Don't own 'em, wish like hell I did. Thank you for the reviews and for sticking with me; this story's going places. It might not end up where I thought it would, but that's the way fanfic goes.

(In response to a previous comment: Self-injury is rarely a suicidal gesture. Often, it's a way of keeping yourself alive - to get out emotions that you can't deal with/to feel something/to stop a dissociative process etc.)

Working on my Gundam always soothes something within me; the feel of metal beneath my hands, bending immovable forces to my will and repairing something that is supposedly irreparably broken. Fixing the broken - it's something that I wish I could do with myself, a desire so strong that I cannot ignore it, cannot refute the desperate need to put myself back together, even when I can't remember falling apart.

I haven't told Duo yet that a mission came in last night; that shortly after he whispered those words (Love you... love you... love you; his voice has been whispering in my mind ever since he spoke those words, and I still can't but help wondering if he was really speaking to me), I crawled out from under his sleeping form and answered the insistent soft beeps at my laptop. He isn't going to like it - not now, not so soon after he was injured, after I... well. I can't say no; I am not meant to refuse a mission.

I have never refused a mission. I've never even considered it.

And yet it's so very tempting to type "Rejected;" to exert my free will and say no. The thought cracked a gaping cavern inside of me, wide and untapped, rage and pain shuddering through my body as I grasped my desk, denting the metal. My vision turned red as I typed "Accepted" into the screen, slumping against the hard chair as the pain recedes.

That had certainly been unexpected.

I didn't mind when Duo left; it gave me a chance to contemplate what I was going to tell him. Shadows of memory had begun to seep through in my dreams, vague remembrances of things better left unsaid; things recalled from my past, my childhood - though it's laughable to think I ever had one. It's been - what - four years since I met Duo, since I joined the other pilots - and still I am the outsider, the outlier in the mathematics, the side-liner that can never fully participate. I know that I'm called the Perfect Soldier - hell, I've done nothing but live my life to perpetuate that rumor - and yet I will admit to the fear that pulses through my veins at the sheer thought of asking Duo what he's gone through. I know what we all know - Duo the street rat, Duo the church orphan, I know the story that he has told us all and yet -

And yet, if I admit it to myself, when I look into his eyes, there's a tightness there, a dark hallway with a closed door behind those violet orbs, stories that are the cause of the tough interior that he hides behind his laughter and jokes. We all have our specialties - I try not to think of what his would do to him, unless he needs my silent presence in the darkness, a silent pillar to his nightmares.

The feeling of a wrench held tightly in my hand calls me back to the present, a sound in the distance; footsteps walking closer. It takes everything within me not to level my pistol at Trowa as he waits silently outside of my Gundam for an invitation. A nod, and he joins me. The banged pilot sits thoughtfully across from me as I work to fix the latch on the door, carefully rewiring the mechanisms and unseen traps riddled therein. Many find his reticence to speak difficult to deal with; quite frankly, I find it refreshing. So many people - and several of the other pilots - have this terrible habit of needing to say something, anything, to sever the silence down the middle, a clean cut of contemplating, lest someone begin to think too hard and come to an unsavory revelation.

My revelations are almost always unsavory, and when they aren't - a good example being my feelings for Duo - I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do with them, so really, a fear of silence is rather asinine.

"Quatre's worried."

I waited, jerking my hand away as the door panel sparked, waiting for the wires to cool down. I knew with Trowa there was always more than that; he talked a great deal more than people gave him credit for, if you could only wait for him to find the right words.

"Wufei thinks you're suicidal."

I snorted. "By his standards, all of us are suicidal." This was true, if a bit questionable; Duo drives so fast that it's impossible to believe he doesn't secretly have a death wish. Trowa is silent, and obviously keeping his dark feelings to himself. Quatre is terribly sensitive, and that will be the end of him. And I, of course, purposely injure myself. Regardless of the fact that my methods of keeping myself relatively sane are somewhat circumspect, I do not intend to die. Wufei is the lone holdout of perfection - he simply has rageful energy, according to His Highness.

He waited until I had pliers in my mouth and hot wires beneath my fingers to speak. "I think you need to talk to Duo. Whatever's bothering you is too deep to surface on its own. Obviously you trust him the most - you should use that to your advantage. Quatre thinks it could help your memories come back."

Fortunately, my concentration held enough so that I didn't shock myself again. The door slid shut, and I sighed, beginning to refit the panel. "What makes you think I'm having issues with my memory?"

He merely grunted. "When you were injured, you screamed while you were out of it. Quatre caught the edges of what you were feeling, and he couldn't sleep for days. I assumed it was because whatever it was you were feeling was deep, hidden, and dark." The banged pilot shrugged. "I assume that if you're having nightmares, you need help. Duo's good at that. He helped me, once. Don't take it for granted." The boy stood, opening the door and walking away as quietly as he'd entered.

My thoughts were jumbled as he left. None of us ever talked about what relationships we'd formed during the war; all of us assumed, but Trowa had all but just admitted that he and Quatre were spending nights together. And he'd almost implied that he thought Duo and I had that type of relationship. We all knew that Quatre was sensitive, but... until today, I didn't really put faith into the idea of empathy. If Quatre had felt my nightmares...

The pliers fell to my feet. They knew how I felt about Duo. What if someone told him?