The house was quiet and dark, the others all asleep upstairs. I’d been talking to Duo for most of the evening. I know, me, Heero Yuy, talking, but… but Duo had somehow wrangled me into a conversation. I learned a lot about him, and I guess he learned a lot about me, too.

“Do you miss it?” Duo asked, frowning, a sorrowful, wistful tone to his voice.

“Miss what?”

“Miss that part of you that you gave up in order to be a killer, to be a Gundam pilot. I do. Not often, but sometimes; sometimes, I wonder how different I’d be if I hadn’t killed that part of me that stopped me from being Shinigami.”

I hesitated. “I don’t think I ever had that part of me. I was trained to be a killer since I was born. I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“I didn’t have that part of me for long. I lost it when I was about eight. But… sometimes I wonder. We gave up so much to be what we are and do what we do. Sacrifice for the cause and all that shit. Sometimes I sorta wonder how different we’d be. I don’t think Wufei would be much different, and Trowa probably wouldn’t. But Quatre, I think he’d be different, more… cheerful. I mean, I know he’s cheerful enough, but sometimes, he gets all quiet and sad. You can tell that he’s hurting about the things he has to do, the person he has to be.”

He fell silent and I prodded, “Would you be different?”

“…. I think so. I mean, I became Shinigami way before I became a Gundam pilot, but… I think, I would be different. Less… haunted.”

“And me?”

“You…. I dunno. I mean, like you said, you don’t know how to be anything else, but….well, I think you’d be different.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Maybe… more relaxed. I mean, you never stop thinking about the war, about the big mission, and I think… if you didn’t have that worry, that responsibility, maybe you wouldn’t be so… serious. I can’t imagine you ever being like me or Quatre, but I think maybe you wouldn’t be so… closed off. Maybe you’d let someone get close to you.”

I thought about that for a minute. Would I be different without the war? Duo was right, I was constantly thinking about the cause. Would I really be different? I didn’t think so, but… maybe. Then I thought about that last sentence. I couldn’t see anyone getting close to me. Only two people had ever really tried: Relena, and Duo. I’d rather wear a frilly pink dress than ever get close to her. But Duo…. Some small, forgotten part of me, a part I hadn’t even thought existed, wanted to let Duo inside my defences. A tiny voice at the back of my head was saying, Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it’d be nice. Maybe.

“You don’t let anyone get close to you, either,” I said aloud. “You pretend, but you keep everyone at a distance.”

He gave a lop-sided grin. “Yeah, I guess I do. Shinigami’s just not a good person to get close to, ya know? I let some people get close to me once, and they died, so… I stopped getting close. But, it’s not as if I have a whole lot of people to get close to, ya know?”

“We’re very isolated.”

“Yeah, even among the resistance. Whenever we walk into a resistance base, everyone just sort of… looks. Have you noticed that?”

I had. We didn’t visit the resistance bases often, but when we did, we stuck together. We’re all loners, except Quatre, but we always stick together. The Gundam pilots, the ones who are always different, always on the outside.

Duo fell silent again, staring out the window at the dark. I watched him, memorizing his features without really knowing why. Alright, so maybe in some dark place in my heart, I did know why, but I just wasn’t up to admitting it right then, so bugger off.

“Do you ever think about what will happen after the war?” Duo asked after a long couple of moments. “If we win, I mean.”

I hesitated. Did I? “No.”

“Me either. Wonder what we’ll do-if we’re alive. Quatre will go back his old life, the family business. Trowa will probably go back to the circus with Catherine. Wufei, who knows, but he’ll find something, probably become a professor at some college or join some form of law enforcement or something. But, what about us two? The others, this isn’t really their lives, ya know? They’ve always had something else. But me and you, we don’t got nothing else. This war is everything to us. I have no bloody idea how I’m gonna survive after it’s over. What’ll I do? I really can’t see myself settling down in a nine-to-five job and going home to a nice house with a white picket fence, with the wife and kids and a couple of dogs. And I can’t see you doing that either.” He sighed heavily, leaning forward and covering his face with his hands. “Man, that’s depressing.”

I looked at him and realized that he had let his mask drop. All the grins and smiles and jokes were gone, leaving him very… serious; depressed; haunted. I felt very… honoured that he had shown me his true face. He never showed anyone else. Which begged the question, why me?

“Because I know you understand,” he muttered, as if reading my thoughts. He let his hands fall down and sneaked a glance at me. “Like I said, the others, they wouldn’t understand. But you do. I know that. Quatre, he’d just go all pitiful and say, Oh, Duo, don’t think like that. Trowa would give me a look and wander away. Wufei probably wouldn’t say anything. But you, you understand. You know exactly what I’m thinking.”

And I did. I understood perfectly. Duo and I were Gundam pilots to the core, soldiers, fighters. Nothing would ever change that. We lived for fighting, for danger, and we couldn’t survive without it. It hit me then that I didn’t intend to live through this war. If I didn’t die in battle, I’d commit suicide. I could not live in… peace, normality, whatever the hell you call it. And Duo couldn’t either. I don’t think he intended to commit suicide, but…

“I’m gonna self-destruct my Gundam, with me in it,” Duo said. “And if on the off-chance that that doesn’t work, like with you, I’ll probably go out looking for some serious, serious danger. Shinigami ain’t gonna go out quietly. He’s gonna go down in a blaze o’ glory.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Not unusual, I’m not good with words. But, looking at his… disheartened expression, I wanted to. For some reason, I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to tell him not to die. I wanted to touch him. What the fuck is going on with me?

“I got a mission tomorrow,” Duo said, and I blinked. While missions were strictly confidential between base and pilot, we tended to tell each other the basics. Duo hadn’t been near his laptop all day, so he’d waited a while to tell us. Uh, tell me. Why hadn’t he told the others sooner? “It’s a sneak, grab and blow.”

Translated, that meant it was an infiltration-extraction mission where he demolished the place afterwards. That last was unusual. Normally, infiltration-extraction missions meant that you got the target out undetected and left the base/building/whatever alone. I frowned.

“What else?” I asked, because I knew that there was something else.

“The target is a scientist who wants to come to our side, bringing with him tons of information that could help. Only they’ve put some kind of chip in him, homing beacon kind of thing. I have to make it look like he died so that they won’t trace him immediately, meaning our doctors can remove the chip. And the best way to do that is complete demolition, where they’ll have to spend a weak identifying each body.”

“Of course.”

“Here’s where it gets hard. He’s not staying at a military base. He’s staying at a civilian hotel. I’ll have to completely destroy the place, civilians included.”

Oh. I opened my mouth and then closed it, not sure of what to say. Killing civilians by accident was hard. Killing them on purpose was harder. Killing dozens, possibly hundreds, including children, on purpose was… there wasn’t a word for it. I’d only done it once, and it had nearly killed me, though I didn’t show it and I’ll deny it under torture.

“I’ve got the blood of civilians on my hands, we all have, and I’ve got more than the others, equalling yours, but this… I researched the hotel as soon as I got the mission. It’s large, one hundred and fifty civilians. It’s near the beach, the park, and the arcade, so it’s popular with tourists, tourists with kids. The hotel even has a little crèche. Out of morbid curiosity, I looked up how many kids there will be when I’m there. Seventy kids my age or younger. And you know what, to get maximum impact, I’ll have to plant some major explosives in the crèche, among other places. The kids won’t stand a chance. None of them will. Over a hundred sacrificed… for one man and some information.” A fierce expression came onto his features, savage. “We’re supposed to be the good guys,” he growled. “We’re not supposed to do shit like this. If we do this shit, what the hell makes us different from the bad guys?”

I didn’t have an answer to that. He stood up so abruptly, my hand was on my gun before I realized it. He stalked up the stairs, his anger, his frustration, swirling around him like a dark cloud. And inside that cloud was the other emotions-the guilt, the sadness, the horror. We all have lines we won’t cross, things we won’t do. I only have one: I won’t rape anyone. But the others have more lines. Duo has fewer than the others, but he has some, and this, I think, was one of them. And if he crossed this line, what did that make him?

I continued to sit on the couch for a few more minutes. Duo and I shared a room and I knew that he wasn’t in the mood for more talking. Neither was I. So I sat, and I gave him time to change and get in bed. He’d pretend to be asleep, and I’d know he was awake because he always woke up when someone entered the room, and he’d know I knew, but he’d pretend, and I wouldn’t break the charade.

After five minutes, I turned off the small lamp that had been illuminating the living room and walked upstairs. I paused briefly to listen. Quatre and Trowa were in their room. A bedspring creaked as someone rolled over. They were both breathing, both alive. Wufei was breathing, and alive. I could hear all this, distant but clear, and knew that I shouldn’t have been able to. No normal human could hear someone breathing in a different room. But I could.

I shook my head and walked into my bedroom. Duo was in his bed, the one at the far side of the room, turned away from me, quilt drawn tight around his shoulders. He normally slept facing the door, just in case, and I agreed with it-I mean, I always took the bed closest to the door, and faced the door, just in case. I didn’t comment. He was supposed to be asleep, remember.

I changed silently into the dark blue cotton shorts I used for pyjamas and slipped into my own bed. I wasn’t in the least bit sleepy, though I could make myself sleep if I wanted to, but I didn’t make myself. I stared at the ceiling, and listened to Duo breathe. I finally went to sleep sometime around midnight.

I woke up to the sound of Duo standing up. I glanced at him and saw him stretching, muscles straining, fingertips reaching for the ceiling. He looked at me and didn’t grin or smile or even speak. His mask was still down, and I knew that around me, it would be until he came back from the mission, and maybe then, he’d continue to go unmasked for me.

Shaking his head, Duo moved to the single dresser and opened one of his two drawers, pulling out some black jeans and a black long-sleeved tee shirt with black boxers and black socks. He dressed silently, turned away from me, but making no move to hide himself. He had a bullet-crease scar across his shoulder blades and a clean knife wound to the right of his lower back. His skin was creamy and pale, as he normally wore long-sleeves and most of his work took place at night, or inside a building or Gundam. I knew that he was strong and muscled, and it showed more in the front, in his chest and abdomen, but just from looking at his back, you could tell he was strong. He was lean and lanky, but he had muscles. I liked that.

Sitting down on his bed, he unbraided his hair. and brushed it. He looked completely different with his hair down. It moved around him like it were alive, a thick, warm, chestnut, living blanket. I liked seeing him with his hair down. I was the only one that got to see him like that. I felt honoured. He braided his hair quickly, having had years of practise, and tied it off with a black hair-band.

Duo reached under his bed for his bag and began checking its contents-clothes, weapons, basic medical supplies, four changes of ID, handheld radio, laptop. He had another bag filled with bomb-making equipment, another change of ID and a couple more guns, plus a complete med kit. The handheld radio was for him to call us on the emergency frequency in case of trouble.

He pulled on a shoulder holster, checking the gun’s clip and safety automatically, and then strapped a knife to each forearm. The knives were a set of four, the other two going on his thighs. He normally didn’t add the knives unless in enemy territory, usually having just his gun and hunting knife. That he was wearing them now was not a good sign. He pulled on his black combat boots and checked the knives in the built-in sheaths. A gun and four knives, and he hadn’t even left the safe house yet. Not good. Duo wore extra weapons when he was nervous, angry, or upset. I think it might have been all three this morning.

He looked at me again, some dark, unreadable emotion in his violet eyes, and then left. He hadn’t said a single word. Unless doing infiltration work or hiding from search parties, silence was damn near impossible for Duo Maxwell. I didn’t like that he was silent. I really didn’t like it.

Sighing, I got up and changed into faded jeans with an off-white tee shirt, gun a stark contrast to the whiteness, but no one would comment. Forgoing shoes and just wearing socks on my feet, I padded downstairs and found that Duo was the only one up. He was sitting in the kitchen, staring into his coffee. Duo’s idea of breakfast was coffee-or in a pinch, Coke-and maybe an apple. Quatre made sure he ate properly. So did I. Come to think of it, so did the others. Hm, interesting.

“How long will the mission take?” I asked quietly, pouring myself some coffee and sitting down opposite him.

“Few days, week at the most. I leave in a couple of hours.”

“The others might not be up.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to tell them about the mission?”

Duo thought about that for a moment and then shook his head. “No.”

“Alright.”

I heard movement upstairs and knew that at least one of the others was awake. If it was Wufei, it was just him, if it was either Trowa or Quatre, it would be both of them. I listened, and heard just one set of footsteps, so it was Wufei. He moved into the bathroom and I heard the water running. It was his day for the first shower, a very hot one. Then it would be me, with a hot one, then Duo with a very warm one, then Trowa with a warm one, then Quatre with a lukewarm one. The hot water in this safe house was very limited, and it took a long time to heat back up, so we took it in turns. Of course, the water running made the other two wake up. Quatre would come down in a moment and start making breakfast-probably pancakes.

I looked at Duo and saw him take a deep breath, let it out slowly, and plaster a cheerful grin on his face. It looked completely genuine, just like all his smiles, and it made me… sad to see it, which was confusing as hell.

Quatre walked in, wearing a pair of jeans and a loose grey tee shirt. He didn’t appear to be armed. He was the only one of us that was not constantly armed. He smiled around a wide yawn and said good morning.

“Morning, Quat,” Duo said cheerfully. “Didya sleep well?”

“Very well, actually. You?”

“Like a corpse.”

“Duo.”

“Sorry. Like a log.”

“Better. Pancakes?”

“Oooh, yummy.” Duo sipped his coffee and watched Quatre move around the kitchen, getting all the ingredients for pancakes. I watched Duo. He seemed so happy, so… carefree. But it was just a mask. It was as flawless and impenetrable as my own masks. Did the others know it was a mask? Quatre, with his mild empathic abilities might, if he focused hard enough, but the others…. I don’t think any of them realized just how much Duo hid from them. He ran and he hid and no one even knew he was doing it.

“I’m going out to do the shopping later, if you have anything to add to the list,” Quatre said, glancing at us. I’d already checked the list and couldn’t think of anything else, so I didn’t say anything. Duo stood up and took the list off the fridge, examining it. It was quite short, just the bare essentials, and one luxury item per pilot. My luxury item is a book by Laurell K Hammilton. She’s my favourite author. Only Duo knows how much I like her, and he’s read some of my books. Duo’s luxury item is a new CD, nu metal, of course.

