"So, what was it that you wanted to talk to me about?" I ask, towel warm around my neck in the heat of the kitchen. He's made tea and is bringing it over to sit across from me.

"Wufei isn't dead."

My eyes sting again. I thought, after a day and a half of crying that I was out of tears left to cry, but the certainty in Heero's voice brings me right back to the brink of my former tears and threatens to throw me straight into them again.

Lady Une said that there weren't any survivors. She's never lied to me before, I don't see why she would be lying to me now…

As though reading my mind, he sets the mug in front of me and says, "She's not lying, she just doesn't know any other truth to tell you."

"And you do?" I snap, irritable.

The long pause in the air is what makes me reconsider, looking up from my teacup to stare at him, mouth slightly open. I swallow the lump in my throat.

His eyes, cold and hard, meet mine, and it's like running smack into a brick wall.

"… do you?"

But he doesn't respond to my question, instead, he stands and picks his jacket up off of the chair. "Drink your tea. And make yourself something to eat, I'll be back tomorrow." He pulls on the jacket, his dark hair messy against the collar as he flips it up against the chill outside.

I don't get a chance to say anything more before he's disappeared through the door, but the second I hear it shut snugly, it's as though someone has opened a set of blinds and let the sunshine into my day. If you're trying to read Heero, you can stop, but he rarely leads you to believe anything he doesn't mean.

Calculating bastard, he is.

But I can overlook that for the moment, because Wufei is alive. He hasn't said as much, but he may as well have. I stand and head over to the refrigerator, amused but not overly surprised to find that there's food in it.

Heero must be very intent on seeing me back in top form. Or else someone told him to make sure I was taking care of myself.

***

"I'm no doctor, Fei… but from what I've looked up, your eyesight will come back when it wants to, and not before."

The concept of being less than whole, at one point, would have been much more disturbing than death. But now, something's changed.

During the war, I was obsessed, preoccupied with perfection, and I held myself to a standard that was impossible for anyone to uphold. All that mattered to me was the people I felt I had let down. The clan whose entire line culminated in my life. It was easy to feel unworthy in such circumstances, far too easy. And I weakly allowed myself to fall into that feeling of unworthiness, which is why I couldn't really forgive myself for Meiran's death. And why I punished myself for so long.

The other people I worked around at the Preventers could see it in me, my inability to forgive myself. Even if they did not know that they could. People act often on their instincts, and they treated me how I gave them reason to treat me. It is that simple.

Now I have another reason to go on. One that is much simpler than a clan and traditions that I have to maintain, one that has less responsibility, and yet a greater one.

"That does not disturb me," I reply, finally, finishing dressing in the clothes he's brought for me. "I can see enough to move about, and anything else that I require can be taken care of."

I swallow, slightly. I very much doubt that Sally will care that my eyes are not perfect; she isn't concerned with such things. I do not believe that she feels what she feels for me because of my eyesight, and I hope that it will not influence her feelings that it is no longer perfect.

There is a long silence in the room, one in which not even Trowa utters a word.

"You've changed," Duo says, and though I can't see his face, I can tell that there's an approving smile there, by the texture of his voice in my ears. "We'll be docking shortly. The two of you will transfer over to your transport to earth from the port."

"Duo," Trowa speaks up for the first time since entering the room. "Aren't you going to come down and see… him?"

The figure I can make out before me stiffens, and I notice that Trowa stills again. None of us are exactly sure what happened between Duo and Heero, but we do know that it led to Duo moving back to the colonies from earth, and leaving Heero alone.

It was shortly after the Incident. And neither of them spoke to any of us about it. Quatre and Trowa managed to last a bit longer… but not by much. Trowa and Quatre splitting up I can understand. Quatre felt the strains of his obligations at Winner Corporation. And the desire, that he spoke to me of a few times, to start a family of his own.

A desire that did not echo in Trowa, who knew only of responsibility in family, and no joy. When they split up, Heero's response was that it would not be permanent.

I remember his words, and the far off look in his eyes as he said them. "Love is more important than some things." Undoubtedly, he was thinking about something between he and Duo.

"No," he replies, turning towards the door. "He doesn't want to see me. Not now."

"That's a lie," I hear myself saying.

"What?"

"There's very little else I can think of that Heero would like more than to see you again."

