Once Trowa woke up, Quatre forgot about the rest of us. He once again went into the hospital room, and Sally slowly stopped visiting as much. The third specialist was able to reverse the damage to my eyes, or at least partially, but the treatments were painful and I was forced to stay in the hospital for several weeks.

I was unsurprised when she didn't visit me much while I was there.

She came twice. And I remember both times exactly.

The first time, she stood in the doorway for a long time. I thought that she was a nurse passing by, because my eyes were bandaged against the light in the room, but then she took a step inside, and the noise of her feet was not that of a sneakered nurse in scrubs. She stepped carefully over to the bed, and I could smell her. She smelled like green tea and vanilla candles.

"Are you awake?" she asked softly.

"Sai Lei?" I said in response.

She pulled a chair over, I could tell by the scraping of the wood on the floor, and sat down, reaching up to take my hand in hers. "I'm sorry," she said, pressing her forehead to the back of my hand.

"For what?"

"Not visiting you before." Her voice broke.

"Does it remind you of visiting your father?" I asked in a gentle voice, as gentle as I could manage. I wanted to sit up and put my arms around her. To tell her that it was all right. But I was half afraid to. I had told her what needed to be said, and she had no response for it, other than her continued presence. By all rights, I should not have offered anything more.

She nodded, and I could feel the heat of her face as it flushed, but not from blushing. I turned my hand over and could feel the tears in her eyes. But 'all rights' do not include the heart. I gave in right there, and sat up, drawing her into my arms. She didn't resist, as she had when she dropped off my things from the apartment, and she leaned heavily against me, burying her face in my pajama shirt.

I stroked her hair with a gentle hand, and she put her arms around me.

A nurse walking by coughed and cleared her throat at us. Sally turned her face towards the woman, leaning her head back slightly. "That sort of behavior is not appropriate in a hospital."

Sally started to stutter, but I cut her off. I knew which nurse it was at that moment, by her high and mighty attitude, and the tone of her voice. "Leave us," I snapped.

"Mr. Chang, I do not care if-"

"That was not a request, Nurse Long."

She cleared her throat and stepped out of the doorway, but it was enough of a distraction to break the spell. Sally pulled away from me, and I heard her shuffling with her coat. "Visiting hours are almost over anyway. I just… I needed to see you, and be sure that you were all right."

"Don't let the bandages frighten you," I said, hoping to be helpful.

"There's a forty percent chance that you'll go blind from the laser surgery, Fei." She reached over and brushed a hand against my forehead. "But that's not what I'm worried about." She pulled her hand back and I heard her put her coat on. "Your window garden should be started soon… what do you plant in it?"

But it was her parting question, because she closed the door behind her.

The second time was what convinced me that she came to visit more often than when I was awake. I slept a lot, worn out by the anesthetic and the treatment they used on me. It was after one of the more exacting surgeries, and they had just finished bandaging my eyes. I had only just been wheeled into the room when I caught the scent of her circulating in the stale air of the hospital.

The door closed and she stepped over to the bed and took my hand. "Did it hurt?" her voice was very compassionate, very caring, and very soft. I thought, for a moment, she was a dream.

"Pain killers were injected into me." It hurt to turn my eyes, I wanted to fall asleep so that I didn't have to try any more, but her hand kept me awake. I wanted to be awake with her. I spend much of my time asleep with her, before the hospitalization and during it, I now realized. I had dreamed her a hundred times in the three weeks, but this was enough to prove to me that they had not all been dreams.

"But you have a high tolerance for them."

"It was a new one," I murmured, tugging against her hand.

She obliged me, and leaned down. Her hair was down, which suggested something to me that my fogged mind could not put its finger on. It brushed against my face. She reached up with her free hand and adjusted my askew pajama top, redoing a poorly done up front with careful fingers.

"I'm not supposed to be here," she said, leaning a little closer to kiss my cheek. "I've gotto go before that Nurse Long decides to check on you again."

"Don't go just yet," I said. "It feels like a dream."

"Maybe it's better if you think of it that way, Fei," she said, running her free, cool hand along my warm face. "Get some rest."

And then she was gone. And I am still unsure if she was really there or not.

But today the bandages come off. And I am still not sure if I will be able to see, let alone drive a car that isn't here. So either she will be here, or one of the other Preventers will be, to take me home.

