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Some things never changed. Not for Sally Po.
She still woke up precisely at 5 AM, despite attempting to sleep in and take it easy. She was no longer in the military. That part of her life ended almost ten years ago. And she was no longer a Preventer field agent, except on the few special occasions that called for her expertise.
She still met with Lucrezia and Une for wine and dinner once a month, though that tradition had slowed to once a quarter this past year.
And she was still calling Chang Wufei out on his bullshit on a weekly basis.
Every Friday, without fail, Wufei showed up in her office with a vein pulsing in his forehead or his face turning red with rage about some indignity.
“It’s ridiculous,” he would start, before getting into the meat of his current rant.
Sometimes it was because of a change in protocol or routine. Like the retirement of the original drab olive uniform shirts. Wufei thought the color was perfectly fine, and the new design became a constant source of complaint for him. Sally teased him: ‘I never knew you were one for fashion.’
Lately, it was because of his latest partner, and longtime friend, Duo Maxwell.
Duo had been contracting with the agency for a while now, but would never be a company man. 'Don't hold me down, Sally! You can’t chain the wind'—Duo's words, partly taken from a country song Wufei hated.
Once, Duo replaced Wufei’s handgun with a starter pistol. Naturally, the incident incensed Wufei. Not because he didn’t realize that someone had swapped the weapons—he was a professional after all. But because Duo dared to do something so silly. It was a safety issue.
Another time, Duo switched out Wufei’s uniform socks for pink ones while he was doing katas in the gym.
But today had nothing to do with Duo Maxwell and everything to do with their boss, Lady Une, and the slow, but inevitable encroaching tide of bureaucracy.
It was annual review time.
Over the last decade, the agency’s review process had evolved from a relatively short assessment to a nearly month-long procedure involving 360-degree peer feedback, partner evaluations, and tests of physical fitness and mental acuity. This was accompanied by team-building activities that focused on collaboration, leadership, and cross-team harmony.
Often, this meant bringing in an external consultant to give some sort of workshop. The most memorable of these being a company that administered tests to identify everyone’s workplace ‘auras.’ Sally had a blue aura, meaning she was resourceful, assured, and calm.
Wufei’s aura was simply black.
Or at least that is what everyone assumed.
He didn’t even last five minutes in the conference room. With a derisive snort, Wufei had stormed out, complaining about the uselessness of the whole thing, and disappeared. Sally later found him at the firing range with Heero, who was calmly shooting paper targets while Wufei huffed and puffed in the adjacent lane.
Sally did not like the annual review process. No one did. But it was just part and parcel of being in an ESUN agency. Of being part of a larger whole.
So, it was no surprise to find Chang standing in her office before lunch, his shoulders hunched and arms crossed over across his chest.
She was certain she had shut the door before leaving, but Wufei had no respect for such things. He never did when he was in a tizzy. But heaven forbid Sally even knock on his door or enter his office space without him being present.
Outside, the weather was still cool and wet. A mist of rain dotted droplets on the frosted glass windows lining her office. It was two weeks into spring. Daffodils and tulips would blossom soon. But for now it remained dreary and gray and required an umbrella.
“What is it today, Chang?” Sally asked.
The door shut behind her with a click. She set her tablet on the desk and drew the blinds, letting in the gray morning light.
“These new recruits are immature and childish,” Wufei spat. “Undisciplined.”
He began to pace across the room, from one side, where a bookshelf stuffed with her medical textbooks stood, to the other. A series of photos in plain black frames adorned the opposite wall.
All photos of the important people in her life. A picture of her and her regiment. Her, Noin, and Relena in dresses at a gala. Her with the Gundam pilots on a summer day. And many more.
Amidst the photos was one of her and Wufei with ice cream cones, him cracking the tiniest of smiles while she held her fingers in a peace sign behind his head.
He stopped mid-stride, straightening his back as though a magnet had pulled his rigid spine into alignment. A familiar arrogance flashed in his eyes.
“They are weak,” he said.
Weak.