“Nope, you’ve got everything here,” he said, putting the list back on the fridge just as Trowa walked in, wearing jeans and dark blue tank top, with a gun in a hip holster. A shoulder holster would chafe against his bare skin, so why put up with it if you didn’t have to? He made himself a coffee, and Quatre a tea. Quatre is the only one of us that doesn’t drink coffee, or anything with caffeine in it, for that matter.

“So, what’s everyone doing today?” Quatre asked cheerfully, putting the pancakes in front of Duo, along with a bottle of chocolate ice cream sauce, knowing how much Duo like the stuff on his pancakes.

“I’m going to be working on Wing,” I muttered, still watching Duo, who just looked at his pancakes and then pushed them towards me.

Quatre noticed and asked, “Aren’t you hungry, Duo?”

“Not as much as I thought I would be. I’ll grab a snack later or something.” He grinned and left. I ate the pancakes because my body was hungry and then followed him. He was opening the window, and tossing down his two bags and med kit.

“Leaving?” I asked quietly, leaning against the wall. He looked at me and nodded.

“Yeah. Might as well get a little jump-start on things, huh?”

“One week.”

“Yep. From today.”

Meaning that next Wednesday, if he wasn’t back and I hadn’t heard from him, he was captured or dead, and I could go find him.

“We leave this safe house in three days.”

“I’ll get the co-ordinates from base at the end of the mission. I’ll find ya.”

“Who’s going to pilot Deathscythe?”

“You, of course. I don’t trust anyone else with my buddy. Just don’t steal his parts again.”

That was something of joke between us-that I’d stolen parts from Deathscythe to fix Wing after he’d busted me out of the Alliance hospital. Like the fact that he’d shot me when we first met. He grinned at me for the first time since yesterday, and it was a mere ghost of his usual grin that left his eyes empty, drowning violet pools of nothing.

Then he turned and jumped out the window. I heard him land lightly, pick up his bags, and walk away. It was a five mile walk to the town, but I knew he could walk it. He could’ve taken the car and left it at the drop-off point, but he didn’t. He chose to walk. Hm.

I walked over to the window and watched him walk away, and felt… something. I don’t know what it was-sadness, longing, wistfulness, all of them, none of them; just something. I sighed and turned away from the window.

The new safe house is just like the last one: small out-of-the-way cabin sort of place in a forest, with only one old black-and-white TV set, a tiny radio, and two bedrooms, which meant that Wufei would be sharing with me and Duo. Just one problem: there were only two beds in the bedroom. This had happened only once before, and luckily, it had been a busy two months and at least one of us had been away at all times. Duo didn’t come back for four days, maximum, and I wondered what we’d do when he did return.

I was desperately worried about him, though I didn’t let it show, of course. It’s constant communications blackout, so I had no idea how he was doing. I guess I could take comfort in the fact that he hadn’t called on the emergency frequency-I’d know if he has, because I keep my handheld radio clipped to my waist at all times.

The others were quite interested in his mission and asked me a lot of questions, probably because I’m Duo’s unofficial partner and group leader, but I feigned ignorance, not hard to do, because I never let my expressionless mask drop, so they couldn’t read me. I felt Quatre trying to ‘read’ me a couple of times, alerted by that faint prickling sensation that gives me goosebumps and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and told him to stop it. As far as I know, I’m the only one who can feel him using his gifts. Yet more proof that I’m not entirely human.

“You’ve got such a gloomy personality, why don’t you just give up and stop pretending to be human?” Duo muttered angrily.

“Hey!” I shouted before I could stop myself. That had hurt. I don’t know why but it had hurt, cut through my heart like a knife. I didn’t want this cocky American pilot to… think about me like that. What the hell was going on with me?

Duo looked up at me, his deep violet eyes sullen and distrustful. “What is it? You’re too late if you think you can ask for me help.”

I hesitated for a split second. What could I say? Then I leaned forward casually and said, “Could you keep it down over there?” Dammit, no! I hadn’t wanted to push him away!

“Yeah, sure,” Duo said, glaring at me fiercely, completely angry now. “Forgive me for interrupting.”

I shook my head to clear my thoughts. That was the fist instant in which I knew Duo was like no one I had ever met before, the first time I’d felt something strange. I wished with every fibre of my being that I could go back and change that, not push him away, not that it would make much of a difference. He didn’t stay pushed away. I like that about him-he’s as stubborn as me.

I wandered over to my laptop and checked my email account. It’s empty, other than three old emails from Duo. They each contain a picture of him doing something stupid, and just general chatter, nothing important, nothing that could be used against us if the email was traced, not like that could happen. All our laptops have insane firewalls, and Duo and I have more than normal-the benefits of being a computer genius.

I wished for a mission. It would give me something to do. Wing was in perfect condition, my weapons were cleaned and cared for to within an inch of their lives, my files were all updated, and it meant that I had absolutely nothing to do but sit around and think about Duo.

Wufei walked in, wearing a pair of grey jogging trousers and nothing else. He was covered in a light sheen of sweat, and his breathing was a little rapid. He nodded at me and walked into the tiny kitchen, getting a bottle of water out of the fridge.

“Any word from Maxwell?” he asked, sitting down in the armchair and sipping his water. I shook my head.

“Iie.” Oops. I didn’t speak Japanese unless I’m nervous or upset or worried or angry. Only Duo knows this, but I think the others suspected something. Wufei’s eyes narrowed slightly, and I met his gaze challengingly. After a minute he shrugged and walked upstairs. I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

“Heero, you look tense,” Quatre said, walking down the stairs and looking at me sadly. “Is it Duo?”

“Of course not.”

“What’s this mission about, anyway? It’s not like him to not tell us.”

“All I know is that it’ll take a few days to a week and obviously didn’t require Deathscythe.” Aha! I could mess with Deathscythe. Okay, so Duo probably wouldn’t appreciate it, but it’d give me something to do. I stand up and leave the house silently, walking through the forest. There’s no hint of a path, and it’s just under a mile to where the Gundams are hidden, and I don’t really think I thought at all as I walked.

Deathscythe was crouched next to Wing, and I keyed in the password-singingshinigami-to open the hatch. I settled into the command chair and closed the hatch, looking around the small cockpit. On impulse, and knowing that I really shouldn’t, I brought up Deathscythe’s internal computer hard drive and looked at the files. There was a folder labelled ‘Heero Yuy’, and I opened it. Inside were three different files, not labelled, and I opened the first, only to come up with a password box. Okay, this was so wrong. I pulled out of the folder and just stared at it. Then something else caught my eye-a folder labelled ‘Victims’.

With a very bad feeling in my stomach, I opened the file and found it was a list. The first few names, I didn’t recognise-Solo, Emily, Jon, Kid, Sister Helen, Father Maxwell, Janet, Nate, Kelsi, Phillip, Anya, Tara. Then came the names of bases and a number. I recognized the bases as ones he’d destroyed. Occasionally there’d be Jane and John Does in the list, and sometimes there were names, probably people who had seen his Gundam, or just people at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a long list.

Dammit. Duo kept a record of all the people he’d killed, all the blood he had on his hands, soldier and civilian. Dammit.

I sighed, staring at the list. He probably had as many kills as I did. But while I could forget about them, seeing them as necessary and justified deaths, he obviously couldn’t. He felt guilty about every single one of them.

I closed my eyes, leaning my head back against the headrest, and thought. I’d known that Duo’s wide grins were just a mask, but I’d had no idea just how much he hid. He hid all his guilt and sorrow and horror almost constantly. It had to wear him down. I didn’t have much emotion to hide, so I was alright, but Duo…. Someday, he was going to snap, and I really didn’t want to be around when he did. I had the feeling that it would cause some very serious mass destruction.

It was nearing midnight on Tuesday when Duo walked into the safe house. I was sitting on the sofa with my laptop, updating one of my files, when the door opened. I really didn’t like how he looked. His skin was paler than normal, almost white; his eyes were unusually bright but sort of dead at the same time; his feet dragged, making him sort of shuffle instead of walk.

“How was the mission?” I asked in a murmur, watching him closely as he left his bags by the door and flop down in one of the armchairs.

“Shitty, but successful. The resistance doctors were putting Takashi under for the operation as I left the base.”

“You didn’t stay to rest?”

“Nope. Hate those looks I get, and all those murmurs-ya know, ooh, look, he’s one of those Gundam pilots, he looks so young, how many has he killed, is he armed, terrorist.” His eyes flashed angrily. “Those stupid bastards are sitting there, saying, yeah, I’m fighting OZ, I’m a good guy, I’m a hero, and they don’t have the slightest idea what this war is really like. They don’t have any scars. They haven’t hidden in a dark, damp cave with no food, no water, no warmth, while hiding from search parties who were after their blood. They haven’t sacrificed anything. And they sit there, all high and mighty, look down their noses at me. I haven’t even turned sixteen yet, and I have sacrificed things, done things, that they will never have to do. I have nightmares every night, about the things I’ve done, but I still do it, because I know I have to. They have no right to be like that.”

I just looked at him and let him rant on about the resistance soldiers, because it was important to him. He needed to focus on something else other than what he’d just done. He looked at me with those dead eyes, and a tear rolled down his cheek. In all the time I’ve known him, all the things we’ve been through, and I’ve never seen him cry. I wanted desperately to comfort him, to hold him, to…. I don’t know. But I couldn’t do any of it. Because while I so desperately wanted to, and was able to, to actually do it would be admitting to both him and myself that I lo… that I cared for him. That’s about as much as I can admit at the moment, and it’s a huge leap for me.

Then we heard footsteps upstairs. The others had woken up to the sound of our voices, because there weren’t supposed to be any voices. Duo wiped the tear away and grinned. Quatre and Trowa walked down, guns in hand, and stopped when they saw Duo.

“Injuries?” Trowa asked quietly, putting the safety back on his gun. Duo shook his head.

“Nah, perfectly healthy.”

“What was the mission?” Quatre asked.

“Just had to rescue some scientist from OZ and get him to a resistance base. OZ doesn’t even know he’s gone yet.” Which was technically true. OZ thought he was dead, not missing. He’d also left out the hotel and civilian causalities.

“Why didn’t you tell any of us you were leaving?”

“I told Heero.”

“You didn’t tell him much.”

“I told him everything.”

Quatre gasped, looking at me. “You lied!”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Because Duo asked me not to tell you.”

Quatre frowned. “Why did you tell him that, Duo? You’re not normally this secretive.”

“Quat, I have more secrets than you could possibly imagine.”

“Well, I guess….”

“I’m tired, so I’m gonna go to bed, alright?”

“Alright. It’s good to have you back.” Quatre smiled at him and left with Trowa. Duo sighed, closing his eyes.

“Truth, Duo,” I said quietly. “How was the mission?”

“Bloody awful. I, uh, got caught, by a couple while planting bombs in their room. Hid behind the door. Knocked the woman out. Knifed the guy. Knifed her. Locked the door. Planted the bombs. Left. Simple. Just a little more blood on my hands. Nothing to write home about.” He laughed suddenly, a dry, bitter sound. “When I’d killed the OZ guards and met Takashi, he just looked at me incredulously and said, You’re my rescue? You’re just a kid. I just grinned and looked at him and said, I haven’t been in a kid in a long time. He didn’t believe me, didn’t believe that I was capable of getting him out. So I showed him Shinigami; I showed him what I was. He nearly fainted. He just couldn’t believe that a kid like me could be so… monstrous. Couldn’t believe that the grinning kid in front of him was a cold-blooded mass-murdering terrorist who would kill anyone in an instant if they needed killing. But I can. I have. And I will again. Always kill. Always destroy.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Apologises are just words, Heero. They don’t change anything. Nothing can change what I am.” He shook his head and took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh. “Where’s my bedroom? I need to sleep.”

“Um….”

“What?”

“There’s only two bedrooms.”

“And?”

“And only two beds.”

“Oh.”

Silence for a moment and then I said quietly, “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“Bullshit. There ain’t no problem with us sharing a bed.”

I hesitated on that, but followed him upstairs anyway. As soon as we opened the door, there was the unmistakable sound of a safety being clicked off a gun, and we both froze.

“Chill, Wufei,” Duo said wearily, sighing and walking the rest of the way into the room. “It’s just us.”

Wufei put the safety back on his gun and put it back under his pillow. “Maxwell, you couldn’t come back during the day?”

Duo didn’t respond to that, and neither did I. Wufei went back to sleep, while Duo and I changed into what passed for pyjamas among us pilots-shorts or boxers. Pyjamas were unnecessary and took up needed space, so we didn’t have them.

Duo slid into the spare bed-which happened to be the one closest to the door-and looked at me in the darkness. I hesitated at the foot of the bed. He raised his hands and used sign-language to say, Get in the bed now, Heero, or I shoot you. And if I start screaming, get the fuck out of the bed and don’t try to touch me.

Well duh. One of the most basic lessons is that you do not touch a sleeping soldier-especially not a Gundam pilot-when they’re asleep and not expecting to be touched, especially if they are having a violent nightmare. The results are often bloody. I rolled my eyes at him and climbed into the bed, feeling automatically for the gun hidden under the pillow.

The bed was quite narrow, so as much as I tried to put some distance between me and the warm, trembling body of Duo, our sides were pressed together. As it was, he had one leg and arm flung over the side. Duo sighed.

“Heero, raise your left arm,” he ordered. I frowned, but raised my arm. Duo rolled over and pressed himself against me, head nestled in the hollow of my shoulder, one hand on my bare stomach, the length of his body pressed against mine. “This okay?” he asked quietly, rolling his eyes to look up at me uncertainly.

I would never in a million years tell him just how okay this was. I could be close to him, hold him, and it wouldn’t reveal a damn thing. Hopefully. I smiled softly and draped my arm around him, closing my eyes. I heard Duo’s breath ease out in a soft sigh and waited until his breathing had steadied and deepened. I could feel his heart thumping rhythmically against my side.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. His masks were gone, and even in sleep there was a hint of… pain on his features, a faintly stubborn expression on his face, an expression that said, You can hurt me, but I’ll hurt back, because I’ve done it before, and always survived, and I’m not gonna give you an inch. That one expression summed up so much about Duo. I tenderly brushed my fingertips against his cheek, the barest of touches, but all I dared. The smallest, softest smile curled Duo’s lips and he snuggled closer to me, mumbling something incoherent under his breath. I smiled and left myself fall asleep.