I'm still required to rest, and I have outpatient checkups scheduled for the next month, and a pair of dark sunglasses waiting for me. But none of it matters. The door is opened and I hear a familiar pair of sneakers.

"Today's the day, Mr. Chang."

I did not let the Nurse call me by my first name, it was something she wanted too badly, a familiarity I couldn't handle with her. Something that Meiran would have disapproved of, unlike Sai Lei, whom I am sure she would have smiled at. The two women might have been friends, if it were not for my weakness.

"That it is." I am sitting up in my bed, and I can feel things in the room. The light coming in the window, the magnetism of the monitors around my bed, the uncomfortable cushion of the hospital bed beneath me.

"No one has shown up yet to take you home, but the doctor will be in shortly to take your bandages off."

"You're meddling again."

"I'm trying to look after your well being, Mr. Chang, despite your efforts to the contrary. You will need a way home."

The door opens behind her, and I hear the doctor's footsteps. They are not alone. "I will indeed need a way home," I reply.

"You have one." If I hadn't smelled her as the door entered, I would have known her in the instant she spoke. I can feel the frown in her voice and the bristle in the nurse's. "I was just having a conversation with your doctor, Wufei, I didn't think you would mind me being tardy, under the circumstances."

I am tempted to reach out a hand to her, and I do. She steps over to the bed, leaning down to kiss my cheek, and stays when I clasp the hand she puts in mine. There's a chuckle in her voice as she says to the doctor, "Is it time?"

"We could have done it this morning," the doctor, whom I have come to find is a very competent man, one that I trust, "but I wanted to wait until there was something familiar for him to see. Nurse… Long and I are not faces he would recognize. Some patients," he is rounding the bed and taking a pair of scissors from his pocket, "find the renewal of full-sight to be disorienting. A familiar, friendly face is something I make procedure to having around to comfort them."

The warm wrap of the bandages is slowly snipped and pulled away. Sally's palms are sweating, and she threads her fingers through mine. The cool air on my eyelids makes them twitch.

"Feel free to open your eyes, Mr. Chang."

I do, and at first the light is blinding, and I close my eyes again.

But then, with the encouragement of Sally's hand in mine, and the steady thrump thrump of the blood through the veins of her palm, I open them again, slowly. The room, off-colored at first, is tinted green from the fluorescents as I glance around, seeing the three people peering intently at me.

Nurse Long, exactly as I expected her, with her straight black hair pulled tightly back into a bun high on her head. Her pale complexion looks sallow in the light of the hospital, and is as unforgiving as she is. Then the doctor, Jonas Gray, with his youthful and competent expression, despite the graying of his hair and the wrinkle lines of his forehead and near his eyes.

Then my eyes rest on Sally, and I forget, for the moment, that there is anyone else in the room. The long fall of her dark blond hair is shiny in the light of the dreary room. Her complexion, as opposed to the nurse's, is healthy, but her expression is strained. Her eyes are worried.

"Sai Lei," I say, lifting a hand to her cheek. "How I have missed seeing you."

Tears brim in her eyes, and she leans forward, putting her arms around me, holding me close and pressing her face against my neck.

Nurse Long starts to speak up, a frown on her face, but I narrow my eyes at her. Dr. Gray laughs slightly and bustles her out of the room. "You know where your clothing is. I'll make sure to have the check out papers brought in for you."

I nod, and he closes the door behind him.

I stroke Sally's hair, and she trembles. "You were afraid," I say softly. She nods. "Sai Lei," I start to chide.

"There's nothing to chide me about," she murmurs against my neck. "There was a real chance you'd go blind."

"I have been through worse," I say.

"But that's just the point. You shouldn't have to go through anything, not now. Pardon me if I'm a little more concerned about you than you seem to be for yourself. But you," and by that word I know that she means the five of us and not me, "deserve better. This danger… this needless risk… it's not worth it."

"Why do you stay with the Preventers, Sally?"

The question throws her, and she sits back in her chair, just slightly, still perched gracefully on the edge of it. She swallows, "I-"

"It is not as easy as it seems, is it? Explaining away what you do. I am not like Heero, or Duo, or Quatre… or even Trowa. All of them were raised differently than I was. They do not have the same sense of justice that I do."