Sally gave a wry smile. If there was a Wufei bingo card, that word would be on it. (Actually, there had been one as an April Fool’s joke. Everyone blamed Duo, but it was Trowa’s idea, oddly enough. Sally still had a copy buried in her desk.)
“I take it you had your one-on-one meeting with Une then,” she said.
“Hmph.” An affirmative.
Sally tried not to roll her eyes as he scowled. Her stomach grumbled. All she had had that morning was a matcha latte from the cafe across the street, where she had met up with Noin. Usually, she ordered an almond croissant, but not today. As lunchtime neared, she regretted it.
Wufei looked at her expectantly. Awaiting some subtle cue, a blink of her eyes or a slight brow raise, before he continued. She adjusted one of her long locks of hair and tilted her head. With that gesture, he resumed, eyes flicking back to her photo gallery.
“My peers find me abrasive,” he said as his eyes traced the framed pictures.
His voice was tense and snide, though not as nasal as when he was a teenager. Sometimes, she forgot how young he still was. Barely past 25 now.
“She gave me this.” Wufei reached into his jacket, removed a folded piece of paper and extended it to Sally without a sideways glance. “My peer feedback scores for collaboration and respect are below expectations for an agent of my caliber.”
Sally leaned over and took the paper gingerly between her fingers.
“That’s at least what that woman told me.”
Woman. Another stamp on the bingo card. Sally could already feel the familiar tension mounting in her head, a slight pulse at the base of her skull.
“That woman is the head of the agency, Chang,” Sally said, her voice biting.
He had the decency to swallow whatever he wanted to say next and glance at a browning plant in a glazed blue pot in the corner. It had been a gift from Noin that Sally had failed to water properly.
Une had warned her about the revamped peer-review process. The so-called Full Circle method, in which all of your coworkers provided an evaluation based on a rubric with categories like teamwork, collaboration, leadership, and respect, among others. Une was worried, particularly about Yuy and Chang.
Sometimes, Sally wished Quatre had stayed longer with the Preventers, if only to ease these types of conversations or pawn them off on him entirely.
Yuy had taken his review surprisingly well. He simply responded as he always did—with a singular, guttural sound: ‘Hn.’ His scores were adequate. Some of his peers had even remarked on his ‘dry humor.’
The same was not true for Agent Chang.
Sally unfolded the paper and skimmed it, her eyes flicking across the stark black text on white.
The words were damning.
‘Misogynistic and cruel,’ read one anonymous review.
‘He saved my life, but I’d rather be dead than continue to work with him,’ read another.
Another: ‘So much yelling. Very rude.’
And one more: ‘Does he even have an indoor voice?’
“You can’t scream at them like a drill sergeant, Wufei,” Sally said. She flipped to the next page, finding similar comments in a bulleted list and sighed.
For years, she had been his partner. They worked well together as Agent Water and Rain. She knew how to wrangle him, and he knew how to read her body language and behavior. There was an invisible tether between them. The only other people capable of dealing with Wufei were the other Gundam pilots and, sometimes, Une.
But that dynamic changed when the Preventers expanded nearly four years ago. Sally became the head of a new medical division. Une assigned Heero and Wufei to lead the ‘Preventers Bootcamp’ for new hires. How Une had expected their green trainees to handle Wufei’s brusque nature and meet his lofty standards escaped Sally.
“These new recruits are far too sensitive for the type of work we do here,” Wufei groused with a shake of his head. “Noin and Maxwell are letting standards slip.”
“Is that what you wrote in their Full Circle reviews?”
“I—there was not a corresponding category on the rubric for that,” Chang said. “Maxwell received an honest review from me, though.”
Chang went quiet for a moment, thoughtful. His black hair, tightly pulled back in his customary ponytail, shone under the artificial light like a wet ink spill.
“Despite our differences, Maxwell and I make a good team,” Wufei admitted.
There was a slight tinge of pink on his cheeks. Sally smirked to herself, but didn’t tease. Maybe later she would prod at that and mention Maxwell again, but not now.
“Not that we—you and I—weren’t a good team,” Wufei added quickly.
She nodded. “And what about Lucrezia?”