When Duo jerked violently to the side, I was instantly awake. He was frowning, shivering, and thrashing madly, but not yet screaming. Emphasis on the yet. I rolled out of the bed and watched as the first blood-curdling scream spilled from his lips. Wufei was on his feet immediately, gun in hand.

“Nightmare,” I said tersely, just as Quatre and Trowa burst in, both carrying their guns. They looked at Duo as he screamed again, spine bowing almost painfully, and sighed, putting the safety back on their guns, and just watching, helpless, as Duo fought against his nightmare.

Duo screamed wordlessly for over five minutes, as fast as he could draw breath, but then his screams formed a single word: “SORRY!”

That one word slashed at my heart like a knife and I gasped, flinching. I wasn’t the only one to react. Tears welled up in Quatre’s eyes and he reached blindly for Trowa, confirming my suspicions that he felt something more than friendship for the tall Italian. Wufei looked shocked, staring at Duo with wide eyes.

Duo jerked awake suddenly, violently, sitting up as if he were a spring. He looked around wildly, panting for breath, and finally found me. He begged me silently, desperately, and I understood.

“Everyone, out,” I growled threateningly. They didn’t hesitate. They fled. I cautiously approached the bed and knelt down. “Talk?” I asked quietly, and his breath hitched slightly, a tiny hiccupping sob escaping his lips. He shook his head mutely and I suppressed a sigh. We didn’t talk about our nightmares, especially Duo, but I had the dreaded feeling that he needed to talk, needed to cry, needed that… release. But he kept it all bottled up inside, and it was slowly killing him.

“Do you think you can sleep again?” I asked, knowing the answer, but needing to ask anyway. He shook his head, tucking his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees. He began to rock, gently at first, but then violently. I don’t think he realized that he was doing, or that he could stop. I hesitantly reached out to touch his shoulder, and found that his skin was deathly cold. His eyes were blank and unseeing. Shock, or something very close to it. Damn.

I pulled the quilt out from under me and wrapped it around his shoulders, rubbing his arms. He didn’t acknowledge any of it and I began to get more than a little worried. I hesitated, debating what to do, and then decided to break the unwritten and unspoken rule.

“Duo, it’s alright to have nightmares,” I said quietly. “We all do. We have to do some pretty… horrible stuff, and it’s alright to be guilty, to have nightmares. Just… don’t let it break you. You are so strong, Duo, stronger than anyone I’ve ever met; nothing you’ve been through, the horrors you’ve seen, has broken you; don’t let this. Please. Just… smile for me. Make a wisecrack or a joke or tease or me or irritate me….just do something. Please.”

Duo didn’t acknowledge my words. Didn’t acknowledge anything. I chewed my lower lip to keep from screaming, and continued to rub his arms through the quilt.

“Alright, Yuy, what the fuck happened on his mission?” Wufei demanded, leaning in the doorway. I looked up at him and sighed, giving up completely.

“It was an infiltration-extraction mission, a scientist who wanted to switch sides. He was staying a hotel with some guards. Simple enough. Right?” Wufei nodded, frowning, and I continued, “OZ had put some sort of chip in him, a homing beacon, so if they suspected he was missing… they’d find him immediately. Unless they thought he was dead. The other half of Duo’s mission was to completely demolish the hotel. Civilians included.”

Wufei froze, not even blinking. “How many?” he whispered after a while.

“One hundred and fifty, give or take. Lots of kids.”

Wufei muttered something in Chinese under his breath, and then shook his head. “Barton has some sedatives; you’re group leader; it’s your decision.”

Sedatives would grant Duo the rest he was incapable of, but drugs didn’t work too well on us, didn’t last long, and sometimes gave us funny side effects. Plus, Duo hated any form of drugs, hated the weakness and helplessness and sometimes reality-alterations they caused. After a moment, I shook my head.

“No, no drugs. If he’s not better by tomorrow, um, later today, I mean, then I’ll reconsider. But not now.”

Wufei nodded and left without another word. I sighed, and dared to wrap my arms around Duo’s shaking shoulders, moving to sit behind him, rocking with him.

“I’m so sorry, Duo,” I whispered in his hear. “I wish I could take this pain from you. I’m so sorry.”

Seven in the morning found me and Duo in exactly the same position-me hugging him from behind, both of us rocking, neither of us speaking. The others had left us the hell alone, though I knew they were awake. I could hear them downstairs, making coffee and tea and talking quietly. I felt distantly bad that they hadn’t slept at all in the past four or five hours, but most of my brain was concentrating on Duo. The shivering had worsened to shuddering, then lessened to shivering again, weaving back and forth between the two, and right now, he was shivering. I’d been checking his temperature every ten minutes since he started rocking. He’s dropped three degrees, gained five, then lost four, gained one, and stayed there over the space of the last few hours.

The fact that I could judge someone’s temperature to a single degree just by touching was useful, but I really didn’t like it; just like I didn’t like being able to hear my comrades breathe in their bedrooms when I stood in the hall, or being able to feel Quatre trying to read me, or being able to bend steel bars with my bare hands, or falling down a fifty-story cliff and walking away with only a broken leg, or being able to set bones without any drugs and not feel blinding pain.

I literally shook my head to clear my thoughts. I was supposed to be focusing on Duo, not my fucked up self.

Someone knocked on the door and it opened a crack to reveal Trowa, carrying a tray, on which was a sandwich, a bowl of tomato soup, and two cups of coffee. He set it down on the edge of the bed, next to me.

“Do you think you can get him to eat?” he murmured, and I thought about.

“Probably not.”

Trowa left, before I could ask him to go, and I raised a spoonful of soup, holding Duo firmly to reduce the rocking. I put the spoonful of soup to his lips.

“Duo, could you eat this for me? It’s tomato soup. Please.” I pushed the spoon against his half-parted lips and was granted entrance. He swallowed the soup without acknowledging it, but hey, he was eating something hot. It was progress.

It was slow, and he only managed about half the soup before pressing his lips together and continuing his violent rocking. But his temperature had raised six degrees. Improvement. I finished the rest of the soup, and grabbed one of the coffee cups.

“Duo, do you want coffee?” I asked quietly, holding the cup close to him so that he could smell it. He didn’t take his eyes of the spot of the wall he’d been watching for the past few hours, and he didn’t open his mouth, so I put the coffee back on the tray with a sigh.

The next person to visit was Wufei, and he stepped into the room at ten thirty, hovering near the door.

“Barton and I have a mission in three hours. Should we ask for a delay?”

“Iie, things will be fine.”

Wufei looked sceptically at Duo, who, of course, didn’t notice the attention. “You sure?”

“Hai. I got some hot soup into him. I think… he just needs time.”

Wufei sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s something we don’t have.”

“Why?” A very bad feeling seeped into my stomach, like tendrils of ice. “Wufei, what’s happened? Talk to me, Chang.”

Wufei hesitated. “The mission isn’t only for Barton and myself; it’s for Maxwell, too.”

“No! They can’t ask him to go out killing again! He can’t!”

Duo stopped rocking and both Wufei and I stared at him. Duo’s lips moved silently for a moment and then he whispered, “A mission?”

“You don’t have to go. Quatre can go instead.”

“Mission. Killing.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“…. Little kids. So little. So innocent.” Then he started rocking again, but his eyes had gone from dead to haunted, sparkling with tears. I wasn’t sure if it was an improvement or not. Okay, one thing at a time.

“Wufei, contact base, tell them that Duo is unfit for duty until further notice. Tell them that all missions for Deathscythe can be handled by Wing. Tell them that if they have a problem with that they can fucking answer to me.”

Wufei nodded and left. I clutched Duo tighter, my chin resting on his shoulder. I was close enough to smell the faint spicy scent of his hair, and found that once I noticed it, I couldn’t forget it. It was a completely intoxicating smell.

“No more killing,” Duo whimpered, a tear rolling down his cheek. I wanted to lie, I wanted to promise him no more killing, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t explain it, but I just couldn’t lie to him.

“I’m sorry, Duo,” I murmured in his ear, closing my eyes against a suspicious wetness. “I’m so sorry.”

A few minutes later, there was another knock on the door and Wufei walked back in. From his guarded expression, I knew I wasn’t going to like what he was going to say.

“Just tell me,” I ordered, and he sighed, fingering the butt of his gun.

“The mission has been postponed, and Duo is off active duty.”

I ignored the fact that he’d called Duo by his first name, and not just Maxwell. “And?”

“And… he has to go see a doctor. Report at the nearest resistance base asap.”

“A doctor. A shrink.”

“Yeah. We’re allowed to go with him, and get mental checkups ourselves.”

“Duo doesn’t talk to strangers about his feelings. He doesn’t even talk to us.”

“He… doesn’t have a choice. Winner and Barton are already packing. Can Duo move?”

“No.” I sighed heavily, rubbing my eyes with one hand. “Get the sedative from Trowa. I’ll give it to him.”

Wufei didn’t question me, just left, and I thought. Duo didn’t talk to anyone about his feelings, period. He was not going to talk to some strange shrink. I doubt he could even speak to anyone but me. He’d said a total of thirteen words in the past eight or so hours, and I had the feeling that he was speaking more to himself than anyone else, except maybe me. I know that sounds conceited, but…. I think I was the one Duo was closest to. I think I was the one who was going to get him through this. Stop laughing, or I’ll hurt you.

Wufei returned quickly with a needle, and helped hold Duo still while I swabbed his arm with alcohol and injected him with the sedative. It only took a moment for it to kick in, making him go limp in my arms. I laid him down gently on the bed and stretched until joints popped.

“I’ll get dressed, get packed, and get a car,” I informed Wufei. “Make sure Duo stays drugged, just don’t use Thorazine. He has a bad reaction to it.” It was a dismissal, as polite as I could manage that moment, and it was enough, because Wufei left.

I changed quickly into some faded jeans and a loose dark blue dress shirt over a white tank top and shoulder holster. Yes, the holster chafed a little, but I could bear it. I also strapped a pair of throwing knives to my forearms. They’d been a gift from Duo when I’d lost mine on a mission. I kept my essential things packed in two duffel bags in case of attack, so I just added my clothes, and was packed. It took me less than a minute. I glanced at Duo, and decided to pack for him too. Then I realised that he had never unpacked from his mission. All he had out was the black cargo trousers and black tee shirt when he’d come in last night. It would do. I dressed him quickly, not thinking about what I was doing, and then left, pulling on my trainers as I went.

The town was three miles away, and I set myself to a light jog that quickly covered the distance. Finding a car was easy, finding the right car was harder. It had to be something inconspicuous, with a decent engine and enough petrol in the tank, and could fit five boys, one of whom was unconscious. I finally settled on a dark blue van parked in a car park. It only took me a second to get the door open, and another moment to get the engine started. Duo, Trowa and I all know how to hotwire any car, truck or motorbike. Wufei thinks it’s dishonourable, and Quatre… well, Quatre’s just Quatre.

I was at the road next to the forest after being gone just half an hour, and watched as my friends walked out from behind the trees. Quatre and Wufei were carrying Duo. Trowa was carrying Duo’s bags. We all had two duffel bags, no more, and light enough to carry for a long time. We’d been thankful for that two months ago when we’d been discovered and had to run two miles, while hiding from the enemy, through a rocky terrain, carrying our gear, to our Gundams. It had not helped that Trowa had a broken leg and Wufei had a broken arm. But we’d managed it. Of course.

Quatre and Wufei sat in the front, while Trowa sat in the back, with Duo pressed against his side, his head resting on Trowa’s shoulder, who checked his temperature and pulse frequently.

The nearest resistance base was a three-and-a-half hour drive, three-hours-clear if we didn’t always pay attention to speed limits. I paid attention to speed limits and took the extra half hour. No one said anything. I guess none of us were particularly eager to get to the base.

After an hour, Quatre flicked on the radio to fill the silence. After listening to upbeat pop music for half an hour, he turned it off again. I kept flicking glances at him, a question preying heavily on my mind. But Quatre didn’t reveal what he sensed from others often, said it was like a priest talking about a confession. But I had to ask.

“Can you… sense anything from him?” I asked quietly, my grip tightening on the steering wheel. Quatre looked at me, something dark and un-Quatre-like flitting behind his blue-green eyes. After a moment he sighed, leaning his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes, rubbing at his chest with the heel of his hand.

“A lot of… guilt… and pain… and horror… and sadness… and… Gods, I don’t have a word for half the emotions he’s feeling. But none of it is good. He’s on the brink of some huge black pit, and he’s fighting it, with everything he has, but it keeps pulling at him, all the time, and he can’t fight it forever. He’s losing. He’s slipping. And if he falls, we’ll never get him back.”

“I won’t let that happen!” No, I did not say it. I opened my mouth to, but Wufei beat me to it. I glanced in the rear-view mirror at him, and raised an eyebrow. He flushed slightly, but continued, “Duo is the strongest, brightest spirit I have ever met, and I will not all that light to vanish. I don’t care if he doesn’t want my help, he’s got it, and he’s just going to have to live with it.”

“He’s got my help, too,” Trowa murmured.

“And mine,” Quatre said.

I realized something then. I wasn’t the only one who cared about Duo. We all did. We were probably the closest thing to a true family any of us had ever had, except maybe Quatre and Wufei, but their families were made of blood, this family was made of… something else. We were united, unbreakable. And Duo was right in the middle of us. If someone was trying to hurt him, even himself, we’d protect him. I don’t know if any of the others realized this, but I knew that whether they understood why they were doing it or not, they would rescue Duo from the dark pit he was falling into.

Duo stirred and Trowa checked on him again. “He’s waking up,” he reported to me in his soft murmur that right now, was very soothing. “More drugs?”

I hesitated, and then shook my head. “Iie. Let him wake up.”

“Sure?”

I just nodded. They didn’t question me. I was group leader and Duo’s partner. Add in the fact that I could kill them all single-handed, and they tended to listen to me. It didn’t take long for Duo to wake up; like I said, drugs don’t work too well on us. A startled, half-muffled scream escaped his throat and he looked around wildly.

“Calm down, Duo, you’re safe,” I said, watching him closely and completely forgetting the fact that I was driving. Duo looked at me, something… desperate in his eyes. I saw Quatre frown out of the corner of my eye.

