II

He barged into their office the next day and stood imperiously in front of Sally's desk until she deigned to look up at him. "Was Zechs a better man than me?" he demanded when she did. He needed reassurance from an objective source. And, although this he would not admit, a friend.

For a minute Sally stared at him blankly. Then comprehension dawned in her eyes and she began to laugh.

She began to laugh at him.

"You talked to Noin, didn't you?" she asked smugly.

"Answer the question," he growled.

"I'm thinking," she told him primly. He knew she was teasing him, but it still stung. Apparently she noticed this because she said more seriously, "Sit down," and pointed at his chair. It wasn't until he had obeyed her that she said, "I don't like to draw comparisons in that way. I don't think it's for me to judge who's better than another."

"Your friend has no such objections," Wufei muttered, mostly to himself.

"She's in a very vulnerable place right now," Sally jumped to her defense. "You should cut her some slack. I doubt she meant it as seriously as it might have come out."

"Actually," Wufei disputed, "I'm pretty sure she did. As I think you know full well."

Sally sighed. "Okay, fine; I admit it, guilty as charged. Noin told me about Lake Victoria. I knew she still harbored some resentment towards you. Some mistrust. I also think the fact that she's aired her grievance is for the best. These things can fester, and like you said yesterday, Wufei, if I may remind you, we're all supposed to be on the same side now. There, I've said my piece." She seemed ready to dismiss him and turn back to her work, but Wufei was not going to let her get away so easily as that.

"And what do you think?" he pressed. "Was it a mistake to hire me? Am I a danger to the people I claim to protect?"

She gave him an exasperated look. "You're going to be a danger to yourself if you go on like this for much longer," she warned. "Really. Isn't the fact that you're asking these questions answer enough? Noin…" she stopped to search for the right words to say. "Noin cared for Zechs for a long time. And now he's dead -- which, you have to admit, Wufei, affords him a certain…unassailability that you just don't have, being here to defend yourself. It's an uneven playing field. Leave it at that."

That was advice Wufei did intend to follow. Noin, however, appeared to have other ideas. Their next encounter, she sought him out. He hadn't been expecting it; but in retrospect it was clear he should have been. Noin was a mature woman and not the sort who would stand for anything to remain unresolved between them -- no more than would he.

He was running laps in the gymnasium when he noticed that she had taken a seat in the bleachers and was apparently waiting for him. When he jogged over she actually offered a tiny smile of greeting, but then her eyes slid awkwardly away. Her hands sat clasped loosely between her knees, where she glanced down at them occasionally. For the rest, she gazed blankly but fixedly at a spot far across the room from them. Her words, at least, were more direct. She said, "I've been thinking about what you said, and I'm willing to take you at your word…but first I need to know why you did it."

Wufei picked up the towel he had left lying on the seats and began wiping away the sweat cooling on his brow. He was glad she wasn't looking at him, was glad he had something with which to occupy his hands. "That's a very personal question," he said finally, his voice coming out perhaps a little more gruffly than he had intended.

"I know," she said quietly. "I'm sorry to ask it of you. But I think you know why I have to."

He acknowledged this with a slight incline of his head, but he couldn't bring himself to start speaking.

Noin filled the silence.

"What you did was wrong," she said, clearly making no effort to spare his feelings. Not that he would want her to. "And you…with all your talk of honor. How? How can you be so…hypocritical?"

It stung to hear the words. But it was nothing he hadn't asked himself. And nothing, therefore, she didn't have the right to ask herself.

"I don't have an excuse," he warned her. "I knew it was wrong when I did it."

Her hands between her knees clenched tightly into fists before she could force them to relax again. "That's pathetic," she said, her voice barely more than a strained whisper. Wufei couldn't disagree.

"I was a Gundam pilot," was all he said. "I was there to do what no one else could, or would, to defeat OZ."

Noin hung her head. Wufei was almost moved to lay his hand against her shoulder, but given the circumstances he thought better of it. He did not understand this woman, who seemed so angry and so sad at once.

"God, I pity you boys." Her voice, strained and low, did not sound pitying but outraged. "All of you. Your lives must have been so cruel to make you willing to go to such lengths." She stopped, seemed to struggle, and then finally relaxed. She looked at him, and Wufei could see in her eyes that that the ire in her voice was this time not directed at him, but was on his behalf. And the pity she professed, yes, there it was. He shifted uncomfortably and grew steadily more so as the sympathy began to leak into her voice, telling him, "You sounded so much like Zechs just then. I can see why Treize regarded you so highly." This was unfair. Where was the righteously indignant woman who had held him responsible for her pain? He'd known, at least, how to defend himself from her. But this, this softness, this earnestness, it did not open itself to attack, and he had to listen, defenseless, as she tried to care for him, tell him, "But you don't have to be the villain, Wufei. Not for anyone. You shouldn't."