“Agent Noin—” Always so formal, he was. “—has not worked directly with me this past year. So I did not request nor provide feedback.”
That was probably a smart move. Wufei’s relationship with Noin was still tenuous, even after all this time. Wufei could begrudgingly admit he was a bit of ‘an unrepentant dick’—Duo’s words again—to her back then. As he still was to many people.
“Noin is a reliable agent and more than qualified. She is strong, reliable, and smart,” Wufei added, carefully forming the words. “She understands the protocols. I can predict and model her behavior and actions whether in the field or in the office.”
“You trust her judgment?” Sally ventured.
“Yes,” Wufei said with a single, sharp nod. “She follows the same doctrine as I do. As of all us.”
Us. The pilots. Everyone from Operation Meteor. From the war.
“It can't just be us forever. We have to bring in new agents and employees.” Sally folded up the paper and handed it back to Wufei. “We share a difficult past. But it’s been more than ten years. The old ways are not the best ways.”
“When did ‘doctrine’ change?” Wufei asked her as he tucked the paper into his jacket pocket.
Sally eyed the creases in his starched shirt underneath his uniform jacket. Slight wrinkles marred his collar and the placket. Maybe from the drizzle. Maybe from something else. Usually, the lines of his clothes were often as severe as his posture and attitude.
“To still use that term when we are in a civilian world isn’t quite right,” she said. “It's always changing. The world has moved on.”
“I haven’t done well with it.” Wufei replied.
“That’s not true,” Sally interjected. “Perhaps your adjustment has been more… difficult. But you cannot help it. We are products of our time. Of our past.”
He barked a laugh, sharp and bitter, accompanied by a minute head shake. He did not look at her, eyes fixing instead on the space in front of him. Perhaps he was gazing at a ghost. At the after image of the man who counted every soul who died for him and who then died by Wufei's hand.
Sally stepped closer to Wufei, putting her hand on his shoulder. He flinched. He smelled of soap and a hint of bitter and smoky tea. Chasing his eyes with hers, she smiled. He glanced away. Let out a long exhale. Met her eyes, unflinching and hard. His face still so smooth and untouched, despite the pinch between his brows that was etched there.
“We don’t have to be beholden to the past,” Sally said. “But we just can’t forget it.”
A moment of quiet passed between them, still as an untouched pond.
“I know.”
“Good.” She dropped her hand and looked to the mini-fridge next to her desk where her lunch sat inside. Her stomach made another unhappy sound.
“Are we… friends, Sally?”
“What?” She blinked.
“I’m a difficult person,” Wufei said. “I’m aware of this. Meiran—well, it wasn’t unknown to me. Or anyone else.”
She softened and sighed. Sometimes, he was that teenage boy sitting on her exam table in the field, looking far too young and tiny to be piloting a Gundam and raining down hell. But none of those boys ever really had a chance to be a kid. These days, their new agents had had that opportunity—to have childhoods.
“Of course we're friends,” she said finally. “You’re just also an asshole.”
He let out another laugh, this one warmer and deeper, coming from his gut. The tightness drained from his shoulders. His scowl was gone, and his lips turned up in a smile.
Wasn’t this—venting about performance reviews and bureaucracy—a true sign of peacetime?
“Did you bring lunch?” she asked.
“No,” he said, eye twitching. “Maxwell took my meal prep as leftovers and devoured everything last night.”
“I made some extra stir-fry.” She strode over to the small fridge by her desk and pulled out a plastic container holding a mix of pan-fried peppers, chicken, and onion over brown rice. “Care to join me?”
“I’d be honored,” Wufei said.
As they headed out of her office, Sally turned off the lights and locked the door.
“Now, you and Duo are… roommates?” she asked him.
“He is staying on my couch until he gets his own place,” Wufei replied. He ducked his head. Again, a slight flush of red had come to his cheeks.
“And how long has that been going on?” she asked with a teasing lilt.
“Woman, don’t tease.” Wufei gave her a dark glare. Then, his face broke into a smile.
She grinned to herself and they headed down the corridor to the cafeteria, Wufei admonishing her for pestering him and Sally rolling her eyes.
Some things never changed.