frowned, and wondered if everything was all right in the patch. He stuck his head out of the window and called, "Heidi!" There was no answer. He scrubbed his hair with the towel and wondered where she could be.

Suddenly, he heard a small, intermittent noise. It was the mini computer he used to send in his daily report to the preventers, alerting him to a vid communication. This was unheard of; he'd made a particular point of concealing this computer and his reports from Dorothy so that she wouldn't use it to try and speak to Une herself.

He opened it up. "Preventer Une?" he said curiously. She seemed tense.

"Wufei, we have a problem." Wufei was at once in preventer mode, more than he had been for days. "Someone hacked into your reports, they know that you and Dorothy are hiding out in Hong Kong. It's a good thing you didn't tell us where, they have no idea as to your exact location, but be on your guard: do not let Dorothy Catalonia out of your sight, and keep her indoors as much as possible. Impress the importance of it upon her, I'm sure she'll co-operate."

Wufei nodded, his throat dry. "I'll speak to her immediately."

She nodded curtly. "See that you do. Une out."

The moment she disconnected, he slammed the computer shut and shoved it back into its hiding place. He ran outside and called for Dorothy, with no answer. She was nowhere to be found. Wufei felt a ball of dread in the pit of his stomach, and ran over to the Lams' house.

Mr and Mrs Lam obviously couldn't comprehend the gravity of the situation, but were concerned at his ruffled appearance nonetheless. "Mr Wong!" Mrs Lam greeted him. "First Heidi, and now you, what a pleasant surprise!"

Wufei stiffened. "Where is she?" he said in a controlled voice. Mrs Lam looked taken aback by his tone.

"Why, Heidi came to see us earlier, I think she was asking us about how to get to the city. We lent her our boat for the day, and she thanked us, that's all."

His blood ran cold. "How long ago was that?"

"It was this morning, I'm not sure of the time. I think she went to buy some food, she kept pointing to our spice rack."

Wufei thanked her quickly, declined the offer of tea and ran back to his own boat, cursing a certain platinum debutante every step of the way.





Dorothy was enjoying Hong Kong very much. With the wad of notes she had taken from Wufei's wallet, she had bought herself some herbs first, afterwards succumbing to her growing need of a restaurant meal. It was the nicest three-course meal she had ever tasted, but her stomach was so shrunk from their frugal diet that she was stuffed very quickly. Ordinarily, she was able to finish such a meal with room to spare, but just as in those days she had never known hunger, she had never known what it was to be truly full either.

Greatly satisfied, she left a handsome tip and walked out, checking her watch. There were still hours till sundown, more than long enough to indulge her other great weakness: clothes shopping.

It was such a stereotype that she hated to surrender to it, but part of how people viewed her depended a lot on what she wore, and Dorothy cared a great deal about public opinion. She had never had the chance to browse in China before, and delighted in discovering how uniquely beautiful each garment was.

The shopping relaxed her the way nothing had for ages, made her forget where she was and who she was with, but Dorothy decided it was time to leave when the sunlight began to fade. She and Wufei weren't staying on the main island, but on one of the smaller ones around it, and she knew she had to leave quickly if she wanted to get back before sunset.

Suddenly, there was a strong grip on her arm. She looked up and saw Wufei, his face expressionless in what she recognised as his preventer mode.

"What are you doing?" she hissed.

"I told you to stay near me. You violated that trust."

She found herself growing angry. "Ever since I met you, you've been controlling me!" she exploded, still in a hiss. "From telling me I can't go out to putting me in a box-"

"I apologised for that."

"To dyeing my hair-"

"That hair dye has probably saved your life countless times today."

She rolled her eyes in frustration. "Don't be so overdramatic, no one knows where we are!"

"Typical woman, assuming things you know nothing of."

This infuriated her further, and she was about to say something when he stopped at a stall and began looking at the products, a rather dull selection of patterned rugs.

She laughed bitterly. "Oh, so I'm in deadly danger, but there's always time to carpet shop?"

"There's a long distance gunman on the rooftops, there may be more. They can't recognise you easily, but they're looking."

"Where?"

"About a hundred metres to the right, on our side of the street."

She turned her head to try and catch a glimpse of the gunman, but found herself confronted with a faceful of carpet. The scratchy rug lowered to reveal Wufei grinning like a tourist as he spoke loudly in Chinese.

She knew with a disgusted certainty what he had just asked her, and glared at him. "It's hideous, put it down."

His head came closer to hers as he leaned over to lay it back. It gave him the opportunity to say, "Then don't endanger your life by looking for your assassins," in the quietest voice possible."

She sighed. "How are we going to get out of here?"

"You came here to shop, so we'll shop," he said, with considerable distaste. "But you have to act like my wife, do you understand?" She nodded mutely. He spoke harshly, his voice full of an irritation quite out of synch with the blank expression on his face. "For once in your life, just do as I say, and you might leave this island alive."

Even after these words, she was still startled when he took her hand in his. "Don't speak. If they hear an English voice, they'll track you down easily. I'm going to speak in Chinese from now on, just smile and nod at everything." He spoke a few words in Chinese, and she smiled and nodded neutrally. "Exactly," he whispered.

It was the last time he spoke English that day, and Dorothy spent the next hour as a smiling, nodding mute. She hated it, hated being this helpless, but decided grudgingly that pretending to be Wufei's wife wasn't actually the worst punishment she could have come up with. If she hadn't been fully aware that a gun could be trained to her head for every move she made, it would have even felt comfortable. Wufei, far from the awkwardness she had expected, was doing an incredible job of seeming relaxed, his own actions even putting her at ease. He slipped an arm around her waist and held her close, his hand resting easily on her hip. She returned the gesture, and actually began to get into this role.

Her thoughts strayed once again to the girl in the photographs. Dorothy wanted to know the answers to those pictures more than ever.

An hour or so into this facade, he suddenly steered her to the side of the street and turned her very specifically. She forgot about not speaking English and opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing when he punched her, sending her flying into the wall.

Head reeling, she was startled out of her daze by the sound of gunshots, and was about to cry out when she remembered his instructions to remain silent. When she could see clearly again, she was stunned.

Wufei had dodged every single shot.

"Dorothy Catalonia."

The gunman jumped down and spoke in broken English.

"I am a representative of the Prisoners of War."

He didn't get to continue. Wufei attacked the taller man first, violently twisting and smashing whatever body parts were necessary to remove every weapon the assassin possessed. The man retaliated, and Dorothy became hypnotised by the chaos, at a loss as they fought with skill and speed, their movements too smoothly executed to remain clear.

They became clear in a hurry when the man pulled back an arm and shouted at her breathlessly in his broken English.

"Traitor to humanity! Die!" His arm was flung forward.

Suddenly Wufei was in front of her, sprawled on the ground. She cried out in shock when she saw the knife handle sticking out of his side, the handle of the blade meant for her. Tears trickled down her cheeks as the assassin advanced. She looked into the man's eyes, all thoughts of flight gone from her head, waiting for her death.