"Your sense of justice has a habit of almost getting you killed, if you remember."

"But it is all that has been with me for most of my life. It is something my family believed in. And no matter what else there is about them, I have believed what they believed since I was young."

She lowers her head, staring at her lap. "We're not so different," she says in a soft voice. "Except that my father hated me being in the war. Hated me being in danger."

"It is different, for women." She glances up sharply, challenge in her eyes. "For women in the eyes of the men who care for them," I explain. "It would be as easy for your father to admit that he could not provide for you… as to let you go to war. But I am sure that he would have been proud of you for being so strong."

"He was," she says, leaning down across her lap.

There is a long silence in which the hum of the room overtakes the rest of the noise in the world of the hospital room.

"So what happens now?" I ask, reaching over to take her hand in mine. As Dr. Gray predicted, my eyes feel tired.

"We go home," she says.

"Not entirely what I meant," I say, tipping her head up to meet my eyes. "Sally, you have been avoiding me."

"Yes," she admits, reaching over with her free hand to pick the dark sunglasses off the table and hand them to me. When I give her a slightly puzzled look, she arches a brow and says, "Your eyes aren't healed completely. Light can be damaging." She sounds as if she knows this, as though she is an optometrist, an eye doctor and practicing for years. "But I don't think that's as important as getting you home, right now."

"This is more that is important than that," I say, letting her drop my hand as she heads over towards the closet to get my clothing out. "Sally, this can't continue."

"You're a hard man to have love you, Wufei," she says in a soft voice, bringing the clothing over and laying it on the bed. "I can't do more than I am right now." She meets my eyes and there's a sadness in them. She's starting to realize how much I hide from her. She's starting to know.

There is no use in pretending I don't understand.

I nod, lowering my head slightly. This is how things will be then. Again.

I am surprised to find her hand on my cheek. "But I can be a patient woman, when I have to be." I look up into her eyes, and she tips the glasses up on my forehead a moment to brush her cool fingers across my eyes, which close obligingly for her hand. Then she leans forward slightly and kisses my lips. "I'll be out in the hall."

There is something truly frustrating about all of this. I am alone and in love. I am connected to him, and yet cut off from him. And the worst part about it is there isn't anyone for me to talk to about it. Not since Quatre started seeing Trowa again. I've been afraid to go to his room for fear I would interrupt something. I step out into the hallway, closing the door behind me, and lean against the wall.

Nurse Long is staring at me through the open doorway. Jealousy is in her eyes and I can't take that right now, so I close my eyes and look up at the ceiling. She reminds me of one of the women that one of my father's arranged dates for me ended up with. I used to see them around town, when mother and I would go into town for supplies and to escape the men in the house.

The particular boy that this girl was dating, Shenglun was the girl's name, I don't remember his full name… he introduced himself to me as Da, and I remember he had really liked me. Whenever mother and I ran into them, he would always greet me warmly, formally, and I recall the same look in Shenglun's eyes as the look in Nurse Long's. She wasn't happy that he showed me such respect and reverence. I don't think I really blame her. I didn't ask for it, and I didn't want it. But the look on Nurse Long's face is too much. Right now it is just too much.

The noise of sneakers announces her entrance into the hall, and she comes up to me. I can smell the medicine on her. I never smelled like that when I worked in a hospital. "I don't approve of you," she says in a thinly veiled voice. She doesn't disapprove of me. She hates me.

"I'm aware," I reply, opening my eyes to look up at her. She has a clean, pale complexion and black hair. But her eyes are green. Not quite so traditional after all, are we, Nurse Long?

"You don't do Mr. Chang any good."

"And you do? Do you even know my name?" A faint blush colors her cheeks, as though she hadn't expected to be so rebuked by me. She can't be even Wufei's age, and she's acting like his guardian. I straighten up off the wall, the way I used to when Shenglun would glare at me challengingly. "You don't, do you? Because he wouldn't tell you."

She bristles, straightening herself and gathering the clipboard against her chest more firmly. "You're very impolite."

"You're very presumptuous." I hold out my hand for the clipboard. It's his release papers, I'm almost positive. She narrows her eyes at me. "He will need to sign them." I do not add that so will I, as his next of kin. That might put the wrong idea in her head.

