"Lady Une," the guard in the doorway said, snapping out a brief salute. "The raid on the rebel base is reported a success. The station is secured. Casualties acceptable."

She looked up from her deskwork and pinned the messenger with a cold look, magnified by her glasses. "And?" she inquired sharply. "It was a routine assignment, Lieutenant. There are enough of these damn Colonial bases remaining that I don't have time to oversee the assimilation of every single one. Was there something about this particular hunk of rock that sets it apart from all the others?"

The hapless lieutenant shriveled slightly under the glare, but forced himself to think of his mission. "Yes, ma'am. Although our information claimed this base to be inhabited, but lightly guarded, by the time our MS troops got there, the Colonials had evacuated."

"Ah." Lady Une leaned back in her chair and wearily closed her eyes, a bitter smile curving her face. "Again," she mused to herself. "This tears it. There's a leak in our information network somewhere."

At a slight shuffling-noise, she opened her eyes and shot a glare once more at the soldier in her doorway. "Now, correct me if I'm wrong, soldier, but didn't you say that the base had been evacuated by the time your troops got there?"

The messenger gulped. When the Colonel started speaking in terms of 'your troops' instead of 'our troops,' trouble was on the way. "Yes, ma'am," he ventured.

Her fist slammed down on the desk, rattling the computer equipment and shaking some of the loose paperwork off into the floor. "Then how in the seven hells did we manage to pull a 'casualties acceptable?' Did our bright Special troops manage to shoot each other in the strain of securing an empty base?"

The soldier jumped slightly at the impact, trying not to imagine his own vulnerable flesh as the target of that rage. "No, ma'am!" he squeaked. "The troops got there just as the last transport accelerated... but the base wasn't empty."

Lady Une's eyes narrowed. "I'm hoping that whatever was in the base will in some way excuse the fact that you didn't pursue the Colonials?" she remarked dryly.

"I think so, ma'am. It was one of the five Gundam pilots."

"A Gundam?" She leaned forward, her attention arrested. Ever since the unexpected reemergence of Sank and the Colonies' declaration of independence from Earth, the five mysterious Gundam pilots had lead the rebellion against OZ. Their ragtag little group of guerrillas couldn't possibly stand alone against the Organization of the Zodiac, which had half the combined might of Earth behind it—but as long as the Gundam pilots led the rebellion, Oz would get no co-operation from either the Colonies or the Sank Federation. It drove Une to distraction, the sheer trickery and stubbornness of those five elusive teens, and any holds she could gain on them... "Which one?"

"02, I believe. He engaged our troops in that damned oversize Mobile Suit of his long enough to make pursuit of the rebel's transport impossible. The force commander had to be satisfied with securing the facility."

"And the Gundam, lieutenant? What happened to him?"

"The Gundam suit itself was destroyed. The pilot is currently—"

"You mean you captured him alive?" Une's fingers suddenly twitched, as a very unpleasant smile began to grow on her face. "Well, well, soldier. You could have told me this to start with."

"Y... yes Ma'am," the soldier stuttered, more disturbed by the spasmodic motion of Lady Une's hands and the gleeful tone in her voice than by the biting anger she had previously displayed. "I... assume you'll want to interrogate him?"

"Oh, yes, Lieutenant. That's a very safe assumption."

Duo Maxwell passed the time seeking to entertain his captors with his vast store of ancient pop culture advertising jingles. His memory was phenomenal, and his singing voice was actually quite good, yet for some reason the Oz soldiers assigned to guard him were not amused. They had given up a while ago trying to threaten him into silence, however, because that only prompted him to a return barrage of taunts and insults until something reminded him of yet another old song.

He leaned back against the wall, lacing his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling, and sang at the top of his lungs. It was a move calculated to annoy the bejeezus out of Oz personnel, of course—something Duo delighted in on any occasion—but despite his current predicament he was actually feeling pretty good. Ikari's warning had come in time—barely—and Duo knew that he and Deathscythe had delayed the Oz troops enough that Howard could escape with the rest of the rebels and all of the important equipment. Sure, they had lost the base, but Howard had made sure to wipe all of the information records clean, so that there wouldn't be a single trace leading back to their helpful informant, or pointing to the location of other supply dumps. All Oz had gained from the strike was an empty facility on a worthless chunk of rock. And... one Gundam pilot, but Duo was cheerily confident that his stay with Oz would be a fairly short one. If he couldn't break out on his own—a circumstance unlikely but not impossible—then one of the other Gundam Five would break in. Duo knew too much... which meant that from now until the time of his eventual escape, Duo's mission was to keep his mouth shut.

Well... about some things, anyway, Duo mentally amended as he picked another irritatingly catchy tune and began belting it out at the top of his lungs. One of his guards had pulled his hat down over his ears in a futile attempt to block out the noise; the other was doing his level best to pretend that no such animal as a singing Gundam pilot existed. For a moment, in fact, the noise level was high enough to disguise the grating click that signaled someone's entrance to the detention block. The harried guards looked up and sighed in not-so-well-disguised relief as Lady Une entered, trailed by two of her attaches; Duo, out of the line of sight from the door, perked to attention at the change in the guards' attitudes.

His singing faltered, the stopped entirely as the newcomer stepped around the corner and halted, folding her arms, and Duo was confronted with a face he remembered very well indeed—and the associations were not pleasant. Frankly, he was just as happy that there was a wall of bars between them.

"Gundam pilot zero-two," she bit out, staring down at Duo with a icy glare that Heero Yuy would have envied. The odd resemblance lent him some unexpected comfort, and he summoned a perky smile for her benefit.

"OZ flunky one-one!" he chirped in reply. "We gotta stop meeting like this."

"I'm actually quite surprised to see you," Une said in a flat tone. "I would have expected that someone of your importance to the Rebellion would have self-destructed rather than let himself be captured."