“Pull over, Heero,” he ordered, and I frowned.

“Why?”

“He needs… he needs you to be with him.”

“Nani?”

“It’s confusing and I don’t really understand it but… he needs you to hold him. He needs your touch.”

“Why me?”

“Possibly because you’re his best friend. Possibly because you’re the strongest and can protect him. Possibly because you held him before. Possibly all of the above. Possibly something else.”

I pulled into a small petrol station and let Wufei drive. As soon as I slid into the back, Duo fairly pounced on me, clutching at me with a grip that I’m not sure even I could’ve broken. Feeling more than a little embarrassed with the others watching, I slipped my arms around him and began to rock gently back and forth.

“It’s alright, Duo. It’s alright. You’re safe. I’m here. You’re safe. I’ll protect you. It’s alright.” I kept repeating soothing nonsense words to him for the rest of the trip, and it seemed like only a second later when we were passing guard stations, Wufei giving the right code phrases.

Duo wasn’t up to walking, so I carried him. He’s nearly my size, and his weight was unbalanced, but I could carry him for a short distance. We ended up in a nice but cluttered office. Trowa and Wufei were leaning against the back wall, Quatre was sitting in one chair, and we’d tried to make Duo sit in the other, but he refused to let go of me, so he ended up sitting on my lap. I noticed that both Trowa and Wufei had their arms crossed over their chests, which put their hands close to their guns. I didn’t comment.

It was thirty minutes until Dr. Shaw walked in. He was a tall, lean man with dark skin and greying hair. He attempted a smile, but it faded when he saw that he was faced with four very not-friendly, not-happy lethal Gundam pilots. He sat down at his desk and stacked some files before looking at us.

“Alright. My name is Dr. Shaw and I’ve been assigned to talk to one Mr. Duo Maxwell. I take it that’s him?” He gestured to Duo, who didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“That’s him,” I grunted.

“Could you tell me what’s the basic problem?”

“How about the fact that he’s fifteen and has a higher body-count than most middle-aged war veterans?” Wufei growled. “Or the fact that he has to be the God of Death? Or the fact that he has to kill anyone who he knows he’s a Gundam pilot? Or it could be the fact that he just had to kill over a hundred civilians, including children, because he was told to. Take your fucking pick, Doctor.”

Dr. Shaw blinked. I glanced at Wufei. I’d never seen him so… angry; protective; intense.

“Alright, can I call him Duo?” Shaw asked.

“Hai,” I said. “You can call him Duo.”

“Good. Now, boys, Duo and I have to talk alone for a while, so perhaps you should go to the mess hall and get something to eat?”

“I don’t think Duo will like me leaving.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure that the only reason he isn’t completely freaking our right now is that I’m holding him.”

Shaw raised his eyebrows and just looked at me, and the look was very eloquent. “I don’t mean to be insulting, but I doubt that.”

I shrugged mentally and stood up, taking Duo with me. Gently, I pulled away from him, and he gave a strangled scream, reaching for me again. I carefully fended off his attempts.

“Duo, I have to go, alright? I have to go now.” But he didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes were wide and feverish, desperate, and he clutched at me again. I looked at Shaw, who was watching us intently. “He needs me here,” I said, letting Duo grip my body without responding.

Shaw sighed. “Alright. I need to think on this for a moment. Why don’t all five of you go down to the mess hall and bring Duo back here in an hour?”

We left without anyone asking me if Duo could eat. We found the mess hall easily, and as soon as we stepped through the doors, pretty much all noise stopped and everyone looked at us. The others moved up to stand protectively around Duo, who was clutching at my waist with an iron grip while I held him in a gentle but firm grip.

“Yuy, go find a table,” Wufei said. “We’ll get some food.”

“Right. Soup, if they have it.” I spotted a table near the back corner and walked towards it, glaring at anyone who dared meet my eyes. As soon as I sat down, Duo tried to climb into my lap, and after hesitating for a moment, I let him. If any of the people watching wanted to make an issue of it, they could spend the rest of their lives in the infirmary. Simple as that.

“Duo, can you hear me?” I muttered, watching his eyes. He looked at me with his haunted violet eyes, and something registered in them. I almost didn’t see it, but I think he did see me, hear me. “Duo, we’re going to help you, alright? We’re going to make you better. But you have to want our help. You have to let us help you. “

“So little,” Duo whimpered, burying his face in my shoulder, and I could hear all the pain and the sorrow and the guilt and the anguish in his voice. It very nearly broke me. I sighed and wrapped my arms around him and… lied.

“No more killing, Duo,” I murmured into his ear, closing my eyes. “I promise, no more killing. No more killing.”

The others walked over, Trowa and Quatre balancing two trays each. Both trays held coffee, sandwich, and soup, chicken and vegetable. Duo’s favourite soup was tomato, but he didn’t mind chicken and vegetable. I raised a spoonful of soup to Duo’s lips, holding tight to stop the rocking, and he let me spoon feed him almost all of the soup. I could feel the soldiers in the room watching us, talking, but just ignored them. Once Duo had eaten the soup, I checked his temperature again, and found it had raised two degrees. I picked up half of the sandwich and held it to his lips.

“Duo, could you take a bite of sandwich for me?” I asked quietly. “You need something solid inside you. Please? Duo?”

Duo ignored me and began rocking again. I sighed, putting the sandwich down. I ignored my lunch, too, just taking a quick sip of coffee.

“If I hear the words ‘poor little kid’ one more time, I’m going to hurt someone,” Wufei growled. I’d been ignoring the soldiers, but now that I listened, I could hear the words repeatedly, from various places in the room. “That’s it.” Wufei pushed himself up and stood on the table. “Listen up, pathetic onnas! We are Gundam pilots, and we are different! We face horrors every day that you can’t imagine! We live forever alone, forever killing, and don’t complain! My companion here is fifteen and has earned the title Shinigami, the God of Death! He has known only killing, only pain, for his entire life! And murdering over a hundred innocent people has finally made him snap! So shut the fuck up, leave us alone, or we will kill you all!”

Silence. You could’ve heard a pin drop. Wufei sat back down very calmly, and sipped his coffee. I glanced at Duo and found that, while his rocking had not ceased, his eyes were now fixed on Wufei. Wufei noticed and looked back. After a moment of silent eye contact, the Chinese pilot nodded his head in the best bow he could manage from his position, and went back to his meal.

We left the mess hall quickly, with half an hour to waste. To fill the time, we went to the room we’d been given, away from the barracks. It was a simple room with five narrow cots and five empty footlockers. We didn’t unpack.

Quatre sighed, sitting down on his cot. Silently, Trowa sat down beside him and began massaging his shoulders. I wondered if Trowa felt the same way about Quatre that Quatre felt about him.

“Maxwell could use a shower,” Wufei said quietly into the heavy silence.

“Hai,” I muttered. Duo obviously hadn’t showered in a few days, and quite badly needed one.

“We’ll clear out the showers,” Trowa murmured, giving Quatre’s shoulders a final squeeze before standing up. He gestured to Wufei and they left. Quatre moved to Duo’s duffel bags and found his 2 in 1 shampoo and conditioner, and towel. He hesitated, looking at Duo, who was curled in my lap.

“One of us will need to hold him, and another to wash him,” he muttered nervously.

“I hold, you wash.”

“You sure?”

“Hai. We’ll leave all our boxers on.”

“Of course. Can you carry him?”

“Of course.” I stood up, shifting Duo’s weight. Quatre opened the door, and we walked down to the showers. Wufei and Trowa were standing outside the double doors, guns in hand, threatening glints in their eyes. I trusted them to make sure no one walked in. Few people would question someone with a gun, and fewer still would question a Gundam pilot with a gun.

The showers were one of those large communal ones with no stalls, which was okay, because we were alone. Quatre stripped to his boxers-white silk-and helped me strip Duo to his plain black ones. It was harder for me to get undressed, because Duo wouldn’t let go of me, so eventually Quatre ended up pulling off my dress shirt and tank top while I held Duo away from my body. Then we had to stand up, and Quatre had to unzip my jeans. Letting him undress me would have been embarrassing, if we weren’t think so hard about the reason he was undressing me.

Once we were all in our boxers, we stepped into the showers and turned on the water. Duo’s legs were not up to holding any of his weight, so I did, while Quatre grabbed a bar of soap and a washcloth and started to wash his thin, trembling body. I have to give Quatre credit for being totally professional. He could’ve been washing a car, for all anyone else knew.

The water was seriously nice against my skin, hard and hot, and I realized just how tense I was. Don’t tell anyone, but a long, hot shower is one of the few things I truly enjoy. I rolled my head and shoulders, trying to relax, but for some strange reason, I couldn’t. Go figure.

Quatre bit his lip, looking at me, “Um, we should wash his, um, private area.”

“Just do it, Quatre. I don’t think he knows what we’re doing anyway.”

His face a furious red, Quatre peeled down Duo’s wet boxers and quickly cleaned the exposed flesh, before replacing the boxers. No, I didn’t watch. Quatre pulled the band out of Duo’s hair and worked out the kinks, eyes widening at the sight of Duo with his hair down. Even under the circumstances, I could appreciate Duo’s beauty, or maybe because of the circumstances. Duo was so troubled, so haunted, and yet, so beautiful. Inside, he was fighting demons, but outside, he looked like an angel. Gods, when did I get so poetic?

Washing Duo’s hair took a bloody long time, and I divided my attention between supporting Duo, and making sure he didn’t get soap in his eyes. Just as we were rinsing out the soap, we heard angry voices. I listened and heard Wufei shouting, “Leave now or I break your arm!”

“I want a shower!” an unknown voice retorted.

“The showers are busy!”

“Stinking Gundam pilots! Think you can do whatever the fuck you like because you’re so hard done-by! Poor little kids, asked to be soldiers! You’re pathetic!”

Then came the hard sound of a bone breaking, then of flesh hitting flesh, and a small thump, presumably the now-unconscious soldier falling to the floor. Wufei did give him a warning, probably several. It was the soldier’s fault. And even if it wasn’t, we’d have found a way to make it look like it was.

“Alright, he’s done,” Quatre announced, turning off the water. He grabbed the towel and quickly dried his body, before drying Duo’s. He patted me down, and then wrapped the towel around Duo’s hair to stop it dripping. Our boxers were soaked, but we ignored it and dressed.

When we opened the door, we found Wufei and Trowa completely ignoring the unconscious soldier on the floor. They glanced at us and put their guns away.

When we got back to the room, I had everyone look away before redressing Duo in different black boxers, black jeans, black tank top, and heavy black sweater. Getting myself dressed was harder, but I managed it, changing into different boxers, jeans, and forest green tee shirt. I took the towel off Duo’s hair and dried it a little more, before taking the brush from Quatre.

Brushing Duo’s hair was… oddly intimate. I don’t know why, but it was. I shrugged mentally, and concentrated on getting out all the tangles. His hair was darker when it was wet, a dark brown like mine. It didn’t suit his complexion. I liked him with golden-chestnut hair, naturally streaked with blonde and auburn. I expected to have trouble braiding his hair, as I’ve never done it before, but I found it was easy, probably because I’d seen him do it so often.

“We’re ten minutes late,” Wufei commented as we walked down the corridor to Shaw’s office. I glanced at him over Duo’s head.

“So?”

“Just saying.”

I knew he hadn’t meant it as a reproach. Quatre is the only one of us who doesn’t mind shrinks, but I think even he wasn’t happy to be here. We wanted Duo better, sure, but… well, we didn’t like getting outside help. We were a family, and we tried to handle all problems internally. We’re just protective that way.

Shaw was sitting at his desk, writing something in a file. He glanced up at us and frowned. We just smiled-yes, me included-and took up our previous positions.

“Alright, I’ve thought about it, and reviewed your files, and decided that if Duo is to recover, he is going to need help.”

“Well duh,” Quatre said.

“I would ask all of you to leave, other than Mr. Yuy.”

“No,” Wufei said flatly. “We aren’t leaving.”

“Mr. Chang-“

“Duo is ours to protect, ours to care for, ours to help. You deal with him, you deal with us. We aren’t leaving.”

“H-H-H-H-Heero?” The voice was just the breath of a whisper, but we all heard it, and we all looked at Duo. He was looking up at me with wide, frightened eyes. “H-Heero, I’m so cold.”

My arms tightened around him almost of their own accord. “I’ve got you, Duo. We’re all here.”

“T-They were so innocent. And I killed them. All dead. All dead. All dead.” The tears started then, rolling down his cheeks. I was vaguely aware of Trowa and Wufei bodily removing Shaw, but all my attention was focused on Duo. The tears were slow and silent, almost as if he weren’t crying, but his eyes were leaking.

Then something inside him seemed to snap, and he began to cry in earnest, huge sobs wracking his body, the tears coming faster. He clutched at me as if I were all that were holding him on the edge of the black pit, and I clutched him back with a matching fierceness. Come tomorrow, we’d both be bruised.

A pair of arms wrapped around us, and I blinked at Quatre. He was crying, too, but not as hard as Duo. Then Trowa embraced us, followed by Wufei, so that we were all holding onto Duo, surrounding him with our bodies, our warmth, our protection.

I have no idea how long Duo cried, it seemed like an eternity, but eventually, he stopped, and went still in our arms. When I looked, he’d fallen asleep. This was the first natural sleep he’d had since the nightmare, and I doubted it would be all that peaceful for long. Trowa checked his pulse and temperature.

“He’s… better,” he murmured, frowning slightly.

“Better?”

“Pulse, stronger, steadier; temperature, rising. Come on, let’s… get him into a bed. He needs to rest.”

I didn’t voice my doubts about Duo actually getting rest, because we were all so desperately trying to be positive. I stood up, with some help from Trowa, and carried Duo down the corridor to our room. I laid Duo down in the bed, but when I tried to leave, he moaned and reached for me. Smiling softly, I laid down beside him, and he settled easily into the curve of my body, as if he were made to lie there.

“They look so… peaceful, like that,” Quatre murmured to Trowa, and I blushed, looking away. Duo began to shiver again, but his skin was warm, so it had nothing to do with the temperature.

“Is he warm enough?” Wufei asked, noticing Duo’s shivers. I sighed.

“On the outside, yeah. On the inside, no.”

