It was so hard to tear myself away from him this morning and hurry to my apartment to change into this blasted uniform. Especially when he was being so demonstrative with his affection. Still very formal, and yet very welcoming at the same time. It distracts me all the way through my mad dash out the door, and the drive down to headquarters.

Obviously, since I missed yesterday afternoon, people have started asking questions. I pass Trowa in the hallway, and he offers me a faint, unsure smile. The other people at the office may think what they like. Leave it to Trowa to think the best, and also the worst, of a situation. "Paperwork," I murmur, leaving him to his imagination and heading for my office. He should know Wufei well enough to know what didn't happen last night between us, and if he doesn't… I really don't care.

They're both safe, and the relief of that makes all of this worth it.

"What are you doing in today?" a voice calls, startled, from the end of the hall as I fumble with the keys looking for the one to open my office. I turn for a moment as I jam the key into the lock on the door, and find that Lady Une is staring at me, incredulous.

"Did you say the same thing to Trowa?" I ask her, setting my briefcase just inside the door. "I just saw him in the hall."

"On his way home," she corrects. "They've both earned some time off."

And I know she means Wufei as the other part of that they. Suddenly it makes me a little angry. As though the two of them deserve this sort of a job after what they went through. But there's a part of me that corrects me mentally, as the stupid words leave my mouth. They both chose to keep doing this job.

"Wufei wouldn't accept that," I say quietly, "you know he wouldn't…"

"But he doesn't have a choice," Lady Une responds in an equally grave voice. She inspects me with bright, intelligent eyes. "Trowa did debrief this morning," there is a pause in her sentence, "it appears Wufei's eyes were damaged."

"Yes, it does. I told him to rest."

"I've made a few calls, there are doctors I'd like him to see."

"So that he can get back to work?" I hear the anger in my voice, and know instantly that it's unfounded, Lady Une isn't that much of a heartless slave driver, but after this morning, I need someone to be angry at. I think she understands, because she shakes her head and turns to head off.

"No, Sally, so that he can get back to living." The words cause me pause, but she doesn't give me an opportunity to respond before she says, "Don't stay after lunch. He needs you more than we need the filing finished." I start to object, but she interrupts, "And if you're so worried about paperwork, I'll have Hilde see to it."

I blush, embarrassed and not a little ashamed of my reaction to her gentle care. I step into my office and close the door behind me, leaning against it for a long moment before heading over to my desk and booting up the old computer. I sit down in my desk chair and take a deep breath. All the filing still has to be entered in the hard way, even though we fill out the reports twice.

According to 'experts' that makes it more confidential and harder to break in to. I'm not certain if I believe that, thinking about how the Alliance and Oz both used the same techniques, and Heero still managed to hack into them, but it's not my place to make judgment calls on the computer systems.

In the meantime, it means a lot of extra work for all of us.

I lean back in my chair and stare up at the ceiling in mute fascination at the patterns that my lazy mind makes out of the markings in the insulated dropped ceiling. The panels are prefabricated, of course, and there's no marking that's meant to make a design other than none at all, but nonetheless my eyes seem to trace out a pattern, as though I am making my own constellations of the markings up there.

And I see his face smiling down on me.

There's a cough from the doorway.

I'm obviously not going to get any work done today. I turn my eyes to the door and find Hilde has come timidly to my door, and is smiling shyly. "Sally?"

"Yea, Hilde?"

I remember her mettle, suddenly, and the way she stood up for me on the temp floor. She only holds up the faux effect of shyness because it suits her, I bet. The same way that Duo used to wear his cheerful mask. She steps in and closes the door.

"I spoke to Trowa," she says simply, as though that should explain everything.

It doesn't.

"And?"

"I know that it was… Duo… that saved them." Her voice catches on the mention of his name, and I swallow. I know where she's coming from, what she's feeling. And I hate the thought of someone else feeling that way. I wonder, suddenly, if she wonders, as much as I did this past couple months, about Duo the way I wondered about Fei.

"So Wufei told me as well," I say, not committing to an answer. It hurts me to see her so helpless against the very mention of someone seeing Duo, but there isn't anything that I can do about it. And I very much don't think Duo wanted her to know where he was. I make a silent apology to him, even though it's Trowa that informed her.

"He was the one who called you, wasn't he?" her voice is a little sharp, almost accusing.

I lower my head in the closest thing to a nod that I can without betraying him wholly to her. It isn't that I don't like and respect Hilde…

Quite the contrary.

I just can't get the image of Heero out of my mind, from when he mentioned Duo to me, what seems like years ago now, on L1 when we were resting after concluding our business. It was horribly tender and quite open.

Something I cannot begrudge him towards Duo, because he did not begrudge me the same towards Wufei. If I have a chance to help Duo find his way back to Heero, I won't hurt it. And Hilde might hurt that, make Duo retreat into hiding again. Whatever else is between Duo and Heero, there's love there. And that's not worth forsaking so easily.

"Did he… leave any word for me?" her words break my silent reverie.

I try not to look at her, but my eyes settle on hers inevitably. There is nothing else to look at in the room with her standing there by the door. I instantly regret it. It's written in her eyes. She would drop everything and go look for him, as I know she did before. And so it hurts me to say it, but I say, "No, Hilde, he didn't."

She swallows the lump in her throat. It is true. He did not say not to tell her he'd called, but he didn't, either, ask me to tell her that he was doing well. I can do no better or worse than what I have. But the sympathetic part of my heart hurts at being so cold to her about the topic, when she, I can see from looking at her, would do much differently if our circumstances were reversed.

"I see," she says, softly. Her voice sounds defeated, and I know there is nothing in my face to offer comfort. She turns to go when I stop her with her name.

"Hilde." She does not turn back towards me. "Duo does care about you. He did what he thought was kindness, in the circumstances."

"Perhaps," she says, opening the door. "But he doesn't love me."

And she steps through it, closing it softly. I sigh.

For every hopeful heart satisfied, another is broken.

I push my chair back from the desk and give up on the paperwork. Lady Une was right, I'm not going to get much done today, whatever my good intentions were.

I run into Trowa in the hallway as I slip my jacket on over my shoulders, and there is an awkward moment of silence before he speaks, "You didn't have to bring him to the terminal with you."

"I couldn't have brought Jean," I respond, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. After what Jean proposed to me, I can hardly handle looking him in the eye, let alone taking him somewhere with me. And the dejected, defeated part of Quatre that I had to see was too much for me to see without acting on it in some way. "Not after knowing how much-"

"I care about Jean," he says, and I'm not quite sure whether he's saying it to make a point to himself or to try and make me believe it. The look in the eye of his I can see is unsure, smoky almost, as though there are things he's not ready to speak, things he can't say to me. "Quatre has his own priorities."

"And you're one of them," I hear myself say in a stubborn voice. He can't be this cold about it. Quatre really cares for him… the same way that Heero cares for Duo, the way that I… "Trowa…"

"Regardless of that," he says, interrupting me. I blink and wait for him to go on. "Be easy on Wufei, will you? He's not quite sure how to handle how he feels about you."

I start to ask a question, but Quatre steps into the hallway, and I find that I can't entrust whatever I wanted to know to his ears, not anymore. If Trowa doesn't want to fall back into Quatre's arms, that's his choice. I won't violate it.

"I'm going to go to him now," I say, and glance between the two of them. "Should I-?"

"Tell him that I send my best," Trowa says, green eyes trained on Quatre. "And that Quatre does as well."

"I need to talk to you, Trowa," Quatre says. Trowa nods and I head towards the elevator to give them their privacy, catching out of the corner of my ear Trowa's response of, "My office is this way."