"Self-destruct?" Duo sighed. "You're thinking of Heero Yuy, lady. He's the expert on self-detonation. I might have tried to imitate him, but your soldiers seemed awful keen on inviting me to visit."

"Yes." Une contemplated Duo for a moment, behind the glasses. "Your last stay with me was somewhat... abbreviated."

Duo shrugged. "What can I say? Your hospitality wasn't that great either."

Lady Une shifted position slightly, until she was leaning against the wall in a pose of pretend casualness. "I am well aware of that, 02. In fact, I find myself at a loss as to how you could have possibly escaped Baruji in the condition you were in."

The young man positively smirked at her. "A good magician never reveals his tricks."

"You're very confident," Une observed. She turned to the guards. "I assume you searched him?"

"Yes, Colonel Une," the guard replied, leading her over to the table where the prisoner's equipment had been laid out. Une glanced over the array, her cold analytical mind clicking as she tried to form some impression of its owner's methods. Standard handgun, the ammunition clip laid neatly beside it. A communication device, the insides melted and outer case cracked. Several blades of various sizes that could be easily hidden about one's person. Breath mints—Une's eyebrow quirked slightly upwards as she saw that—and, probably most arresting of all, two small electronic devices that it took Une a moment to recognize as detonation devices for explosives.

"Interesting," Une mused, and gestured to the assortment of knives. "I do hope you got all of those off him." Behind her, Duo apparently took her sudden disinterest in him as an invitation to start singing again.

The boy definitely had spunk.

Lady Une hated spunk.

She turned on her boot heel and paced quickly back to the holding cell, this time keying the door open and entering the cell with the Gundam pilot as the guards scrambled hastily to keep up. Duo looked up at her, and the two soldiers locked gazes for a moment; she saw Duo's eyes dart from her to the guards to the door, as if running some mental calculations. Whatever they were must have come out negative, however, because he didn't move from his seat. Lady Une's cold glare pinned him against the wall, and raked him from head to toe for a long moment before her hand shot out and seized Duo's braid. He swallowed a pained yelp as his head was jerked around by the sharp pressure on his hair as Une yanked it towards her for close inspection. Her gloved hands felt over it from base to tip, and yanked out a slim pocketknife, which she tossed against the wall over her shoulder and—after a few more minutes of probing—a complete set of lockpicks.

"Major," she said coldly, without taking her eyes from Duo. "See me in my office later this afternoon for a discussion on proper search procedures."

Duo reclaimed his braid from her hands and cradled it protectively as he glared back at Une, but some of the surety was gone from his eyes. A smile curved her lips involuntarily as she said, "I'll be the first to concede you're good, Gundam Pilot. But it is physically impossible for you to have escaped a heavily guarded Oz facility entirely on your own power. Either you got help from outside, or someone from inside Oz assisted you. That will not happen again. If there is a leak in our organization, you will help us find it, 02. And if any of your comrades step in on your behalf, then we will have them. Count on it."

All traces of humor had vanished from Duo's countenance long since. "I think you underestimate us, Colonel. Just as you have from the beginning," his voice dropped almost to a whisper.

"Indeed?" Une challenged, her gaze boring into Duo for a long moment. There was a brief clashing of wills, and then Duo broke the eye contact and summoned up a dry chuckle. "No, Lady, I'm not about to go giving you free information like that."

"I see," she said dryly, and turned her attention to the guards, both the two that had been guarding the detention area and the ones that had accompanied her from her office. "You four, take the prisoner down to Interrogation. Record the session and deliver a report to my desk afterwards. Understood?"

"Uh—Colonel?" one of the soldiers ventured. "Don't you want to oversee the interrogation yourself?"

Une looked back over her soldier at the boy in the cell, her glance fixing vaguely somewhere in the air above his head. "I don't see the need for it. It's highly unlikely that we'll get anything out of him on the first session, and I have work to do. I'll find time to attend to the matter personally... later."

"Hey, Lady," Duo called after her, "are you sure it's safe to leave me alone with only four guards? I might overpower them and escape!"

Une actually considered this for a moment, her gaze moving to the table with the explosive detonators, her hands curling around the lockpicks. At last she turned back to the guards. "Break his hands," she ordered. She then collected her remaining attache, and swept out of the cell block.

"Shit!" Duo groaned under his breath, edging nervously along the wall away from the guards. "My mouth..."

It was some hours later when two of the burly guards (whom Duo had immediately dubbed Une's Goons) dumped him roughly back into the cell. The lights inside dimmed as the door closed, signaling the beginning of the ship's night cycle, but Duo barely noticed. A part of him registered that he was in shock, recognized what the breathing hitch and uncontrollable shaking were symptoms of, and was calmly assured that it would eventually pass off. It was a tiny part, though, and all Duo was conscious of was the horrible pain reporting in from all over his body... especially his arm. His left arm clutched his right wrist close to his chest, and he couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from the unnatural angle.

Slowly, his heart slowed its racing pace, and some semblance of rational thought returned. That's bad, he thought, blinking at his broken wrist. Really bad. I'll have to pull it into place if I plan to get any use out of it at all.

His body shuddered even at the thought of the pain that would entail. Both of the bones in his lower arm were out of place, and resetting the arm would hurt even more than when the thugs broke it the first time. For a moment, Duo contemplated leaving it wrong. There was a very distinct possibility that if he fixed it, the interrogators would just break it again; it sure as hell wasn't like the arm would have a chance to heal right no matter what.

A memory sprang to his mind, of when he had met Heero for the first time. Well, nearly the first time, anyway. The time that Duo had broken into the military hospital to free Heero, and the other boy had jumped forty stories and walked away—well, with a little assistance from Duo he had walked away, although Duo was fairly confident Heero would have hobbled along even on his broken leg if he had to.