They didn’t ask what I meant, because they all knew. They’d all felt that horrible ice consume their heart, their soul. I’d felt it twice. Once after murdering one hundred and seventy-three innocent civilians (and one little puppy), once after the New Edwards disaster. I didn’t want to feel like that again, and I so desperately wanted to get that iciness out of Duo. He was the warmest person I’d ever met-when he wasn’t being Shinigami-and I wanted him to stay that way.

“It’s alright, Duo,” I whispered. “It’s alright. Nothing can hurt you here. I’ll protect you. It’s alright. I’m here. I’ll always be here.” And, surprisingly, it worked. He stopped shivering and just lay there. I blinked, and kept talking to him. “I won’t let anything hurt you, Duo. I’ll protect you. I won’t let anything hurt you. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

It was nearing dawn when the nightmare took him. I’d begun to foolishly hope that maybe the nightmare wouldn’t happen. I should’ve known better. Duo jerked suddenly and I rolled out of the bed as the first scream burst from his throat. He struggled, twisting and turning and thrashing, clawing at the air, screaming all the time.

“Duo, calm down!” I urged. “You’re dreaming, Duo. Wake up. Come on, Duo, just wake up. Please!”

He didn’t seem to hear me. His screams echoed so loudly in the silent room, cutting at my heart like knives. It was all I could do to keep from touching him, trying to comfort him, but I knew that if I did, he would try to hurt me, and I might have to hurt him to stop him. I didn’t want to hurt him. So I was forced to just stand by and watch, utterly and completely helpless. I felt like screaming myself.

“I’M SORRY!” Duo screamed, sitting up and looking around wildly, searching for something, I think.

“Duo?” I asked softly, taking a hesitant step forward. Duo’s gaze swung to me and whatever he saw, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t good. He screamed and scrabbled off the bed, flinging the door open and running away.

“Shit!” I cursed, following him. But he was fast, faster than normal, and I couldn’t catch him. He ended up outside, just outside the barracks, when he collapsed, shaking, sobbing, and screaming.

“Go away!” he screamed between sobs. “Please! I’m so sorry! Just go away!”

“Duo?” I stepped forward, and when he didn’t scrabble away, I knelt down and embraced him. He clutched at me like he’d been doing so much in the past, Gods, was it only two days?

“Make them go away, Heero,” he sobbed. “Make them all go away. Make the pain stop. Please.”

“I’m so sorry, Duo.” I felt so fucking helpless! Dammit, he was falling, falling so fast, and I couldn’t do a thing! I wanted so much to make them go away, make the pain stop, and I couldn’t. All I could do was hold him, and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. But it was all I had.

I felt eyes on me, making my skin itch, and I looked up to find that about two dozen soldiers had come out of the barracks, probably because of Duo’s screams, and were staring at us. I glared at them, and wished desperately for my friends. As if on command, my friends appeared, all slightly out of breath. They looked at me and Duo, then at the soldiers, and moved to block us from view.

“Alright, get the fuck back to your beds before we kill you all.” Surprisingly, this wasn’t from Wufei, it was from quiet and calm Trowa. His voice was still quiet, but it wasn’t calm, it was shaking with anger.

“…. Is that kid alright?” one soldier asked, trying to peer around the wall made by Quatre, Trowa and Wufei, to look at me and Duo.

“He has issues. If you’d been through what he’s been through, you’d have issues, too. So leave us all the fuck alone.”

Some of them left, but about ten of them stayed. Wufei slid the safety off his gun and fired a shot into the ground. As he’d had the safety on, he’d probably brought the gun just for this purpose.

“There are fourteen bullets left in this clip, and only eleven of you. Now fuck off, before I have just three bullets left and not fourteen.”

The soldiers fled. I turned my attention back to Duo, though it had never really left him. He was still crying, but he wasn’t sobbing or screaming any more. But I was still helpless. In desperation, I turned to the one person who knew partly what was going on in Duo’s heart.

“Quatre, what can I do?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. He’s… he’s so lost… he’s trying… to find us… to find the world… but it’s so dark… oh, Gods, it’s so dark.”

Trowa embraced him gently, and Quatre clung to him, much like Duo clung to me. Only, Trowa’s embrace seemed to help Quatre, and I’m not sure my embrace was helping Duo.

“It is,” Quatre gasped. “Your touch is the only thing keeping him from being lost forever. Lost in the cold, in the darkness…”

“Hush, little one,” Trowa murmured. “Stop reading him. You’re hurting yourself.”

“I can’t help it. He’s screaming at me. Oh, Gods, Trowa, it hurts so much.”

“Trowa, get a sedative,” I ordered. “As strong as Duo’s body can handle without too strong side-effects.”

Trowa nodded and walked away, his footfalls echoing in the still air. I looked at Wufei, and tried to think up a plausible errand for him. I needed a couple of minutes alone with Duo. But before I could speak, Wufei took Quatre’s shoulder and led him away.

“We’ll return in five minutes,” he said quietly, and I just blinked at his back. Well, damn. Sometimes that guy amazes me. I looked down at Duo and drew away enough to look into his shining, haunted eyes.

“Duo, can you hear me? Do you know who I am? Say my name, Duo. Please.”

“H-Heero.”

“Good. That’s good. Do you know who you are?”

“K-Killer. Shinigami. So evil.”

“No, Duo, you’re not evil. You are the….” Okay, I know that this is probably a seriously bad idea, but I have this feeling that… if I tell him how I feel… it’ll help. “You’re the only person I have ever loved.” There, I admitted it.

Duo blinked at me, and some of the… whatever seeped out of his eyes, and he just stared at me.

“D-Do you?” he whispered. “Do you love me?”

“With every breath in my body.”

“W-Why?”

“Because you’re beautiful, and strong, and brave, and kind, and warm, and funny, and you never let anyone break you. If they say scream, you refuse to even whimper. If they say stand up, you sit down. And I love you for all of that and more.”

“D-Do you think I’m evil?”

“No. You could never be evil, Duo.”

“T-They were so innocent, Heero, so little. And I killed them. Oh, Gods, I killed them.”

“I know. And I can’t erase what you did. But you had to do it. You just have to… put it behind you.”

“W-Will you help me?”

“Always.” I said it with as much sincerity as I could muster, and Duo, apparently, believed me, because he actually smiled, a smile that made his eyes light up, and then fell unconscious. But he wasn’t shaking, and he wasn’t crying, and he wasn’t screaming. He was just asleep, and maybe, just maybe, it’d be peaceful.

We left the base at lunch. Screw our orders. Duo needed to have what he knew, who he knew, around him, not dozens of strangers in a strange place, giving him strange looks, and asking strange questions. He was still asleep when I carried him into the van. Someone had emptied it off the clutter that had been in the back when I’d stolen it, and put some blankets down for comfort.

“You guys aren’t supposed to be leaving yet,” a familiar voice said. We all turned around from lying Duo down on the blankets to look at Sally Po. She smiled. “I was called in as soon as you guys were. Took me a while to get here. Is he alright?”

“He’s better,” I replied. “Just needs time.”

“You’re all supposed to stay for psych evaluations.”

“We don’t need our heads examined. We just need to help Duo.”

“Heero, I appreciate that you guys are very… protective, but we have doctors here who know what he’s going through possibly better than you do.”

I just snapped. “Really? Have they killed over a hundred civilians, including little children, to make sure OZ didn’t track one guy? Have they had ice consume their heart? Have they been coated in blood, so fresh it was still warm? Have they gone through thirty bullets in a handful of minutes, and not waste one shot? They have no fucking idea what Duo is going through. But we do. We can help him. We are the only ones who can bring him back from the dark place he’s in.”

Sally hesitated for a moment, but then sighed. “Alright. I’ll trust you with him. But call me, if you need help?”

“Sure. Quatre, get us out of here.”

“Right.” Quatre, Trowa and Wufei jumped out of the van and shut the doors. A moment later, Quatre was behind the wheel and starting the engine. Duo murmured something, hands reaching for me, and I laid down beside him, letting him spoon against the side of my body, head resting on my shoulder.

“… loves me…” he murmured, almost inaudibly, and I smiled, brushing his bangs out of his closed eyes and gently kissing his forehead.

“Yes, Duo,” I whispered back, “I love you.” Duo made a little ‘mmm’ sound, snuggling closer, and I smiled again. In that one instant, I forget all about the war, all about the pain and suffering and death that was my life, our lives. There was just me and Duo. I’d never felt so… peaceful.

Duo was still asleep when we stopped the van outside the forest. I carried Duo, and my bags. Wufei carried Duo’s bags. Trowa carried Quatre’s bags. Quatre drove the van back into the town.

The safe house was just as we’d left it, down to the half-filled coffee cup sitting on the coffee table in the living room. I laid Duo gently on the sofa, brushing his cheek with my fingertips, and quickly secured the house, checking closets and under beds, until I was certain that the house was empty.

Trowa had already put the kettle on. I think we all needed something strong inside us at that time, and since Duo had yet to smuggle us some more alcohol-Quatre doesn’t like us drinking, so we have to hide it from him-coffee, was all we were going to get. Wufei sighed, falling into one of the armchairs and looking at Duo, with something odd in his eyes, something that I couldn’t decipher.

“I never realized before,” he said quietly, “How much he hides. I saw the grins and the jokes and didn’t look any further, didn’t even realize it was a mask, let alone try and break it. He carries so much inside, yet doesn’t show it. He jokes and he laughs, because he knows that… we need it. We need him to be the clown, to get us through this war. He knew it and he accepted it. And I didn’t question it. I was a fool.”

“Duo didn’t want us to see past the mask,” I assured him softly, leaning against the wall with my arms folded across my chest. “He didn’t want anyone to know… how much he hurts. Don’t blame yourself. None of us noticed.”

“We should’ve. All those times, he’s gone on… horrific missions, and come back grinning, I just called him a baka and dismissed him. I didn’t see… the pain in his eyes, the loneliness. I can see it now, though, in my memories. And I curse myself for not seeing it before.”

“He didn’t let us to see. Duo is a master at running and hiding, so good that he was doing it, and no one knew. We see only what he lets us see. And unfortunately, that’s not much.”

Wufei growled in frustration, scrubbing at his face with his hands. “I feel so fucking helpless,” he nearly shouted.

I laughed bitterly, and he looked at me. I watched the thoughts fly across his face and then he grimaced.

“Sorry. You must feel worse than I do.”

“Hai. But I think he’s getting better. I think…. Oh, hell, Chang, I’m not sure. Duo’s always been such a mystery to me, and… I just have no idea what to do. Quatre knows him better than I do.”

“You’re wrong,” Trowa said quietly, walking in with a small tray and handing us both a coffee, sitting down in the other armchair and sipping his own drink. “Quatre knows his emotions, but he doesn’t know Duo. He doesn’t know what to do. You do.”

“No I don’t! That’s the fucking problem!”

“Heero, just think about it. What do you want to do, right now?”

I answered without thinking, “Hold him.” I blushed and looked away from his soft, knowing smile.

“Your first instinct is to hold him, and it’s right. The only thing that’s kept Duo sane these past two days, is you holding him. You are exactly what he needs.”

“I am?”

“Yes. I don’t know if he needs your strength, or your love, or both, or if he loves you as much as you love him, but he needs you.”

I glanced at Duo, and caught him frowning slightly, hands flexing. It didn’t take any thought. I went to him. It took some manoeuvring, but I managed to get behind him, and he smiled, curling against me.

“See?” Trowa said quietly. “You’re exactly what he needs.”

“Medicine for his soul,” Wufei murmured. “I have checks to run on Nataku.” Then he got up and left. I looked at Trowa.

“Do you love Quatre?” I asked bluntly, and he blinked at me. Then he smiled.

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Loving someone is dangerous, especially for us. We can’t let emotions get in the way of missions.”

“They don’t. When we go on missions, we’re Gundam pilots. But off-duty, we’re just boys. Boys who live very weird lives, granted, but still boys. I won’t jeopardize a mission for Quatre and he won’t for me. But being in love, it’s also good. Because we know what we’re fighting for, what we’re trying to protect. If we completely cut ourselves off from everyone and everything, how do we know what we’re trying to save? Loving Quatre means that I have a reason to fight. I’m going to fight to protect him, to make he sure he survives, and to make sure that sometime in the future, we can have a normal life together. I don’t care about anything else. I’m fighting for Quatre.” He stood up and walked upstairs, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Trowa was fighting for Quatre, Quatre was fighting for peace, Wufei was fighting for justice, Duo was fighting for revenge… but what was I fighting for? I was fighting for Duo. I was fighting to make sure he didn’t have any more nightmares, no blood on his hands, no more… icy darkness. The Colonies didn’t matter anymore, not to me. I was fighting for Duo.

It was early evening when Duo finally woke up. He blinked blearily and then looked up at me. He actually managed a weak smile.

“How are you feeling?” I asked softly, and he frowned.

“Um… shitty. But better.” His stomach growled loudly and he grimaced. “Ooh, and hungry.”

“Expected. I’ll go get you something to eat.”

“Potato chips?”

I smiled at his hopeful expression. “Sure.” I kissed the top of his head before carefully disentangling myself. He chewed his bottom lip as he watched me walk away, hands curled into tight fists, and I realised that this was the first time he’d been conscious and I hadn’t been touching him. I gave him a smile and then disappeared into the kitchen. All he’d had in the past two days was soup, and I wanted something solid in him, so while potato chips weren't exactly nutritional, I got them for him. Okay, so it was also because I found it so hard to refuse him anything, but shut up.

When I walked back into the living room with the potato chips, Duo’s gaze travelled down my body and he flinched violently. I frowned and glanced down, realizing that he was looking at my gun in its hip holster. It hit me then, for the first time, that Duo hadn’t been wearing any weapons when he’d come back from his mission. He’d gone unarmed, something he never did. Because weapons were things of death; of pain. Dammit.

Holding the potato chips in one hand, I pulled off my holster, gun still in it, and put it under the armchair.

“Better?” I asked softly, and he nodded, looking vaguely… ashamed. I handed him the potato chips and sat down next to him. We shuffled around a bit until I was sitting down at one end of the sofa, and he was curling up beside me, with my arms wrapped around him. “It’s alright, Duo. I don’t expect you to be fine after what you went through. But you’re not catatonic, and you’ve got an appetite, and you’re thinking semi-rationally. It’s all good.”