The words speared him. He stared at her. He hadn't expected her to stab so close to home. "I know that now." He'd wanted his words to come out matter of fact; instead they just sounded foolish. Vulnerable.

Noin's eyes were still sad, but it was a different kind of sadness now -- the kind of sadness that comes from letting go of the past instead of clinging to it. "Then maybe you're finally growing up," she told him. Her gaze went inevitably back to her hands when she added, "Maybe I am too."

Unexpectedly, he found himself agreeing with her. She had accepted what he'd told her, and he was grateful for the simplicity -- the normality -- of her assessment. Growing up. Was that all it was, for both of them? That was, surprisingly, the most comforting thing he'd heard in years…and from this woman, of all people. It was almost laughable. Almost.

Gratitude, the same urge to reach out for her, was still with him. He satisfied it by taking a seat on the bleacher below hers and confessing, "I thought I grew up a long time ago. But I guess…maybe not."

"It can be kind of a shock to realize how young you really are, can't it?"

She lifted her face and smiled at him, almost tenderly, and tentatively held out her hand. "Truce," she promised.

He was surprised. "You're forgiving me? Just now? Just like that?"

She nodded her head; admitted, "It's not easy…but I think it's time to let go."

And just like that he took her hand.

"I am sorry," he said, "I am." He could say this now, now that he didn't have to, now that she didn't demand it of him in order to grant him her acceptance. He had, in fact, been waiting years to be able to say this to someone, who could hear him, and who could forgive. He'd almost forgotten what a heavy burden his guilt was until this moment, when he felt the possibility that it might be lifted.

Noin squeezed his fingers, then let go. Her eyes had that far-off look to them again. "Wufei," she said, "please let me give you some advice." He waited, watching her steel herself. Finally she said, "I spent the last two years with a man who never forgave himself for the things he did. I saw what it did to him. And all I can say to you now is, please don't let that happen to you. I can't think what bigger waste there would be than another unnecessary death from a war that's over… I could tell you I forgive you a hundred thousand times, and it wouldn't matter if you don't have it in you to forgive yourself. The awful thing is, it's the one thing I haven't been able to bring myself to forgive Zechs for. Isn't that stupid? Holding it against a man for feeling guilty? But Wufei, I don't want you to make his same mistake. I want you to be okay."

"Are you trying to guilt me into forgiving myself?" he asked, incredulous, to which she smiled and brazenly said,

"Yes."

He smiled too, and felt the weight disappear, possibly only for a moment; but for that moment it was gone and he was free and it was good. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs, feeling alive. "Okay," he said.

"What about you?" he asked after that, provoking surprise and a blank stare. He hesitated to explain, but feeling that it was her due he forged ahead and said with daring, "You're aware of feeling guilty now, but don't forget, you've always looked this sad."

She tilted her head to regard him at a calculating angle and was silent for some time. "I suppose I should be flattered," she said at length, her tiny smile back in place. "You don't need to worry about me. I'll be just fine." Her hand pressed his knee in reassurance. "I always have been. Really. This day was always going to come. I knew it somewhere deep inside myself, and now it has…I just need my time to mourn is all. You can understand that, can't you?"

He started to nod when the gymnasium door bumped open, and at the abrupt reminder that they were not insulated from the world Wufei was startled to his feet. The familiarity of Noin's touch fell away as if it had never been. She stood too and jumped from the bleachers to the floor, throwing her uniform jacket over her shoulders as she did so. Her eyes turned briefly back to his once she hit the ground and she offered something that was halfway between a salute and a wave. "Goodbye Agent Chang," she said with surprising finality. "I hope I'll get to work with you someday."

"You speak as if we won't be seeing each other for some time," he said in confusion. "Why is that?"

"Because we won't," Noin told him. "I put in a request when I rejoined the Preventers to be posted as far away from Brussels as would be possible. Civilization frustrates me. I leave for Tanzania in the morning. I'm going back to Lake Victoria."

He hadn't expected the bottom to drop out of his stomach at the news, but it did, leaving him reeling in shock…until she added, with a new light in her eyes that was almost humorous, "Now it's being run by Preventers I expect to find it very peaceful there."

And then he laughed, and smiled, and waved goodbye.