He remembered the feeling of sick admiration that he had felt as he watched Heero pull his broken leg into place, then stand and walk on it without assistance. Duo grimaced just thinking about it; Heero Yuy didn't even think twice about setting his own broken bones. Heero Yuy knew that a soldier could not afford to function at less than maximum capacity, no matter what pain it took to get him there. If he could see Duo now, he'd probably ream him out for showing weakness, for wavering over something as simple as a fractured wrist.

Or... maybe not. Duo settled upon a different memory, a quieter one.

Months after that... spectacular first meeting, Duo and Heero were camping out in a motel building, coming down from a seek-and-destroy mission. Heero had quite thoroughly broken his shoulder, and all the while Duo was patching him up he ranted at the Japanese boy for his carelessness and stupidity. Of course, a lot of the anger Duo was working out was really directed towards himself; he'd been so wrapped up in smugly congratulating himself on what a fine team he and Heero made, that the explosion that tore the catwalk out from under their feet had taken him completely by surprise. But Heero provided a silent and uncomplaining target for Duo's recriminations, which of course only made him feel more irritable.

"Will you stop fidgeting!" Duo finally snapped, as Wing's pilot twisted around to inspect the bandage on his shoulder for the seventh time. "It's fine! It works! I know how to set a damn splint, all right? You don't have to quadruple-check everything I do!"

Heero dropped his hand from his shoulder and turned to stare at the wall. Duo felt his anger leak away, to be quickly replaced by guilt. "I'm sorry, Heero," he admitted in a smaller voice. "I didn't mean to... I..."

The Japanese boy didn't answer—as usual—but he turned his bright blue eyes back on Duo, a faint question in their depths. Duo felt warmed by his gaze, and he felt compelled to expand on his feeble apology. "Didn't mean to... take it all out on you. I was just a little tense from the mission. I mean, I know I screwed up..."

"The mission was a success," Heero stated flatly.

"Yeah, right!" Duo pushed himself off the creaky bed and began to pace the length of the room. Heero's gaze followed him. "It's great that 'the mission was a success' and all, Yuy, but it was harder than it should have been and nastier than it needed to be and I screwed up and now you're hurt—and if anybody should be yelling, then it should be you tearing into me, not the other way around!"

A long moment of silence stretched between the two, and Duo flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. He felt Heero's unwavering gaze on him, but had no way of reading the other boy's hypothetical emotions, until at long last Heero stirred. Duo looked up as Wing's pilot stood from his chair and crossed to sit on the bed, facing Duo. For a long moment neither of them stirred, until finally Heero broke the silence.

"...It didn't hurt."

Duo shook himself free of the stillness, and let out a sarcastic snort. "Bullshit, Yuy. You might try and pull the 'tough soldier' crap, but I've had broken bones like that before and I know perfectly well that it hurts like hell!" Again, he had to avert his eyes from Heero's intense stare, but this time confusion joined self-recrimination in his mind. Was Heero trying to... make him feel better?

Unexpectedly, Heero shook his head fiercely. "No, I... that wasn't what I meant."

The American blinked in puzzlement, and looked back at him. "Then what..."

Once again, Heero raised a hand to touch the splint at his shoulder. "I mean... this... didn't hurt."

What's he babbling about? Duo wondered. I was trying to be careful, but it still had to...

"Not like... not like... not as much as it should have," Heero finished, obviously struggling with the concept.

Duo stared at Heero, trying to work out in his mind what the other boy meant. He's always been the one to fix his own injuries before. He isn't used to having other people help him. "Well, yeah..." Duo said slowly. "Y'know, there's a reason people go to places like hospitals... it's usually better to have other people patch you up than to try and do it yourself."

Heero studied him for a moment, then nodded decisively, as though absorbing mission parameters. He stood, and crossed back over to the chair, pulling his laptop open once more. Duo stared at his back, at the damaged shoulder, and couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"Duo?"

A voice broke the stillness, so soft Duo hardly even recognized it. He blinked and refocused on Heero, turning his head to look at Deathscythe's pilot over his shoulder. "Yeah Heero?" he asked dazedly.

"...Thank you."

Duo smiled at the memory, the warmth of that voice and those eyes chasing some of the pain away from his body. Well, since Heero's not here to fix my arm, then I guess I'll just have to do it myself. All I have to do is keep myself together until Heero comes and breaks me out of this dump.

Resolved, Duo braced himself against the wall of his holding cell. He picked up his braid with his good hand and stuffed the end in his mouth, then took hold of his shattered wrist and pulled.

He was right; it hurt like hell, and even as he bit down hard on the braid he couldn't stop a slight whimper of pain from leaking out between his teeth. Sweat was dripping off his face and he had started shaking again by the time he was finished, but he noted with satisfaction that he could once again move the fingers on his right hand. Drained by his painful ordeal after what had already been a very long, very tiring day, Duo settled himself down on the stiff cot and resolved to get some rest. After all, he thought, I've probably gotta go a few rounds again tomorrow. He couldn't suppress a shudder at the thought, but steadied himself with the thought of Heero.

He'll come for me. I know he will. After all, he came once before... and that was even before we were lovers.

He grinned up at the ceiling, in the dark, at the memories the thought stirred, and then closed his eyes.

"Shit," Howard hissed, rising out of his swivel chair so fast he knocked it to the floor behind him. He barely remembered to key the self-initialization sequence on the computers, which would wipe all programs and memory, before he set off at a dead run down the corridor. "Heads up, people!" he bawled at the top of his lungs, knowing that this facility's open ventilation system would carry his words throughout the entire complex. "Pack up and make it fast! We're gonna have company!"

As he pelted down the hallway, doors open and people swarmed about, the secluded rebel base immediately coming alive with activity. One doorway slid open and a small-framed teenage boy with a long trailing braid poked his head out, blinking as he took in the urgency on the older man's face. "What's up, Howard?" he asked, swinging out to fall behind him.