A fine tremor ran through his body, and he gave one of those little hiccupping sobs. “I feel so fucking weak,” he said, his voice shaking slightly.

“You’re not. You’re the strongest person I know. Don’t be ashamed of the fact that you’re having a hard time dealing with…” I didn’t want to say, What you did; it sounded too judgemental, so I changed it to, “Your last mission. It shows that you can still feel, that your heart is doing more than pumping blood through your body. I’d be more surprised, more worried, if you were perfectly alright.”

“I just…. You’re so strong, Heero. You don’t let anything get to you.”

“Oh, things get to me. Do you remember New Edwards?”

“Oh, God, how could I forget?”

“Well, afterwards, when I was healthy again after self-detonating, I went around to all Field Marshal Noventa’s relatives, asking their judgement, offering my life. I was so haunted by what I did, I could barely breathe. It was eating me up inside.”

Duo twisted his head around to look up at me. “I-It was?”

“Hai.”

“I… I didn’t know.”

“No one did. Except Trowa. He helped me. I was… still not a hundred per cent.”

Duo frowned, absently eating a few potato chips. “I didn’t think all this shit got to you.”

“It doesn’t often, but every now and then… yeah, it gets to me.”

“How… how do you cope?”

“I write the most detailed mission reports known to man,” I said with a dry chuckle, and then hesitated. “And… I also… visit nightclubs.”

Duo blinked and stared at me. “Uh, what?”

“I go to nightclubs, sometimes. To… observe people. To see… what normal people do. I don’t know why, but… it helps.”

“I never woulda guessed that the Perfect Soldier went to nightclubs to relax. Isn’t that like, an unnecessary security risk?”

“But it is necessary. Because if I didn’t go, I’d burn out, and I’m still needed.”

“Hm.”

“Do you want to come with me?”

“I don’t… I don’t think… all those people… I can’t.”

I tightened my arms around him. “It’s alright.”

“Gods, I feel so fucking weak!”

“You’re not,” I assured him, gently but firmly. “Even I couldn’t have done what you did without feeling it.”

“I just feel so…. Gods, Heero, I am so fucked up. I can’t even stand to see you with a gun. I can’t… I’m a Gundam pilot, and I can’t even look at a weapon without… Shit!”

“Duo, I understand. It’s alright. No one is expecting you to be alright right away. You’re off active duty, until I say otherwise, so we have time. You can take as much time as you need to get better. Alright?”

“But you don’t,” he said quietly. “You’re still on active duty. You still have to go on missions. I don’t… I don’t think I could survive if… you went away.”

I didn’t know if he was talking about going away temporarily on a mission, or going away in the more permanent, dead sense. Possibly both.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured him. “I am not leaving you for one single second unless it’s absolutely necessary. The war will just have to wait.”

“Nothing waits, Heero. The world keeps turning, keeps going on, no matter how much pain one person is in, or how much they want it to stop. I learned that very early on.”

It was a reference to his past, on the streets of L2. I’d never heard much about his past; no one had. I wanted to know more, but knew that I probably wouldn’t. It would be painful for him to tell it, and probably painful for me to hear it.

“I’m okay with that,” he continued quietly. “I understand, I’ve accepted, but… it’s inconvenient. Because, and it makes me feel seriously fucking weak saying this, I don’t think I could survive you having to leave me. I just don’t. You’re all that’s holding me together right now. And if you leave me…”

“I’ll never leave you. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Can’t I?”

“No, you can’t, and you know you can’t. So make a different promise.”

“Anything.”

“Promise that you’ll try your hardest not to leave me.”

“I promise. But you have to promise the same thing.”

“What do you mean?” He frowned and looked up at me.

I struggled to put it into words. “You’re not Duo anymore. You’re drifting away from me, into someplace dark, someplace that I don’t want you to go. Don’t go. Promise me that you’ll fight it, fight yourself, fight to stay with me. Because I don’t think I can live without you either.”

Duo just looked at me for a few moments, and I watched thoughts, emotions, fly across his face, too fast for me to see. Then he smiled, not one of his patented idiotic grins, just a soft, warm smile, that made his violet eyes light up, all the pain and horror disappearing like a bad dream.

“I promise,” he murmured softly. He leaned forward and brushed my lips lightly with his. My breath caught in my throat.

“Duo…” I murmured, trying to speak around the lump in my throat.

“Heero, just kiss me. Please.”

There was such raw need in his eyes, so raw he was almost in tears, that my voice left me completely. I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and the next thing I know… I’m kissing him. His lips are so unbelievably soft against mine. Those so-soft lips part and my tongue slips into his mouth, dancing with his, exploring his mouth slowly. The kiss was soft, tender, loving, slow, gentle, everything that we don’t have in our lives. Our lives were hard and fast and bloody and painful, but this… this was just… I can’t explain it, but…. Oh, Gods, his lips are so soft.

We draw away reluctantly and breathless and just look at each other. I’m not sure what’s showing in my eyes, but Duo’s are filled with… would I be too hopeful to say love?

“I love you, Heero Yuy,” he murmured, resting his head on my chest again. Nope, not too hopeful.

Wufei was the first one to see Duo awake. He’d been outside doing his katas, and came in slightly breathless. He stopped at the doorway and blinked at Duo, who clutched at me a little tighter. I understood why. Wufei had always been so stern and derisive towards him, and now he was afraid of what the Chinese pilot would say about the past two days.

Wufei smiled. “It’s good to see you awake, Duo.”

“Um…. Thanks. Sorry about… being a pain… Heero told me… about you guys… all going to that base with me… protecting me.”

“It was my duty, and more than that, my pleasure. You’re a strong, bright spirit, Duo Maxwell, and I won’t let anyone, even yourself, hurt that. If you want to thank me, just get better.” He walked towards the kitchen and stopped in the archway. “Oh, and no practical jokes for a while would be nice,” he added over his shoulder.

Duo chuckled and I felt some of the tension ease out of his body. He fell into silence, something that lately, wasn’t that unusual for him. That worried me. Duo hated silence. He’d once said that it was so he didn’t have to think, that he needed the distraction, the noise, either his own talking or music or something. I didn’t like that he was so silent.

“What happens if I don’t get better?” he asked quietly after a while.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m a Gundam pilot, and the war needs me, but… what if I don’t get better? What if I can never hold a weapon or pilot Deathscythe? What if I stay… broken?”

“You aren’t broken, Duo. You’re just troubled.”

“Troubled?” Duo repeated with a bitter, choking laugh. “I’m Shini… I’m Shiniga… and I can’t even say my name or look at a gun. I’m fucking fucked up, Heero!”

“Maxwell, you are not Shinigami,” Wufei said from the archway, ignoring the way Duo flinched at the mention of Shinigami. “You are having trouble with the fact that one hundred and fifty civilians were killed, by your hand. Shinigami might be able to live with that, but you aren’t him. You are Duo Maxwell, my friend, the warmest person I have ever met, and he cannot just casually kill a hundred and fifty people. Give yourself a break.”

Duo was silent for a moment, just watching him, and then he smiled. “Thanks, Wufei.”

“No problem. I’m going to go shower.” He nodded at us and walked upstairs.

“Never woulda guessed that he counted me as a friend,” Duo murmured.

“He does. He was very worried about you. We all were.” I hesitated, and then asked, “What do you remember? Of the past two days?”

“Not much. It was… dark… cold… but… there was someone… holding me… keeping me safe… You?”

“Me.”

“Mmm.”

Quatre and Trowa had been out in the makeshift hanger, working on their Gundams, and they came in an hour after full dark. Duo and I hadn’t moved much from the sofa. I’d gotten up once to get us some coffee and toast-dry, because Duo’s stomach couldn’t handle anything else. The first thing Quatre did when he saw Duo awake and reasonably sane was smile, one of those huge Quatre Winner smiles that must hurt his face and just make it impossible not to smile back. Then he hugged Duo, hugging me at the same time, and just this once, I let him.

“I’m so glad you’re awake, Duo,” he said enthusiastically, drawing away.

“Thanks, Quat.”

“Are you… alright?”

“Um… I’m better than I was, but I think alright is a bit of a stretch.”

“We’re all here, if you need anything. Alright?”

“Yeah. Thanks. I, uh, I’m doing better. I just….”

A series of beeps interrupted him and I recognised the pattern as my laptop. I cursed and reached over to grab the right bag, pulling out my laptop. With my arms still around Duo, I typed in the passwords and opened up the message, fully intending to send back ‘mission refused’, something I’ve never done before. But I didn’t have to. I just blinked and stared at the message. I heard Duo gasp as he read the message.

“What is it?” Quatre asked, frowning.

“Um, we’ve been given two weeks’ vacation,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Recommended by Dr. Sally Po, all five Gundam pilots are to report to a safe house, put under the care of Marianne Green, for some R&R. Dr. Po suggested that we needed the time or we’d burn out, especially Pilot 02. Suggestion approved. We report tomorrow morning. It’s a… two hour drive, so we leave… seven o’clock.”

“Who’s Marianne Green?” Trowa asked in a quiet murmur.

“Doesn’t say. Two seconds.” I entered the name into my search engines and ran it through the databases. “Ah, alright, here we go. Marianne Green, Major, twenty-three, blonde, grey eyes, quite pretty, not much combat experience, field medic. She’s legit. Wait, part of this file’s missing.” I frowned and searched for the rest of the file. I sighed when I found it. “She’s not a field medic-she’s a psychiatrist.”

“They’ve got to be kidding,” Duo muttered, looking at the picture of Marianne, who was smiling softly at the camera. “She doesn’t look like a shrink or a resistance soldier. Do we really have to report to her, Heero?”

“Yep.”

“We didn’t obey our last orders to see a shrink,” Wufei said from where he was curled up in the armchair.

“I know, but… I think we should go. I mean, when was the last time we went two weeks without a mission? Duo needs the time and relaxation, and truth be told, I think we all do. Quatre fractured his wrist during his last mission because he wasn’t concentrating properly.”

Quatre blushed and rubbed his wrist, still wrapped up in support bandages. He’d received a stern lecture from both Trowa and myself because of that screw-up. He’d returned bruised badly, with over two dozen small cuts on his body, and the fractured wrist.

“It would be nice to have a little break,” Trowa agreed. “We’re all very tense. I can’t remember the last time I relaxed completely. I say we go.”

“I don’t like shrinks,” Duo grumbled, snuggling closer to me.

“You don’t have to talk to her if you don’t want to, Duo,” I assured him. “But some time away from the war is a good idea. And this Marianne actually sounds pretty nice. Good things in her file. Just go with us, check it out, and if you really don’t like it, we can leave.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

The house was a nice Victorian-style one with working shutters, a porch big enough for all us pilots to sit on, and colourful flowerbeds. There was a woman standing on the porch, smiling, and I recognised her as Marianne. She was small, just over five-foot, with honey-blonde hair falling over her shoulders in a wavy mass, and sparkling pale grey eyes. She was wearing grey trousers and a pale lavender blouse with no shoes. I frowned at her as we climbed out of the van we’d borrowed. Duo gripped my hand, eyeing her nervously.

“Alright, boys, let’s get inside,” she said, ushering us into the house and closing the door behind us. “Now, my name is Marianne, and I know all your names. Bedrooms are upstairs, there’s a bathroom upstairs, and a bathroom downstairs, I expect you to wash before lunch and dinner, which are at noon and six every day; I want you all to carry your weight around here, helping me with the cooking and cleaning, and coming with me to do the grocery shopping; my bedroom’s the first one the left, and there are three others. Quatre and Trowa, you two can share, Wufei and Duo-”

“Uh, Marianne, I would prefer to have my own bedroom,” Wufei interrupted smoothly. “And Duo is rather… dependent on Heero at the moment. I’m sure Dr. Po mentioned that.”

Marianne looked at him for a moment and then nodded, still smiling. “Alright. You can have your own room, and Duo and Heero can share. Now, why don’t you all go and pick your rooms and get unpacked. I trust you’ve all had breakfast?”

Quatre hesitated. “Well… not really. We were kind of, um… busy this morning, so we didn’t get time.”

What he didn’t say was that Duo had had a ‘fit’ where he obviously wasn’t in reality, and it had taken us, me, an hour to calm him down. By that time we had to borrow a van and get moving or be late, so breakfast had just not happened.

Marianne’s smile vanished and she pursed her lips. “Hm. Alright. I’ll make you all some breakfast, and then we can all get settled in. Oh, Quatre, I’d like to talk to you in the kitchen for a minute, alright? Trowa, could you take his bags up to your room?”

“Sure.” Trowa took Quatre’s bags from the blonde’s hands and walked upstairs. Wufei, Duo and I followed.

Duo and I ended up with a nice room done in pale yellow. The furniture was all light honey-oak, and there were nice sheets and blankets on the beds instead of quilts, it being too hot for actual quilts. Duo left his bags by his bed, and wandered over to the large window, flopping down on the window seat and looking out at the small lake, and beyond that, a forest.

He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it silently. I hesitated, unsure of what to do.

“I met a little girl,” he said suddenly, voice quiet. “Her name was Emily. Brown hair, blue eyes, really sweet smile. She, um, couldn’t find her parents. Really scared. She held my hand, let me take her down to the front desk. Said thanks. And, uh, that evening, someone knocked on my door, and it was her. She’d… bought me a teddy bear, as a thank you gift. Said that when she grew up, she was going to have long hair like me. Only she never got the chance to grow up, did she? I killed her.” He knelt down on the floor and rummaged around in one of his bags, pulling out a small brown teddy bear with a purple ribbon around its neck. “Ain’t it sweet?” he asked, tugging at the ribbon. “She’d, um, added the ribbon because it matched my eyes. I’ve never had a teddy bear before.”

“I’m sorry, Duo,” I said, and the words were so completely inadequate.

“Thing is, she’s not the first Emily I’ve known. There was a girl called Emily in my old family, my gang, with Solo. She was, um, about six. She had black hair, dark, dark brown eyes, and had this… necklace that she’d found in the garbage one day. It was one of those things you get in cereal boxes, black cord, with a little pink plastic angel on it. She loved it, wore it all the time. She died. Plague. Like Solo died. I tried. I got us the vaccine, but… four of us died, Solo, Emily, and Jon. And Kid. Kid died, when Solo died. And Duo was born.”

I’d always wondered how and why he chose the name Duo. I hadn’t really expected to find out like this.