But what's the right idea? I haven't been more than a sister to him, even if he does claim that he loves me. No. That's unfair and unkind. If Wufei says that he loves me, he does. Because he wouldn't be like that. Whatever else I think of him, whatever else I believe of him, he is not like that. He hates that sort of thing in other people, and so he would not do it himself.

If he said something, like that, to me, then he meant it.

I am not quite sure I am even afraid to think of the exact words he used.

Which is really why I haven't told him how I feel about him. I don't want to say something I'm not sure of. Nurse Long waivers, clutching the clipboard as though she doesn't want to give it to me because it will mean that I have him how she doesn't. I know the feeling.

I felt that way about a dead woman.

The door opens behind me, and Wufei is threading his fingers through his hair and pulling it back out of his face. Nurse Long hands me the clipboard, almost throwing it at me, and turns to walk quickly down the hall. Shenglun used to do the same thing, retreat quickly whenever Da would enter a room and we were facing off. "Ready?" I ask him.

"Blasted hair."

"It's getting longer," I say, handing him the clipboard.

He gives up trying to fix his hair from his face and scribbles the characters of his name into the release form, handing it back. "You have to sign too."

"I know," I reply, glancing over the paperwork before signing where I'm supposed to. "We have to get you a wheelchair at the nurse's station. And an aide to wheel you out."

"Not necessary," Dr. Gray says. I turn to find the man offering a patient smile. He pushes a wheelchair towards us. "I'm sure you'll see him out well, Miss Po. You can leave the chair at the desk downstairs."

"Thank you, Doctor." Wufei offers the man a slight bow and lowers himself into the chair. Once, he might have protested. Once, he might have fought the idea of being an invalid. Once, he might have refused the wheelchair.

I offer the doctor a smile, handing him the clipboard, and step around to push the chair towards the elevator banks. "Have you seen Trowa lately?"

"Not in a week," I respond. "He's asked to have no visitors."

"I'm sure that will change."

"I don't think so." The doors open and I push him inside, turning him around before pressing the lobby button. "He wrote Quatre off his last of kin form and I don't know who he put on it. But he hasn't been talking to anyone from the office."

"I think he will see you, if you call to ask him if you can come."

I hadn't thought about that. I don't know why Wufei has. "Why… why do you think that? Why mention it now?"

"Everyone needs someone to talk to, Sally."

There he goes again. "It should be you." He doesn't respond. I suck in a breath. "Who do you talk to? Not me."

"I am … not everyone," his voice is tired, weary, and I can feel the sadness in him, the sadness that makes my skin itch. The sadness that makes me want to wrap him up inside me and soothe away whatever memory keeps hurting him so that he can't open up.

But I can't.

The doors open on the lobby and I push him out. "The car's in the far lot. Wait here and I'll go get it. It's still cold out."

He catches my hand. "May I come with you?"

He knows.

He knows. He knows. He knows. And he wants to make it work, I think. He's trying to give me the space that I need to think it through but without letting me push him away completely.

"It'll only take a minute."

"I'll wait then." He will be a tender lover, if we ever manage it.

I leave him, retrieve my coat from the rack and button it up, pulling my gloves on as I step through the doors and out into the chill. It's not really cold. It's damp, muggy, and chill. There's fog outside and I don't doubt there will be rain. But it's turning to spring now, and things could always be worse. I walk smoothly, not a run and not a slow pace, and find the car.

He loves me.

I open it and climb in, spending a while staring at my ghosted reflection in the dirty windshield.

He won't touch me.

I put the key in the ignition.

He's not lying, but there's some reason that he won't. And I don't have to settle for that. He's not the only man in the world. I've dated other men. Not recently, but I have. I turn the key over. Just because one man loves me doesn't mean that it's the end of my searching. If he can't open up and let me in… I don't just want Wufei the mind.

I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I also want Wufei the man.

And I'm not a hormonal teenager anymore. Not the way I was in the wars, when my thoughts wavered only between my purpose and the intensity of the pilots I was infatuated with. I back out of the parking space carefully and turn towards the front entrance. It takes much less time to get there when you're on wheels.

He stands and steps through the entrance, and I unlock the door. He opens it, settling into the seat as though he belongs there, and has never been anywhere but there. I settle myself, hoping to have at least part of his calm, and pull off.