"Just got a message from Ikari," the mechanic growled. "We've been found. Oz dispatched a squadron to take the place over. They launched at three-twenty."

"That means we've got..." The boy blinked as he did some mental calculations. "...Just under an hour," he finished, and stopped dead in his tracks as the shock hit him.

Howard swung around to face him. "An hour if we're lucky," he confirmed.

The braid twitched back and forth as its owner slowly shook his head. "That's not long enough to evacuate," he realized. "We'll have to lose the hardware..."

"We can't fucking well do that!" Howard shouted, the dilemma plain on his thin face. "Our merry little band of outlaws is not well enough equipped to dump a whole supply base worth of equipment."

"We can't lose a whole base worth of people, either," the teenager objected. "Even working at top speed, we'll be pulling out just in time to meet the OZ bastards coming in."

"Don't you think I know that?" Howard snarled in frustration. "But Winner and Yuy entrusted me with this junk, and I've gotta find a way." A strident alarm pierced the air, and Howard shook his head against the noise. "I can't stand around and talk about it. I've gotta wipe the computers. Go make yourself useful, kid." He didn't spare another glance for the younger man as he pelted off full speed down the corridor.

The next thing Howard heard of him was the clankings and screechings of the hydraulics system as the kid's Gundam was dragged out of the transport hold. "Just drop it!" came the familiar voice. "It's Gundanium; it can stand a little rough handling."

Howard tore out of the control room and saw the boy standing, hands on hips, as he surveyed the preparations. The mechanic swore, and strode quickly to join him. "Kid, please tell me you're not gonna do what I think you're gonna do," he said in an undertone that cut through the confusion and tumult of the emergency evacuation.

The kid only smirked, watching his mobile suit with a proprietary air. "That depends on what you think I'm gonna do," he returned easily.

"Something really, really, fucking stupid. You know we weren't finished repairs, right? Half the systems don't work! You turn that thing on, I give you maybe thirty minutes before the generator shorts out."

"Thirty minutes?" the pilot inquired, turning the smirk on the gray-haired engineer-turned-rebel. "And you think it'll take you that long to pull your transports out of sensor range?"

"No way. But that's not the point," Howard began, before the other cut him off.

"The point, Howie, is that the only way can get the people and equipment out without Oz staying right on your tails the whole way is for me and my partner to give'm something to distract'em. You think I want to stand in front of Bigshot Commanding Officer Winner and explain why I let a whole base full of valuable equipment fall into Ozzie hands?" He folded his arms and concentrated on looking smug.

"You think I want to stand in front of Commander Yuy and explain why you didn't come back with me?" Howard retorted. "It's too dangerous for you to get caught; you're one of the Big Five, kid, and you—"

"Hey, Howard!" someone called from the shuttle door. Howard turned for a moment to address the problem, and when he looked back, the kid was already scrambling up the mobile suit's side to the cockpit.

Howard heard from him once more, as the last transport prepared to launch, and the Gundam swung itself out of the hangar to lie in ambush. He leaned over the copilot's shoulder and switched on the radio. "This is a really bad idea, kid," he muttered into it, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the arc of space where the Oz troops would come in.

"Bad ideas are my specialty!" came the cheerful reply. "Just clear out of here, will ya, and send my regards to the other crazies!" A wash of static interrupted the transmission briefly, and Howard's heart beat faster as he saw the first OZ suit carrier appear on the radar. "Gotta go, Howard. Don't worry about your ships, k? If these bastards wanna catch you, they first have to get through Duo Maxwell!"

He knew too much. That was what Howard was going to say, a week ago, before they had been interrupted. He knew too much; little things, like the last known location of Relena Peacecraft (outdated), or the name of the important head of state who was considering changing to the rebel's side (irrelevant), or the full list of equipment that he had given his freedom to defend (trivial). And some things that were not so little—like the fact that OZ officer Zechs Marquise was also Milliard Peacecraft, who had shown such strong public support for Relena's diplomatic war. Like the fact that Meryl Ikari, Treize Khushrenada's assistant secretary, had been a Colonial sympathizer ever since Lady Une had attempted to take the colonies hostage against the Gundam Pilots. Like the fact that the young man they now had in custody had been sharing a bed with the leader of the Colonial forces.

No. That was not a piece of knowledge he wanted Lady Une to know.

But all of the secrets, big and little, ate away at his resolve like corrosive salt. The constant questions were wearing him down. Who...? Where...? How many...? When...? And when Lady Une sat in on the questioning sessions, it was even worse; Duo had to constantly watch to make sure that his non-answers and evasive replies didn't give her as much information as a straight reply would. Probably, any of the other pilots could have handled it much better. Even friends had to fight tooth and nail to drag conversation out of Heero and Trowa, and Duo had seen some of the meditation and trance techniques that Wufei used—largely to ignore the American pilot, but those skills would have come in handy just about now...

But Duo Maxwell was not made to be a silent man. He tried—well, sort of tried—but he found himself unable to stifle the constant flood of boasts, taunts, and verbal abuse that he heaped upon the guards and interrogators. Which, of course, only made them madder than hell, and led them to up the level of violence—and the pressure forced Duo Maxwell into even more babble. It was a nasty vicious cycle.

At least they'd given up on drugs. After the second time he'd gotten the syringe away from them—his aim had been off, and the needle had buried itself in the doorway inches to the left of Une's head—they had apparently decided that the minimal results they'd gotten from their truth serum just wasn't worth the aggravation. Duo was glad. Effective or not, the drugs clouded his mind, and he knew he had to be ready when the moment of action came.

Whenever it came.