“I held Solo in my arms, and he said, we’ll always be together, always be two, so Kid died, and Duo was born.” Duo reached into his bag and pulled out a piece of black cord, on which dangled a pink plastic angel. He put the necklace around the teddy’s neck and looked at it. “Both Emilys are dead,” he murmured. “And I killed them both.”

“No, no you didn’t. Emily died of the plague. You tried to get her the vaccine in time. It’s not your fault. You saved the others.”

“Yeah. Kai, Lissie, Cassie, Pete, Michael, Sara, Thistle, Val, Raven.”

“What happened to them?”

“Um, they got adopted. Father Maxwell and Sister Helen found us. Got them set up in semi-decent houses. They tried to get me a home, but I kept getting in trouble, so they adopted me themselves. I keep tabs on everyone. I checked a month ago, and only Michael, Raven, and Lissie are alive. I have to check again. A lot can happen in a month. Everyone’s dead, Heero. Why? If I survived, why didn’t they? Why did they have to die?” He looked up at me, tears burning in his pain-filled eyes.

“I don’t know,” I murmured, mentally kicking myself. “I wish I had the answers for you, but I don’t. I don’t know why they died, or why you survived. I’m sorry.”

“I beginning to forget, Heero,” he whispered. “I’m beginning to forget what they looked like. And, if I forget, then who’s left to remember them? If I forget, then they’re really dead.”

Someone knocked on the door, and Duo quickly ducked his head. Wufei stuck his head into the room.

“Breakfast is ready.”

“I’m not hungry,” Duo mumbled, hugging the teddy bear to his chest and leaning against his bed, effectively hidden from Wufei.

“You sure?” I asked. He nodded. “Alright. I’ll be back in a few minutes, unless you want me to stay?” He shook his head. I sighed and left.

“Something happened?” Wufei asked quietly as we walked downstairs.

“Nothing too major.” Then I had an idea. “Wufei, you’re an artist, aren’t you?”

“In my spare time, yes. Why?”

“I need you to do me, and Duo, a favour. He might not go for it, but I think he will. See, he’s starting to forget what his gang used to look like, and he doesn’t want to forget. I want you to start carrying around your sketchpad, whenever he’s in the same room. I’ll casually ask if he wants to ask if you could draw him some pictures. I think it’ll help.”

Wufei nodded. “I would be honoured.” He paused thoughtfully. “He really cared for them, didn’t he?”

I thought about that for a second and then said simply, “They were his family.”

Wufei did start carrying around his sketchpad, drawing little people and objects. I waited until that evening before talking to Duo about it. We were curled up on my bed, with him lying on top of me, the light off and curtains drawn, throwing the room into a twilight darkness.

“Duo,” I said tentatively, and he rolled his eyes up to look at me. “Wufei is a good artist, and… well, if you asked him, I don’t think he’d mind drawing you some pictures. Of your gang. Maybe it’d help you remember, help keep them alive.”

Duo lowered his eyes and didn’t say anything for a long time. I let the silence grow, completely patient where he was concerned, and willing to accept any answer. He stayed silent for a long time, and when he did talk, his voice was quiet.

“I don’t… I don’t like to ask favours, it means that I’m indebted to someone, and that’s not a good thing.”

I understood that it was a reference to his harsh past, and didn’t push it. “He wouldn’t mind. He’s your friend, and he doesn’t like seeing you hurt. If this helps, I think he’d do it willingly.”

“I don’t…. no. I can’t. It’s too…”

“It’s alright. It was just a suggestion.”

He nodded and let the silence grow again. My hand was rubbing his back lazily, and I honestly don’t remember consciously deciding to do so, it was just one of those things that my body did without me. He liked it, though. During the past two days since he had woken up, I had discovered that he liked these idle touches, as if it reassured him of something, maybe that I was there, that I did love him.

“Marianne seems nice,” he said after a while, and I hummed my agreement. “She seems… she reminds me of Sister Helen.” I didn’t speak. I was afraid to, afraid that it might break this spell and he wouldn’t talk. “They don’t look much alike, Sister Helen was taller and her eyes were brown, I think her hair was too, but when I saw it, it was covered with soot and dirt and…. But it’s in their personalities, in their smiles. Sister Helen would look at me and smile, as if there was nothing wrong with the world, and I knew that if I ever needed it, she would be there to give me a hug and tell me a story. She would protect me. It wasn’t the same sort of protection that Solo offered, of course. He’d beat the shit out of anyone who dared mess with us, and Sister Helen would never think of fighting, but… she’d protect me in other ways. She’d take me away from my life to a world of fairies and princesses and bright little poppies. That was her favourite flower, ya know, poppies. Her sister sent her some, pressed and dried, every year for her birthday, and she gave me one once. I remember feeling so special, that she had given me something that meant so much to her.

“When the attack came, when the Church was destroyed, she was the hardest loss to bear. I searched for her first, and I found her. She had… a wooden beam on her chest, and her legs were buried in rubble. Her wimple was gone, and her hair was half-burned and covered in soot and dirt and blood. She looked at me and smiled, just like every other smile. I knelt down and brushed her cheek, trying to get rid of all the grime, but couldn’t. She, she didn’t have long left. She blessed me and gave me her cross. And her last words… I’ll always remember her last words. ‘You’re a bright little child, my Duo. You’re special. And I will always love you. No matter where I go, I will always love you.’

“I sat and cried for ages, I don’t know how long. I couldn’t understand it, didn’t want to. I’d found a home, found parents, I didn’t want all that to be gone. It wasn’t fair. After a while I got up, left, I didn’t look back. I spent maybe a month hiding on the streets, just trying to survive, trying to cope with what had happened. And then I stole away on a ship. I needed to get away, needed to escape. I was found, and I remember… I didn’t feel scared. Because the worse they could do was kill me and… I didn’t care. They took me to this funky old guy, and we talked for a while, and he asked me… ‘Do you want to get back at those bastards who hurt you, boy? Do you want to make them suffer like you did? Do you want them to hurt?’

“And suddenly I did care, because I wanted that so much. I would do anything for it. And he gave it to me. He put me through some of the worse pain I could ever imagine, always urging me on with the promise of revenge, smiling whenever I went past his expectations, whenever I did something extra that he didn’t tell me to do, whenever I began to become a pilot and do things on my own and have them work out. Then he sent me to Earth, and my revenge began.

“My first mission was an assassination, sort of a letdown, that I couldn’t use ‘Scythe. Some high-ranking OZ bastard who was a serious threat. I made contacts on the streets and got a sniper rifle with a lasersight and nightscope. Researched the guy, found out everything about him. Picked a time, picked a place, and waited. I waited for thirteen hours until he entered the movie theatre with his lady friend. I waited until the movie ended, stilled my breathing, calmed my heartbeat, sighted on his head and waited just a moment more for the shot to be perfect. Then I squeezed the trigger, and he jerked, sort of surprised. A hole appeared in the middle of his forehead, and he went down to his knees. He looked so surprised and confused. I got away immediately, before anyone could bring the authorities in, taking the rifle with me. I went back to Deathscythe and wrote my first ever mission report. And at the end I wrote, ‘Revenge is good. I want more’. So I got more. I took every mission I was sent and killed every OZ creep I came across, spilling their blood for Father Maxwell and Sister Helen and everyone else at Maxwell Church. It felt so good, at the beginning.

“Until I killed my first innocent. I had hidden Deathscythe in an abandoned warehouse outside a town, fair secure. I had some repairs to do and was distracted. I didn’t hear the kid come in until he said, ‘Woah’. I turned and had a gun pointed at him before I even knew what was going on. I didn’t see him as a child, an innocent, I saw a threat, a danger. ‘Don’t let anyone see the Gundam, boy, they can’t ever see it and live. Ya gotta kill everyone who sees Deathscythe, or you’ll be in danger. Got it, boy? Kill everyone who sees your Gundam’. I killed the boy and buried the body, and only then thought, ‘Shit. I just killed a little boy.’

“After that, revenge didn’t sound as good as it had. I killed more innocents, everyone who saw my Gundam, and those that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remembered every one, remembered that had they not met me, they would be living. But they had met me, and they’d fallen to Shinigami. Little kids, Heero. Little kids should not know about Shinigami.”

“Once we win, they won’t. That’s what we’re trying to create, Duo. It’s hard, but we will win.”

“I know we’ll win, but will we survive? Physically, yeah, maybe, but mentally? I’m broken, Heero, very seriously. The thought of holding a gun… killing… I just want it to be over.”

What could I say? Some overused cliché that was a blatant lie? The harsh truth? A mixture of both? I was floundering helplessly in a sea of confusion. I just didn’t know what to do.

“I’m tired now. Gonna sleep. G’night.”

“Goodnight, Duo.” I kissed the top of the head and waited forty-seven seconds for him to fall asleep.

My thoughts were chasing each other around in circles like little rabid bunnies. I’d actually heard quite a bit about Duo’s past, filled with such pain and sadness that it made my heartache, and he’d told me for no special reason at no special time, all because Marianne reminded him of Sister Helen. Why? Why tell me at all?

Someone knocked quietly on the door and Quatre stuck his head in. “Hi, I was just wondering if you needed anything,” he whispered, and then seemed to notice just what position Duo and I were in. He tried, I could see that, but he couldn’t help that damned idiotic smile from creeping onto his face, the one that says he thinks we’re just ‘too cute for words’.

I scowled at him to let him know what would happen if he voiced that opinion before saying, “No, thanks, we’re fine.”

Hesitating a moment, Quatre slipped into the room and moved around to look at Duo’s face, frowning slightly.

“What?” I asked.

“I was feeling… some dark things a moment ago… but now I sense a sort of… peace? Like, something has been lifted from his shoulders or something. What happened?”

“He….” I didn’t want to tell Quatre what Duo had told me, it was too personal, too private, but he had a right to know something, so I eventually said, “He told me some things about his past that I guess he needed to say.” I frowned slightly, because Duo was lying completely still, and even though our voices were as soft as possible, he should’ve woken up when we began speaking. Hell, he should’ve woken up when the door opened.

Quatre slowly reached out and brushed his fingertips against Duo’s forehead, eyes closed. Then he smiled and withdrew his hand.

“He feels safe,” he whispered. “He feels safe and warm, and… he trusts you. He trusts you to wake him up for danger. Only you saying the D-word will get him to wake up.”

“He… he really trusts me that much?”

“He really does. Get some sleep, Heero. You’re exhausted.” He smiled again and left.

Closing my eyes, I tightened my grip around Duo's body, and let the soft sound of his breathing lull me to sleep.

Duo slept until ten o’clock, and even then it was only because I woke him. I was loathe to do so, but knew that we couldn’t just spend the day in bed. It took him a few minutes to wake up, and when he finally did, he looked at me with the sweetest, sleepy little smile.

“Thanks for listening,” he whispered, and placed a soft kiss on my lips, before getting up and getting changed. He dressed in some loose black jeans and a black tee shirt.

I saw him reach for his other bag, the one where he kept the majority of his weapons, and then stopped, hand hovering in mid-air. I held my breath, waiting to see what he would do. The moment seemed to last forever, before he slowly withdrew his hand and left his weapons where they were. He sighed, and his head fell forward, shoulders slumping.

Silently, I slid out of the bed and knelt down behind him, embracing him gently. “It’s alright, Duo,” I whispered.

He clung to me like he had been doing so much lately and I felt a tremor run through his body. “I’m sorry, Heero.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, Duo. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Why can’t I do this, Heero? Why can’t I be strong?”

“You are strong, love. You’re the strongest person I know. All this doesn’t make you weak.”

“It… it doesn’t?” I could hear the uncertainty in his voice, hear the desperate need for my respect. Didn’t he know that he’d had it since the moment he first shot me?

“No, it doesn’t.” At a slightly lame attempt at humour I added, “Wufei would be the first to tell you if you were being weak.”

Lame attempt or not, I got a laugh, and I felt him relax. “Thank you, Heero.”

“You’re welcome, love.” Kissing the back of his neck, I stood up and quickly dressed in some jeans and a tank top, and then hesitated. Duo didn’t like me being armed, but I didn’t like being unarmed. What was more important to me: Duo or being armed? The answer was obvious, and I walked downstairs with Duo.

We found everyone in the kitchen. Trowa was washing the dishes, Quatre was drying, and Wufei was helping fold the laundry with Marianne. Marianne looked at us and smiled.

“Well, you two seem a lot better than yesterday. I’m afraid we’ve already had breakfast, but you’re free to make yourself some cereal or something.”

“Uh, I’d rather just have a coffee,” Duo muttered, and I frowned at him.

“Duo, you need more than that. How about some toast?”

“Yeuch.”

“Oatmeal?”

“Yeuch.”

“Fry-up?”

“Yeuch.”

“Duo, you say yeuch one more time and I’m gonna get pissed. You have to eat something. Now what would you like?”

He frowned and then sighed. “Apple?”

“And something else.”

“Potato chips?”

“Duo.”

He sighed again and was silent a moment before saying, “Piece of toast, dry.”

“Thank you.” I rewarded him with a quick kiss, and then moved to the breadbox. I got out three pieces of bread and put them in the toaster, before turning to find that someone had already made a pot of coffee. Getting two cups out of the cupboard, I made two black coffees, handing one to Duo before sipping my own. It was nice and strong, and I welcomed the slight caffeine buzz. While my genetic enhancements make it virtually impossible for me to get drunk-it would require pretty much every drop of alcohol in any given pub-it doesn’t mean that I can’t get a nice caffeine buzz from coffee or Coke. While I sipped my coffee and waited for the toast to cook, I thought.

Duo hadn’t eaten a whole lot since he ‘woke up’. I mean, a bag of potato chips, some toast, and a couple of apples, and I was really worried about his lack of appetite. He hadn’t eaten much when he was catatonic, and while he was used to hunger and could ignore it if he had to, he preferred to eat when he could. He’d always been small, but it used to be wiry muscles, and now he was just getting… thin.

“Heero, the cup,” Quatre said quietly, and I blinked at him to find everyone watching me curiously. I glanced down to find that my grip on my coffee cup was tight enough to break it if I wasn’t careful. Letting out a breath, I relaxed my fingers and forced my thoughts away from Duo’s health. Well, at least enough to not accidentally shatter my cup.

