"Your car… smells like gunpowder," I say, sliding into the passenger seat.

"It happens. I keep guns in here." Her words are clipped, formal and distant.

"Not normally. Are you ok?" She tightens her hands on the steering wheel and pulls out of the waiting parking lot.

"Buckle your seatbelt."

I do so, and we drive off. The appointment is at the same hospital that Trowa is staying at, and she murmurs something about going to visit him during my appointment. "You spend a lot of time mourning for people, don't you?" I ask, aloud. She does not respond. "Do you mourn for me, Sai Lei?"

"What good would that do me?" she asks, stiffly.

The rest of the drive through traffic passes in silence and the two of us do not speak. She parks, jamming the gear shift of the car into place, and we climb out of the car. I glance around, still not quite able to read the signs, and I feel her beside me. She might be quite upset with me, she might hate me… but she still cares about me.

She slips a hand through my arm, almost casually, and we head inside. Shrugging out of our jackets in the waiting room, she slips her gloves off and stuffs them into the pocket of her jacket. I catch her hand, and she struggles for a moment, fingers flexing, before she accepts it.

We head up to collect the out-patient paperwork, and I run my fingers along her palm. She stiffens slightly, her voice clipped as she asks the nurse for the proper papers, and is handed the clipboard. I do not say anything, until we return to the couches that are waiting for people who are filling things out.

"Your palms are scraped."

"Yeah," she says in a closed voice, tugging her hand back to pick up the pen attached to the clipboard and start to fill out the paperwork for me. "What's your birthday again?"

"What happened last night after you left?" I ask, taking the pen from her.

She looks at me for a long moment. "Nothing," her voice is cold, distant. She's pushing me away with it, just the way that I did to her last night.

"Sai Lei," I start to say, but know as I do that I'll never finish the sentence.

"Sally, Wufei," the voice belongs to Quatre. She hands me the clipboard and stands, giving him a hug. "Have you been up yet?"

The cruelest thing that was done since Trowa got into the hospital, I feel, was when Quatre's wife forbade him to see Trowa in person while he's like this. The scandal, probably. Trowa never wrote off Quatre from the last of kin forms we filled out years ago. Quatre will be the one to tell the doctors when it's time to give up on him.

But he hasn't been up to the hospital room in nearly a week.

And I can only think of one reason why.

Elise Muran-Winner.

His wife, and the future mother of his child.

Likely the only one this particular Winner will ever have. But his sisters are more than filling the gene pool with them, so there's little problem in that regard.

"No. I'm just getting Wufei's paperwork filled out. He's got an appointment."

"Ah," I feel Quatre fidgeting. I do not know what to say to him and I know that he wants to ask something, but doesn't feel right about it.

I won't be the one to suggest that he fills out the paperwork while Sally goes upstairs. That would seem like I was dismissing her. And I do not want her dismissed.

"Actually, Quatre, I'm sure you can fill this out with him… I'll head up and see Trowa now. If that's ok?" she turns to me.

I reach out a hand to her. Not the one with the clipboard, but the empty one, and she steps over, slightly, to take it. "You are kind to him."

"It happens," she says, leaning down over where I am seated to brush my forehead with a kiss. Then she turns and heads towards the elevator banks. Quatre takes a seat beside me.

"She loves you."

"I agree. Thank you for stating the obvious." He starts to fill out the paperwork.

"I just thought that maybe you would want to talk about it."

"My policy number is…"

"Obviously I was wrong."

I cannot talk to you about it, Quatre. Not if I cannot talk to her about it.