Duo sat on the bench that passed for a bed and leaned back against the wall, his eyes closed. He was not asleep. He was waiting. And he hated waiting; it made him jittery and nervous, on top of a whole host of other evils. If he'd had a watch, he would have checked it every thirty seconds; as it was, his knowledge of the passage of time was limited to the periodic change in lighting. Seven day cycles, six night cycles, working on another. Seven days. A whole week. That was the minimum time limit he had counted on before anything could happen; two days for Howard to catch up to the Colonial forces, maybe another day to locate Heero or the other pilots, a day or two to plan and gather forces, and two more days back. Seven days.

Damnit, Yuy, what's the holdup? I'm counting on you here; don't let me down!

The shuttle was cold, and the lighting dim; it was stripped down for speed, and a lot of the life support power had been shunted to the cloaking device. The guerrilla soldiers that packed the shuttle's interior bore the cold and dark stoically; the Colonial forces didn't have enough resources to go around, so there was nothing to be gained by complaining. They huddled in their full combat gear, along the bare gray walls or together in groups for warmth and company, the low murmur of voices blending with the thrumming of the shuttle's engines to provide a soothing background hum.

Some men chose to be alone, sleeping or making adjustments to their battle gear, or any other task that could occupy their minds during the tedious journey. One man sat apart from the rest, tucked in a corner of the shuttle just behind the cockpit. He was easily distinguished from the rest not only by the makeshift rank tabs on his uniform jacket, but by the laptop computer in front of him, the only piece of loose electronic machinery allowed on the shuttle. It was on, and the screen was filled with text, but its owner was not paying attention. He only stared out the shuttle window, his vivid blue eyes fixed on the bright pinpricks of stars or the invisible foes that the blackness hid, or maybe on nothing at all.

"If he's not working on the damn thing, then why doesn't he turn it off?" Wufei muttered under his breath to his reticent companion. "He can brood just as easily without draining the ship's power any further."

"I'm fairly sure it runs on internal batteries," Trowa replied noncommittally. Wufei glared at him briefly, and Trowa gave a slight shrug. "It makes him feel useful," he allowed finally.

"Useful!" Wufei snorted, then shook his head. "He's running a goddamn army against a ruthless dictatorship twenty times our size. And we're not dead yet. If that doesn't make him feel useful, I don't know what can!"

Trowa said nothing. There was no need to speak, something that Wufei knew just as well as the other Gundam pilot.

"All right, so it bothers me!" Wufei snapped finally. "I must confess I'm worried..."

"About him?" Trowa said quietly.

Wufei shook his head in fierce denial. "Of course not!" he growled. "I'm worried about...Heero,and what will happen to all of us if he doesn't snap out of this sooner or later. He hasn't said a word in days, not since we heard about... you know."

Trowa quirked an eyebrow at the other boy and Wufei clarified. "Not that Yuy is the most talkative person in the world even at the best of times, but... I swear he's more of a machine than that computer he's got on his lap. I... just hope he doesn't break and do something stupid."

"Whatever he chooses to do, Wufei, will be in the best interest of the Colonies. You know that."

"I wish I could say that I did." The Chinese pilot turned his gaze on the boy in question, and his dark eyes seemed to darken further. "Tell me, Trowa. You've known him longer than I have. Was he this bad, before... before Maxwell?"

"It's hard to say," Trowa sighed. "Duo knew him before I did, even though back then they weren't... but no. He was bad, but not this bad."

Wufei grimaced, and turned back to look at Trowa. "I don't understand it."

The tall, green-eyed pilot folded his arms across chest, his thoughts turning inwards. "I do. If it were Quatre..."

"I almost wish he were here," Wufei mused. "He could get under Heero's skin..."

Trowa shook himself free of the stillness. "He's needed where he is, at Relena's side. The war they're fighting down there is just as important as the one we're fighting up here, and Quatre and Relena and Zechs are the ones fighting it."

"The charge of the blond brigade," Wufei muttered sourly. "He's needed up here, too, Trowa, danger or no. I can't shake Heero out of this black depression he's thrown himself into, and neither can you. Quatre's the only one that can do that right now. And... and maybe his Spaceheart could have given us some information on Maxwell's condition."

"It's an irrelevant question," Trowa said, his voice a trifle flat. "He's not here."

"I know." Wufei lapsed into silence... again. There was altogether too much silence these days. After a long moment, he roused himself to speak. "You realize, if they manage to break him, he knows enough to bring the whole war down around us. All our fighting, all our sacrifice... made nothing."

"He won't," Trowa said softly. "Have faith in him."

"I do." A long pause. Wufei found his own gaze drawn towards the window, towards the empty bleakness of space. The same empty bleakness that nowadays filled Heero Yuy's eyes; the same cold emptiness that he could feel creeping into his own heart. "...You're right. I am afraid for him, Trowa."

"I know. I am too."

He didn't like the way that the older guard looked at him.

Une's Goons—as with most of the higher-level staff—were chosen from the original members of the Organization of the Zodiac, back when they had just been Federation Specials. As a rule, there were only two kinds of men that went into the Specials; men who were searching for adventure and glory, and men who were on a power trip. Duo had a very bad feeling that the older of his two guards—a slightly hulking man with burning eyes and a knife-fight scar—was one of the latter kind. That smoldering gaze had been fixed on him for the better part of a week, now; and two days ago, when he was alone with his two personal guards for a daily "persuasion" session, the older guard had gone beyond looking. He had broken the rhythm of the beating, bracing Duo up against the wall, and run his free hand down Duo's chest, fingers slipping into the boy's pants. A week ago, if any man had dared to touch him like that, Duo would have broken his arm off or died trying; now, he barely had enough strength to close his eyes and turn his face away. The guard knew it; after all, it had been him who had beaten most of Duo's strength out of him, over the last fourteen days. He grinned at Duo's pitiful show of denial, his face twisted into an ugly leer of lust and hate, and his hand began to move again when the other guard intervened.