“So, what’s everyone doing today?” Duo asked, and I was oddly pleased to see him speaking without it being necessary, maybe because of his awful silence the past couple of days.

“I’m going shopping with Marianne, and Wufei and Trowa have some chores to do, other than that, we can do what we like,” Quatre asked, putting a plate in the cupboard.

“This is meant to be a nice little holiday for you boys, so I won’t have you on a strict work schedule or anything,” Marianne said, smiling. “I expect you to do your chores and such, but other than that, you can do what you want.”

“Hm, been a while since we relaxed,” Duo murmured, and again, I was pleased that he was speaking. “Our lives tend to be a bit… stressful.”

“Which is why you’re getting a holiday. Don’t worry, poppet, there isn’t any stress in this house. If you want, you can go out and see if you can find my cat.”

“You have a cat?” There was a spark of interest in Duo’s violet eyes, and I held my breath, hoping that it would stay.

“Mm-hm, she doesn’t have a name, but she hangs around here sometimes, and then she’ll disappear into the woods for weeks before returning.”

Something besides interest seeped into Duo’s eyes, something… sad. “Why doesn’t she have a name?”

“Well, I didn’t know what to call her, and she doesn’t belong to me, so….”

“But… she should have a name. She shouldn’t be nameless.”

“Well, why don’t you name her then?” Marianne suggested gently, and Duo bit her lip.

“I want to see her before I give her a name, make sure it fits.”

“If you go out and wander in the woods, she’ll probably come to you, to find out who’s invaded her territory.”

He nodded and stood up, looking at me. The need was plain to see, and I smiled at him, putting down my coffee and holding my hand out to him. He grabbed it tightly and smiled at me shakily, and that smile made me feel so good, just because he could smile again.

“Let’s go find us a nameless cat and name her, shall we?” I asked him, and he smiled again, a bit stronger this time.

I saw Quatre smiling that beatific smile of his, and knew that I was not the only one pleased with Duo smiling. Curious, I glanced at the other two. Trowa, of course, was unreadable, but I detected a glimmer of joy in his green eyes, and Wufei didn’t seem quite so… stern. He was almost smiling. Guess the whole family was happy.

The woods behind Marianne’s house weren’t all that special, but then, we weren’t really there to look at them, were we?

Using our acute stealth and tracking instincts, we searched for the nameless cat, and it was a few minutes before Duo stopped. I looked at him curiously, to find him with an odd, kind of rueful expression on his face.

“What?” I asked softly, and he smiled.

“We’re walking silently, and if we want to get this cat to come to us, we should be making noise, because unless she’s really close, she won’t be able to smell us.”

“Oh.”

“We’re idiots.” He smiled at me and then continued walking, swishing his feet to make noise. I copied, and we fell into silence again. He’d smiled three times, and spoken without being prompted, he was willing to eat…. He really was getting better. Oh, willing to eat. He never actually ate. I should take care of that when we got back to the house. He’s not looking after himself properly at the moment so it’s up to me, and I can’t be forgetful important things like food.

“Hey, Heero,” Duo whispered after a while, stopping, and I frowned, stopping next to him.

“What?”

“Look over there.”

‘Over there’ was off to my right, behind a small tree, where I could see a pair of pale green eyes watching us curiously.

Moving slowly, Duo moved around me to be nearer the cat and crouched down, extending one hand, relaxed and half-curled, so that he was more offering the cat his knuckles than his fingers. He began making those little clicking sounds people frequently make when calling cats, punctuating them with soft reassurances. I just stood there and let him, because me and animals… not good.

After a moment, the cat slowly came out from behind the tree and I saw that it had short grey fur that looked very soft, large ears, and a long tail. It was quite a sophisticated looking cat, to my eye. It, sorry, she, sniffed Duo’s fingers for a moment, before rubbing her cheek against them, purring softly.

Laughing softly, Duo sat down on the ground and patted his leg. The cat walked onto his knees and settled down in his lap, closing her eyes and purring. Duo stroked her behind the ears, expression thoughtful.

“She’s a beautiful cat,” he murmured after about a minute of silence. “Very… dignified. Sort of regal, like a queen. Hm, what name should we give you, huh, queenie?”

“Maybe something along the lines of royalty,” I suggested hesitantly, not wanting to say the wrong thing. This seemed very important to Duo, naming the cat, and I didn’t want to ruin it. But he just smiled up at me, and I think he was glad that I’d suggested something.

“That’s a good idea. Hm, alright, well, the name should relate to your parents, too, in some way, or the one who names you, which is me. So, what do I like? I like… Japanese, and I like mythology, and I like the supernatural…. Hm. How can I relate that to royalty?”

I frowned, thinking about that, and then said, “Maybe a queen from some myth?”

“Yeah, but none of the queens I can think of that I like would suit her. Hmm. Okay, I wasn’t given an actual name, I was given a word, and so were Raven and Thistle and some other kids. Um, what’s queen in Japanese?”

I had to think for a second before saying, “It depends on the context and stuff. There’s joouheika, which means Her Majesty the Queen. Or simply the word queen can be kouhi, kisaki, kougou, ouhi, joou, kuxi-n or kui-n. Queen Mother is koutaigou.” I thought about Duo saying he like mythology and the supernatural, trying to relate it to Japanese words, and remembered a long-forgotten word.

“There’s a word for the Queen of Heaven, which is Tenkou.”

“Tenkou, the Queen of Heaven. Hmm. Well, I like it. What about you? Do you like that name?” He bent his head to look at the cat, who blinked and looked at him, before flicking her ears and closing her eyes again. “I’ll take that as assent. Nameless cat, I dub thee, Tenkou.” He laughed suddenly, the kind of laugh I was used to hearing, full of delight and happiness, and it went straight to my heart.

Carefully nudging the cat back onto the ground, he jumped up and hugged me, arms around my neck.

“She’s got a name, Heero,” he said happily. “She isn’t nameless. She’s got a name.”

“She does have a name, and you have a cat-child.”

“I what?” he drew away to look at me, blinking in confusion, and I smiled.

“Well, traditionally, parents name their children, and you just named the cat, so wouldn’t that make you her parent?”

He had to think about that for a moment before grinning. “Yep, and you have a cat-child, too, because you helped. Wow, we’re kinda young to be parents.”

“We’ll manage,” I assured him, barely containing my laughter.

“We sure will. We can do anything together.” And suddenly, the mood turned to something more… serious. The laughter faded from his eyes and for a long time, we just stood there. I don’t know what he was thinking or why he wasn’t speaking, but I was afraid to speak, afraid of where we had gone.

“We really can do anything together, Heero,” he said quietly. “Even… make me better. Right?”

There was something desperate in his eyes, a need to know that he wasn’t beyond hope. My breath caught in my throat and I kissed his forehead.

“Yes, Duo, we can make you better,” I breathed, and suddenly found myself on my ass with Duo trying to squeeze the life out of me. I didn’t know what he was thinking, what had made him so… fearful, but I didn’t really need to know. All I needed to know was that he needed me and that I would always be there. So I just hugged him tight and hummed some nameless tune.

After a few moments, his grip eased, and he drew away, sniffing and looking apologetic. I could see that he was on the verge of apologising for his actions, so I forestalled him by placing a finger on his lips.

“I’m not upset or angry or ashamed or anything, Duo,” I said softly. “If you need to hug or kiss or talk or throw a temper tantrum or anything, I will always be there for you, alright? You never have to apologise for you actions or your emotions or thoughts. Well, unless you actually are wrong, but you aren’t.”

He just looked at me for a long time, I think searching for traces of insincerity, and I let him. Then he scrambled up and showed me his back.

“We should… get back to the house. I didn’t actually eat breakfast.”

“Alright.” I stood up, brushing leaves off my jeans, and let him walk a pace ahead of me. Apparently, my reassurance helped, but didn’t cure everything.

Quatre and Marianne had apparently already left to do the shopping, Trowa was vacuuming the living room, and Wufei was upstairs in his bedroom doing something unknown.

“Did you find the cat?” Trowa asked, turning off the vacuum so that we could hear him.

Duo nodded happily, though I noticed that there was still a hint of colour on his cheeks. “Yeah, we named her Tenkou.”

“Tenkou?”

“Queen of Heaven. She has this kind of regal look, so…”

“Right. Well, good, nobody should be nameless.”

“Right! I’m gonna go make myself a sandwich.”

He didn’t exactly run out of the room, but it was close, and once he was gone, I looked at Trowa with a raised eyebrow. I had a sneaking suspicion about his last sentence, which was confirmed when he gave me a shy smile and a wink. Then he turned on the vacuum again, which effectively stopped conversation. I gave him a grateful smile before I went to see about my own breakfast.

The day was fairly boring, but it was a peaceful kind of boring. Marianne and Quatre came back from the shopping around lunchtime and we all helped to put things away before Trowa cooked a simple pasta thing for lunch. After that, Wufei went upstairs to continue with his unknown thing, Trowa and Quatre went out for a walk, Marianne settled down to watch her favourite soap opera, and Duo and I played some card games.

Things were… peaceful. We didn’t have to worry about being discovered or being called away on missions or tending each other’s wounds. We didn’t have to worry about anything. I treasured that, the feeling of quiet contentment. But what I treasured more was the same look of contentment I saw in Duo’s eyes. He was happy, and that was very important. He smiled a lot more and laughed a little bit whenever he would beat me.

We had a reward system going for our card games. When I won, he kissed me, when he won, I kissed him, and if we had a draw, we kissed each other. And yes, there is a difference between each type of kissing. It’s a subtle difference, but it was there, and I treasured the kisses he gave me most, maybe because it proved that he loved me, that I had managed to catch this mercurial angel and lay claim on him, that I had something now, something important and beautiful and vibrant and that I would get to keep him.

The backdoor opened and Quatre and Trowa walked in. There was a slight blush to Quatre’s cheeks and a happy, satisfied look in his eyes that said they had done a little bit more than walking. I glanced at Duo and he smirked at me, winking. I had to bit my lip to contain my laughter, because I did not want to explain why I was laughing to Quatre and Trowa.

“Is Wufei still upstairs?” Quatre asked, getting a glass out of the cupboard and getting himself some water.

“Yup,” Duo said. “Hasn’t come out since he went up there after we put the shopping away. He’s probably just meditating.”

“No, I’d feel it if he were.” Quatre was frowning thoughtfully. “When he’s meditating, it’s sort of like a distant calm, but now….”

“Now what?”

“Now it’s… eager? Sort of an anticipating happiness. It’s weird.”

“Weird pretty much sums Wufei up. Proud. Admirable. Tough. Stubborn. Strong. Lots of words sum Wufei up.”

I blinked at him, and he blushed. I don’t think he’d realised what he’d said, and I was about to say something when Trowa spoke.

“What words sum up Quatre?”

“Loving. Tender. Gentle. Protective. Determined. Intelligent. Weird.”

“And me?”

“Distant. Observant. Quiet. Fierce. Mysterious. Weird.”

“Heero?”

“Defensive. Strong. Sensitive. Watchful. Intense. Gentle. Smart. Calculating. Weird.”

A soft smile curved Trowa’s lips, and I thought he knew what he was going to do. I wasn’t disappointed. “Humble. Intelligent. Troubled. Joyful. Vengeful. Harsh. Tender. Lively. Weird.”

Duo blinked at him owlishly, a blush colouring his cheeks. “Who-Who’s that supposed to be?”

“There are five members of our team. You described four of them. Guess who I described.”

“Uh… um….”

“Huh, Duo Maxwell struggling for words.” He frowned, still smiling, and said, “Ya know, you’re cute when you looked dumbstruck like that.”

The blush that had been faint turned flaming red, and he gasped before exclaiming, “Trowa!”

“He’s right, Duo,” Quatre giggled. “You look really cute like that.”

“I-you-he-you-I….”

Quatre and Trowa laughed before walking out, leaving me alone with a bright red Duo.

“Would you spontaneously combust if I said I agreed with them?” I asked, smiling, and he mock-glared at me.

“Don’t you start. It is very off-putting to have two of your best friends, who happen to be in love with each other, say that you look cute and sound like they mean it.”

“They did mean it. And so did I. You do look cute when you’re dumbstruck, which is a change from beautiful like you usually look.”

“Heero!”

“What? I’m not allowed to compliment you?”

“Well…. You…. I….”

“You aren’t having much luck with coherent sentences.”

“That’s your fault. You keep surprising me.”

“Sorry. I’ll warn you when I’m gonna compliment you in the future.”

“I give up!” he groaned, and began shuffling the cards, apparently deciding to just stop this conversation before he really did spontaneously combust.

I got pressed into helping with dinner that night, and had to peel the potatoes while listening to some fluffy ‘dinner music’. I had half my attention on the potatoes and making sure I didn’t start peeling my fingers, and half my attention on Duo, who was quietly reading a book at the table. He’d been fairly relaxed since finding and naming Tenkou, other than the bit with the near bursting into flames, and I was happy about that, but I could see something underneath, something that wasn’t happy, and I wanted to erase that look, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t even know what that look was, not completely, and how could I erase it without understanding it completely?

“Heero, you’re scowling,” Quatre said, and I flushed. He gave me one of those looks that are the silent equivalent of ‘you wanna talk?’ and I shook my head. He frowned slightly, and I flicked my eyes briefly in Duo’s direction. His eyes widened in response, a hint of alarm/fear/concern appearing in those blue-green depths, and I gave him a small, reassuring smile, echoing it with a one-shouldered shrug. He nodded and walked away.

We five have been working together, depending on each other, for long enough that we can convey a great deal of information silently, using little gestures and adjusting our body language. It makes it useful when we’re undercover and need to talk but can’t.

It was oddly… comforting. It gave me this warm feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’d never had anyone in my life that was really important to me, no one that I cared about, and no one that I was close to, but I had four friends now, and we were close. I wouldn’t jeopardise a mission for any one of them, except maybe Duo, but I still… cared about them. For the first time in my life I could say that I cared about someone, that I had friends, that I held love in my heart.

“Okay, that’s about the fifth mood change in the past three minutes,” Duo said suddenly, and I looked at him. “Wanna share you thoughts?”

I shrugged. “Nothing important. Just thinking.”

“Uh-huh.” I could tell he didn’t believe me, but he let it drop. I gave him a smile and turned my attention back to the potatoes.