Chapter 14: The White Cliffs of Catalina

A woman with honey gold hair shakes her bobbing, ringlets and twirls side to side. Frustrated, she places both sturdy hands on her ample hips, wondering how she ever got into such a situation.

All around her, the kids were--

Po, stop talking to yourself like you're an old bag!

--ahem, the young people, were enjoying each other and the day.

There. That's better.

Sally Po's "old" eyes scanned the group laughing and playing volleyball while others were splashing about in the water, or sunning themselves on the shoreline. After all, what was the beach for if not to find the simple pleasures in each other's company and have a bit of plain, old-fashioned fun?

"Fun? I don't think that's a word in Chang Wufei's vocabulary." Sally Po grunts aloud, with a snicker. Her gold curls bob over yet another rise of similarly colored sand dunes in search of her missing "partner."

But could Chang Wufei ever truly fulfill that role for me--either in duty or...something else?

Sally wonders, her mind wandering from the seeking out of her fellow Preventer partner on duty today. Instead, she lets the sea breeze take the usual burden of responsibility from her stiffened shoulders and carries her eyes up, up to the sky and the blazing sunlight above...

And there her blue eyes catch glimpse of both that and her heart's target. It was the unmistakable profile of a familiar man standing motionlessly. The wind was blowing through him and his dark ponytail, on the tallest cliff that Catalina had to offer.

Even from where she stood, far far below on the beach, Sally Po could plainly see that neither duty nor fun were terms Wufei's freedom-loving soul was intending to toy with today, judging from the phased-out, meditating look on his brow.

And what Wufei intended to do, Wufei did. Sally was getting pretty darn tired of having to make excuses for his slacking off on the job frequently.

Especially when it comes to dealing with the public...oh yeah, Wufei's a real people person, smooth charmer kind of guy.

And although she herself had personally scouted this scenic beachfront and surrounding area around the Catalonia villa for any threats or immediate danger exposed to the vacationing Vice Foreign Minister, she had found the place clean.

Spotlessly...to a fault in fact. Senator Catalonia seems to be the only inhabitant of this side of the Spanish isle. I don't blame them. Who'd want to have her for a neighbor, anyway?

Sally was not about to let Wufei just sneak off and leave her high and dry with all the work. She wasn't going to let him off so easily.

Besides, Mr. Chang, I think you owe me a dip in the ocean.

Sally looks down as she strides purposefully towards the cliff. She peeks in her buttoned up Chinese style jacket to the little bikini she had purchased when this particular mission was suddenly called up.

"We're here now. Might as well have some fun." Sally says aloud to the salty winds as she lets them carry her up the winding trail to the white cliffs' edge above.

The ocean.

Entranced was a good word for this star-crossed warrior. But maybe "preoccupied" would be a better analysis of Chang Wufei's forever embroiled state of mind.

Perhaps for some people, if not most, the endless blues of the crashing waves brought a sense of peace and calm to one's heart and soul. But not Wufei. No. The ocean waves were nothing but a reminder to him. A reminder of a past battle lost--of a duel he was bested at--of a man who defeated him.

Not once, but twice...

I should have been left alone to sink to the ocean floor and die. But would that have been a warrior's death?

Wufei's tormented mind's questions are interrupted. His fighter's acute senses tell him that someone was approaching from behind, and it was someone he neither feared, nor wanted to see.

Woman.

"Wufei..."

The no-reply was something Sally was quite accustomed to, so she continues to talk to his unfriendly turned back facing the cliff's edge and the sea.

"You know there IS a reason why WE were assigned by Colonel Une to come here."

Yeah right. Great assignment. And ordered by LADY Une too. Protect the pacifist weaklings. I REALLY should have been left to die on the ocean's murky bottom.

Wufei's depressed mind makes a rebound. Sarcasm was the one and only thing that could hold him onto this side of the line his mind so often tread upon--and Sally Po was the master of causing Chang Wufei to be sarcastic.

Inwardly he smirked, but outwardly he never twitches a muscle when some movement down below on the beach catches his hawk-like, black eyes.

"You don't have to worry, Wufei. I took care of the recon and made a complete surveillance on the east to west areas of the grounds below..."

Sally's low voice drones on. Wufei no longer hears a word of it (as if he ever did anyway) as his eyes slit, then go wide, then slit again as they continue to remain fixed on the view below. He ignores Sally entirely as the waves crash against the cliff.

"Look. It was a lot of trouble to get you here. Don't you want to play like the rest of your comrades? Let loose and have fun, maybe once in a while?" Sally offers, deciding to get off the lecturing speech with the hope that Wufei might actually agree to come and act his youthful age for once in his whole, entire, bottled-up life.

Sounds like something a woman would say.

"We didn't come here expecting to PLAY." Mr. Chang says in his oh-so-condescending way. He seemed to say it with a vengeance, accompanied by a disgusted grunt that Sally was not exactly privy to know why just yet.

"The ocean is the ONLY thing I'm interested in looking at--and that's all." Wufei states matter-of-factly. His gleaming black eyes and lacquered black head look straight up and pointedly at the ocean, and the ocean's crashing waves alone.

Weaklings all.

"That's unfortunate. It's the season for crowded beaches and people in swimwear." Sally comments idly to herself mostly. Her eyes gaze away from Wufei's rigid form, his jacket blowing in the wind. She looks down to her own stiff, jacketed form. She decides to just do what she's always done throughout her life.

Darn it all and go for it!

Sally unbuttons her jacket and reveals her own rather revealing swimwear...

(I hope the children don't see me...)

"Wufei, why don't we go for a swim together?" Sally bravely calls out to the back of the man's head. Wufei first goes all stiff-like, then his head begins to shake as if he were nervous or...

Frozen in place for a moment, Wufei Chang is, for once in his life, at a loss. Something in him wanted to look back at Sally's voluptuous bikini-ed form--and yet, he didn't want to look.

He wanted to seem interested--and yet he desperately didn't want to interested. At all. No way.

What is it about women? What do you expect from me? All women are trouble, that's all I know. ALL WOMEN ARE ALIKE!! Their weakness makes even strong men weak. WEAKLINGS ALL! Why don't they just leave us alone?! The strong will survive even if the weak deem to try to tempt us. I don't want to be weak! I don't want to swim! I don't want to play! And I don't want you! Get away from me, Woman!

Tentative, Sally could sense Wufei's immediate stiffness. She quickly wraps her jacket around herself again, not knowing what to expect as the Chinese man in an obvious fluster spins at blinding speed. He, without so much as a word, stomps past her and down the cliff's winding path in a confused huff, leaving Sally Po alone with much the same confusion left on her innocent face.

"...Wufei...?" She murmurs, the look quizzical to the empty sky. Wufei was long gone but for one swift moment, if Sally was as observant as she believed herself to be, she saw something like...doubt cross Wufei's angry-at-the-world eyes. He had purposely averted them from her as he stormed past.

"Hmph." She sighs, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head as once again, her hands go to her hips. "I wonder what go into him?" Sally wonders aloud to the sky as she wanders over to the cliff's edge that Wufei was so firmly planted on.

She gazes up to the beautiful, clear blue, letting it wash over her. And the sky might have answered her if her eyes would care to glimpse some of the weaklings at "play" on the hot sands below.

The clear, scenic view of husband and wife was obviously too much for Wufei Chang's "delicate" sensibilities. It sent his male, machoism over the edge.

However, Sally was too absorbed in her own thoughts to notice Noin and Zechs frolicking, enjoying the crashing ocean waves on the shoreline below.