The other guard was younger—not more than ten years older than Duo himself—and he had stepped in to grab his senior's wandering hand with a sharp word of protest. They argued for a long, tense moment, the words registering only as white noise to Duo's ears, but he could feel the clashing of wills above his head. After a long, agonizing moment, he felt the older man's moist, groping fingers slide away from his skin, but his soft sigh of relief was lost in a cry of pain as the brute's fist came crashing in on his stomach, driven doubly hard by cruelty and frustration. Duo's scream broke off into a choked gasp as he felt another rib snap, and with his next indrawn breath he could feel some liquid gurgling in his lungs.

The iron clamp of a hand which had pinned him against the wall loosened, and Duo slithered down the wall to curl up in the corner between the wall and the floor, watching the two guards engage in another fierce debate. The younger one shook his head sharply, and said something about their orders not covering this, and the older one replied dangerously that their orders were to break the prisoner... by whatever means necessary.

Duo almost wished that the younger guard hadn't intervened. To be... taken... against his will, came pretty close to matching every one of his worst nightmares, but at least the worst would have been over with. Now, he had to wait, and wait in constant fear; wait until the guard was changed, and his new captor might be less morally inclined; wait for the older one to catch him alone; wait for the younger one's nerve to snap; wait for Lady Une to give the order for his rape, in the hopes that that would break his silence where nothing else had.

It wouldn't work. Duo bit down on a growl of determination. He would not betray the others, no matter what. It was just that... He hated waiting. And he hated feeling helpless.

And God, he hated the way the goon looked at him—hated the vicious lust in his eyes, and hated the revolting feeling of his hands on him. No-one had the right to touch him, unless he offered. And he'd only offered once in his life.

Duo had found Heero pressed against the window of the space station, staring out into space. Out at the brief, deceptively tiny flashes of eye-tearing brilliance that were the only evidence of Heero's handiwork; mobile suits, exploding. Soldiers, dying, on a cold and vicious battlefield that would allow no survivors. All of it done by Heero's command; and so, though all the vast depths of cold and sterile space separated Heero from the battle, the blood still covered his hands.

"Heero...?" he said; softly, ever so gently. No sounds of violence reached across space to drown out his words, or the ragged sound of the other pilot's breathing, but in the dim light Duo could see Heero's body shudder with each distant explosion. Lit only by the harsh starlight, Heero had the face of an angel—distant, cruel, cold... and too beautiful to ever be approachable by mortal men. And to think that he had the temerity to call himself the God of Death... He had taken the name in bitter mockery of faith, knowing that there was no God, and yet the unearthly sight of the perfect killing creation in front of him inspired awe in his soul. But still, somewhere behind the shell of ice-cold barriers that encased him, there was a human being—a young boy who felt pain and loss and desire, just like Duo did. So he simply waited, giving his partner an offer of... something. Presence. Comfort. Salvation.

At last, Heero stirred, and Duo could make out his whispered words. Hardly spoken at all, little more than lips forming over soundless breath, but Duo could see them moving in the dim light, and all at once the words came clear.

"Tasukete... onegai..." Heero breathed. The words were foreign to Duo, but their meanings were not, as the Japanese boy lifted his eyes to meet Duo's. "Tasukete, Duo... tasukete. I'm lost, cold. Help me... please..."

Duo took the steps forward, and pulled Heero into an embrace; the other boy was cold, so cold, and he clung desperately to Duo's warmth like a drowning man clutching at a lifeline. "What do you need?" he said quietly into Heero's hair.

"Show me... something worth living for," he stuttered, breathing in Duo's scent as he absorbed his heat. "Give me something worth fighting for. Something worth feeling. I... I need..." He ground to a halt, unable to shape words that fit his terror, his desire. "...need something..."

Duo laid one finger softly on Heero's lips, gazing into the other boy's dark blue eyes; after a long moment, he replaced the finger with his own mouth. "I'll try," he whispered, his words swallowed up by Heero's mouth centimeters from his own, "if you let me touch you."

He did.

It wasn't just sex that Duo was offering, although that had certainly been a revelation—Heero's formidable training had never included that brand of physical sensation. Afterwards, as they lay in the hazy afterglow, with Heero gently stroking Duo's unbound hair,Duo wormed his way up Heero's body to twine his arms around Heero's neck. "I love you, you know," he murmured. "I have for a while. Maybe it was one of those love-at-first-sight things..."

"The first time you saw me," Heero muttered, "you shot me. Twice." Duo laughed a trifle nervously. "That's true. But after that..." He trailed off, and ran a finger down the clean lines of Heero's face. "I love you," he finally repeated.

A long moment of silence fell between them, breathless with expectation, until Duo felt the tension began to build in his slender partner. Anxiously, he reached over and took Heero's face in his hands, turning the other boy to face him. "That's all right," he assured him, before leaning in for another kiss. "You don't have to say anything."

Heero responded to the comment by leaning into the kiss; Duo felt the tension ease out of him, and smiled to himself. Heero couldn't say the words, at least not yet; but Duo never doubted that Wing's pilot felt the same soul-tearing emotions that he did. And someday, the time would come that the words which fell so easily from Duo's own lips came from Heero's, as well. Someday...

"Do you believe in God, Duo?"

Father Maxwell had asked that once. Duo had been a child when he answered.

Kami o shinjimasu ka?

Nearly ten years later, lying skin to skin, Heero asked him the same question. His blue eyes slitted halfway open, boring into the longhaired boy as though to cut open his head and x-ray his skull. Heero Yuy was not a stupid man; he knew that there were implications to the question that he couldn't understand, that there were feelings associated with the concept that he was not equipped to deal with. He asked anyway.

Do you?

Because he needed to understand not God, but Duo... what Duo thought, and felt, and believed. What fueled Duo's spirit; what led Duo's faith.