"It's an easy thing for you to say," Duo replies, and I can hear his eyes flashing as he turns his head to look at me. "Easy for you to say when you have someone like Sally. She made herself sick worrying about you, but you didn't think about that, did you? She probably would've died if you had… And you've never given her anything to show for how much she cares about, have you? She loves you, Fei!"

It takes a long moment to regain my composure after such a weighty confession as that one. I had known that Sally would take it hard, but not to that extent. Duo's words strike true to my heart, and like a spear in my chest, and I have to clear my mind before I can manage to say the words I know must follow his angry shout.

"And Heero loves you."

***

My return to the office is not so much a triumphant one as it is a victorious one. After two weeks of forced recovery from Heero, I am back in good shape, and walk myself right back into the Preventers office. Lady Une's secretary said that it was fine for me to come back when I felt comfortable doing so, and now I feel comfortable, despite having to wear new boots that make my feet hurt a little as I walk in them. The office is much cleaner, if possible, than when I returned. The carpets were still being replaced when I left, and the window glass was still being shipped in. Something to do with the insurance companies not wanting to pay the contractors and the government having made no provision for retrofitting the building.

Julia waves a timid hello, mindful of my prior mood, and I offer her an easy smile. She can't know about Wufei and Trowa. She doesn't have the connections that I do, and so she won't have been informed that they are going to be returning. All she knows is that I care about them, and it's putting me on edge.

And in her own way, she cares and is trying to make me feel better. But she doesn't know how, because she hasn't known me for long enough.

I can't fault her for that.

Although it would be extremely amusing to see her trying to have a conversation with Heero, someone who does understand. All around me everyone appears to be catching up on paperwork, and so I head in to my office to find a list of assignments on my desk.

I laugh as I read it.

Apparently, on top of being in charge of his finances, I'm now expected to finish his old mission reports as well. There's a stack of folders on the desk. With a sigh, I set the to-do list to the side and start in on the papers.

I feel the presence more than hear her.

"Hello, Hilde," I say in a quiet voice without looking up.

She jumps a little. "How did you-" but she cuts herself off and chuckles. "Hi Sally. Finally catching up on his paperwork, I take it?"

She's sensed the change in my mood, undoubtedly, and is checking in on me. A nice woman. I almost feel sorry for her about Duo… but in a different way than I feel sorry for Heero. The way the two of them care about the same person is so intensely different that I don't quite know how it's the same person being cared for.

The phone rings.

"Just give me a second, Hilde, I'll be right with you," I say as I reach for the receiver.

The voice on the other end is familiar, and disconcerting. The noise of electronic delay is on the line, telling me it's a long distance call, from outer space. "I've just put the both of them on a shuttle on their way home. They should touch down in London tomorrow evening at six. I hope /someone/ there has the sense to pick them up."

"D-"

"Yeah, Sal, it's me. I thought I should tell you this part myself, because I… well Fei's still… a little injured. He's not the same as he was when he left you. It's my fault I shoulda-"

"What's wrong with him?"

I look up, and find that Hilde's retreated from the doorway, and has closed it behind her. Leave it to her to know when I'm going to need privacy. She seems to know when to quit, something I'm rather sad that Duo must have taught her.

"His eyes," Duo says cryptically. "I've got to go, Sally… I have… another phone call to make before I get off this space port."

"What do you mean? What's happened? Is he-" my voice sounds strained and worried, I cut myself off. That's no way to be asking about Wufei's condition, or what happened. And anyway, Duo doesn't respond any more to it. Whatever he had to say about Wufei, he's said. But he doesn't hang up yet. So I ask the only question left. "And Trowa?"

"He's fine… easier to break him out than Fei," Duo says, and then he hangs up the phone.

Silently, as I lean back in my chair, I hope the other phone call he's making is to Heero. It will do the silent bastard some good to get a little bit of a shock. And there's no bigger shock than Duo calling up. He said it'd been years since he'd seen the other pilot, and I suddenly wonder just how long that was.

After a long moment, I return to my paperwork. His paperwork.

I'll inform Lady Une after lunch that they'll be returning in the morning. I'm sure she'll be just as glad as I am to have them home.

And I think I'll call Quatre as well.

Trowa should have at least as good of a welcome back as Wufei's going to get.