"No. If there were truly a loving God, then He should stop the war... so there would be no more people like me. And if He can't stop the war, it doesn't matter if there's a God or not, does it?"

Faith. To believe in something higher than one's own self... to believe that there were, indeed, things worth fighting and killing and dying for. Even if you yourself were filthy, worthless, broken beyond redemption, you could still keep going... if you trusted someone that much, to have faith in them.

Do you believe?

"I've never seen a miracle, but I've seen lots and lots of dead people!"

...I don't believe in God, Heero... but...

"The only God in this world is the God of Death."

...I believe in you...

Twenty days. Or was it twenty-one?

Duo had lost count.

He had made a discovery. When the guards beat him, he didn't need to resist. The pain was like the ocean; if he submerged himself in it, instead of struggling to keep his footing, it wasn't nearly so bad. Instead of breaking on him, each fresh wave of pain washed over and around him, without exerting any force on his willpower. It was frustrating the guards, he knew that, and their helpless anger only drove them to greater lengths of cruelty. But that was all right. It didn't hurt until he came back, until he reclaimed his body and felt the brilliant white light stab through his agonized skull once more.

Concussion? Definitely. And if you could have more than one at a time, he did.

...tasukete... onegai...

Lady Une still came to visit occasionally. Looking at her beautiful, hate-twisted features was as bad as looking at the lights, so he usually closed his eyes when she was in the cell with him. He couldn't shut out the voice, but she no longer bothered to speak to him, since he wouldn't answer her any more. She only spoke to the guards, her voice cold and high and angry. The deadness in her voice reminded him of... someone else, on the other side of this war; hearing her refer to him like a piece of carrion sent slivers of pain stabbing through his chest and gut.

Internal bleeding. Wonder if the guards told her about that? Probably not; he hadn't seen the medics in over a week.

...tasukete, Heero, tasukete...

And then Lady Une left, and the guards left, and he was alone. And that was the worst, because he couldn't ignore his own body any more; he just huddled in the corner of his cold damp prison and shuddered as every nerve in his body screamed for relief that was denied to him.

A truly astounding array of bruises, sprains, broken bones, dislocations...

I'm cold and I'm hurting and I'm scared and I...

Sometimes he slept; or at least, sometimes the walls would ripple and jolt as time jumped and stretched around him as he fell into a shallow doze that brought no soothing oblivion. He wondered, in those moments of sickening disorientation, if he were going mad. He wondered if it would make a difference. Everything was so cold. He couldn't stop shivering.

Fever; maybe some kind of pneumonia, judging from the sound of water in his lungs. Assuming, of course, that wasn't blood.

...I helped you when you needed me, Heero, don't leave me...

Waited. Waited for the guards to come back and hurt him again; waited for Lady Une to give them permission to rape him or kill him. Waited for Heero, who never came. Wondering, as he waited in helpless agony, if he had done something wrong, that led Heero to abandon him this way. Wondering if his partner—in battle, in bed, in love, in life, in every way that mattered—had himself been captured or killed or stranded somehow. If he even knew where Duo was; if he had found himself a new lover; if Duo himself, perhaps, had just been forgotten.

Something broken in his chest.

...I love you and I need you so much, please—

Alone, alone, Duo reached desperately through the cold and empty void of space that surrounded his soul, for the comfort of his lover. His fingers ached for the soft silk of Heero's skin; his heart yearned for the pure blue of Heero's eyes. Always, his hands brushed nothing but the cold walls of his cell. Always, his eyes opened to nothing but stark white light.

Lonely.

—please help me...

He waited for a miracle.

Duo was jarred out of his stupor by an explosion. He lifted his head from its cradle on his arms, scrubbing his hand against his face as if in a futile effort to clear away some of the fog. Revelations dropped into his consciousness one by one.

Explosion.

Someone breaking in.

Heero?

This is it!

Hope surged through Duo's veins, and he pushed himself to a sitting position on hands that were trembling from long-delayed anticipation. He wasn't quite able to make his feet on the first try, but as he concentrated he could hear the sounds of panic beyond the impenetrable cell door. There was a second explosion, and then a third, increasingly muffled; the shrill wailing of a distant alarm nearly covered the sound of rushing footsteps in the corridor outside. Urgent voices sounded, too distant for Duo to make out any words, but the general cacophony seemed to be headed away from the detention area instead of towards it.

For several endless minutes, an increasingly dry-mouthed Duo entertained visions that perhaps this was just an unrelated base raid, and he was going to be overlooked. His pulse hammered in his ears, as Duo clenched his hands into fists and prayed. Then; a soft sound, out in the corridor. A male voice, raised in anger or alarm, and then the heart-shattering sound of a gunshot—a couple moments of quiet scrabbling, and the door swung open to a vision Duo Maxwell hadn't been sure he would ever live to see. Heero Yuy stood in the doorway, gun in his hand still trained upon the motionless form of the guard. He raised his gaze into the cell, and his burning blue eyes locked with Duo's.

For what seemed an eternity, although realistically it could only have been a couple of seconds, Duo simply drank in the sight of his lover. He saw the relief and concern chase across Heero's face before the soldier hid them once again behind an emotionless mask—and then Wing's pilot nodded in satisfaction, temporarily holstered his gun, and in the blink of an eye closed the distance between the two. Duo exhaled a long, shaky breath and closed his eyes in sheer relief as his trembling hands sought and made contact with Heero's own, warm and steady and reassuring. "You came for me," he said softly, his voice filled with wonder and love.

"Of course I did," Heero replied in a matter-of-fact tone. His hands closed around Duo's shoulders as he helped the other pilot to stand, and began a body check. His blue eyes flashed with murderous rage as he discovered the full extent of Duo's injuries, but he kept his grip strong and supportive as he pulled Duo into a brief embrace. "Can you walk?" he asked pragmatically as he pulled away.

"Yeah..." Duo leaned on Heero and attempted a step. His legs buckled out from under him as a fresh lance of agony stabbed through his side, and he bit his lip against the pain as he stumbled and clutched at Heero's arms. "Well, sorta," he admitted.

"Take it easy," Heero cautioned, a hint of worry leaking out through his emotionless facade. "I don't want to have to carry you." His gentleness belied the harsh words as he pulled Duo's arm over his shoulder and arranged his own arm around Duo's waist.

"I don't want you to have to carry me either," Duo agreed as, with Heero's assistance, he limped across the cell. A surge of elation swept through him, and Duo couldn't suppress a face-cracking grin as he realized that he was a free man. His trust was vindicated, his faith redeemed, and—best of all—pretty soon, he could get something decent to eat for the first time in nearly a month.

As they passed into the corridor and his eye fell on the guard's body, a spasm of fury and remembered pain flashed across Duo's face, and he worked his mouth enough to spit on the dead man as he hobbled past. The cold blue eyes shifted from the guard to the pain evident in Duo's posture, and a tiny smile of satisfaction tugged at his mouth for a moment. He tightened his grip on Duo almost automatically, but a soft gasp from the wounded pilot led him to loosen his hold and pat Duo on the shoulder reassuringly. "Sorry," he muttered.

"That's all right," Duo replied, suppressing a wince, and it really was. Pain he was used to by now; Heero's embrace was worth anything. "I missed you."

Only silence was his answer as Heero suddenly halted and stiffened in a listening position, then in a flash flattened himself and Duo into a shadowy niche in the wall. Duo held his breath as a quartet of Oz soldiers rushed past, pressing his back into the corner. Heero peered out around the corner, and relaxed, but made no move to continue on. He turned his attention back to his braided lover. "The shuttle is stashed in a drydock on the north side of this complex. All the base personnel should be busy elsewhere for right now; can you make it?"

"Can't kill Shinigami, can you? I'll be fine," Duo assured him airily, his old self-confidence beginning to return. "Small thanks to you," he muttered sourly as he envisioned the nightmare prospect of running for safety or, God forbid, fighting.

"Serves you right for getting caught in the first place, baka," Heero snapped.

"What did you just call me?" Duo demanded, trying unsuccessfully to conceal his hurt at Heero's hostile tone.

Cold blue eyes fixed on him, pinning Duo against the wall. "Baka. Idiot. Fool. Moron." Almost of its own accord, one hand rose and stroked the bone-deep bruises on Duo's cheek with a feather-light touch. "Beloved..."

Duo's own eyes widened, and his hand came up to cover Heero's on his face. "Wh... what..." he stuttered.

Heero's eyes slid closed, and his fingers closed around Duo's hand as he bowed his head. "When I lost you," he breathed, "it was like all the heat went out of the world. Everything was so dry and sharp and far away, and I hurt so much inside and it just goes on and on and on. I miss you.I need you. I love you and you went away, Duo. How could you do that to me?"

"I'm sorry," Duo whispered, an automatic response to the pain in front of him, even as his mind was still working through the implications of Heero's speech. "You... you love me?"

"Hai," Heero said quietly, and when he looked up again there was a suspicious brightness in his eyes. "Ai shite'ru, Duo. I love you—I need you." Without releasing Duo's fingers, his other hand reached up and hovered over Duo's battered face, not quite daring to touch. "So don't die, okay? Don't leave me."

"I won't," Duo promised, and felt matching tears beginning to threaten in his own eyes, although they were countered by the smile that he couldn't keep off his face. He leaned forward slightly into the Wing pilot's touch; he needed the physical contact, regardless of how his injuries protested. " 'I have now found thee; when I lose thee again, I care not.' "

They floated like that, for a timeless moment, before a dull roaring blast and the slight juddering of the walls and floor around them brought them back to reality. "We have to go now," Heero said, and the soldier mask was back in place. He lowered his hand from Duo's face, and redrew his gun. He shifted his grip from Duo's hand farther up his arm, prepared to lend his aid and support, and looked fully into Duo's face. "Will you be all right?" he asked, and there was a universe's worth of meaning in that question.

"Yes." He closed his arms around the vision of comfort and love that was his partner, and knew that everything would be all right now. "Take me home."

"What the hell has he got to smile about?" the Oz guard snarled, jerking his head towards the heavy steel door. "We've had him locked up now for almost a fucking month, and we've been working him over nearly every fucking day. He should be broken; he should be begging for his goddamned life, but we haven't gotten a single worthwhile thing out of him! What the fuck is he smiling at?"

His younger companion only shrugged, feeling the other's frustration and rage without fully comprehending it. The older man seemed to take everything the prisoner did as a personal offense, especially when it was out of the ordinary, like now.

Behind the two men, in the chill confines of the maximum security detention cell, a boy of no more than sixteen hunched into a ball in the corner between the unyielding wall and the floor, rocking slightly back and forth. His bones pressed sharply against flesh covered in a patchwork of bruises and cuts. His skin was flushed by the same fever that filled his eyes with a mad glitter. Those wide-staring eyes were fixed on the blinding overhead lights, the pupils distended almost to the point where the blue-violet irises were hardly visible. A once-proud mass of waist-length braid was matted and tangled beyond repair, tumbling over his gaunt shoulders and pooling against his knees where they were drawn tightly to his chest. A brilliant smile was fixed on his face as he hummed to himself, pausing occasionally to mutter nonsense words in response to some voice that only he could hear. Violent, uncontrollable tremors wracked his frame as he rocked, turning his head slightly as if to track someone's progress, and he smiled.

After a long time, the rhythmic swaying motion slowed, and stopped.

Gently, almost imperceptibly, the tremors eased into stillness.

Slowly, the glitter faded from those violet eyes.