Disclaimer: I own Gundam Wing and all the chara- What's that? It was just a dream? I don't own any part of this franchise?! SON OF A BISCUIT!

His head was nestled atop of folded arms next to a computer which was uploading something from the console bank he was seated at. A large steel box which sat behind the laptop was hooked up to both the console station and the small portable computer. She had noticed that the gundam pilots liked to use the powerful computers onboard Peaemillion to upgrade and fix whatever problems their machines had. What she couldn't quite understand was why they would be uploading and downloading such sensitive information if it took so long. But her specialty wasn't in computer science. She was a doctor, an observer.

As the door slid shut behind her, Sally noticed the boy's shoulders relax. He maintained his sleeping façade, his breathe even. To most , he would appear to be deep in sleep. But she knew better. He was wide awake and tracking her movements. She felt a pang of guilt as she realized that she had probably disturbed his precious sleep when she walked in. She had found that each boy was falling into peculiar habits when it came to catching up on rest during these down times between battles. They were prone to sleeping anywhere they could. Trowa was once found in the driver's seat of a lift in the hanger bay, Duo had arranged three seats in a row, making a makeshift bed in an office, and Heero was beginning to rest in the cockpit of his gundam. Since they were all on stand-by, they were never more than a few dozen meters from the hanger in which their gundams resided.

She smiled softly and took a place at an open console, fanning out her paperwork in this practically forgotten room. These boys were under an incredible amount of stress. It was amazing that they were doing as well as they were under the circumstances.

She glanced up at Duo as he shifted in his place. His large eyes studying her before moving lazily towards the laptop screen. She returned to her paperwork, listening to his breathing in order to confirm her suspicions. She had noticed a hitch every now and again when he took a breath. Her mind wondered as to the cause. It clearly didn't seem to affect him in any way and he had no discernible ailments. Like the rest of them, he was the very definition of health and the epitome of physical fitness.

The brunette boy finally stretched out like a lazy cat, a heavy yawn escaping his lips as his eyes watered and back arched upward. He smiled warmly at her, his face still fully betraying the lack of rest. "What's all that?" he questioned softly.

She hummed contently for a moment before looking up at him. "Quatre is feeling stressed beyond his breaking point. He wanted to know if there was something I could do for him. I gave him some sugar pills, telling him that it'd help with the stress and told him to rest."

The boy chuckled, his slender fingers typing away a command on the laptop before his attention was turned to the steel box. "I wish the medic that helped train me could've been as nice as you."

Placing the sheets in her hand down, she turned fully to the young man. "How so?"

Duo scratched his head. His eyes glossed over, lost in thought and staring off into the distance. A soft smile curled his lips before turning back to her. "They'd drug me with god knows what so I could be familiar with the feeling. During those periods I learned how to avoid giving any information. Sometimes it'd be a drugging and a beating, to get used to that too."

Sally's eyes had widened considerably. "W-what..?"

"I'm sure that at least Heero went through the same thing. Though, I'm pretty sure they also taught him more medically useful stuff, like setting bones and stuff. I was never taught that," he shrugged.

Sally was appalled by the tidbit of information. She looked the boy over from head to toe, gathering her thoughts. "You're alright with what they did?"

He shrugged again. "I guess. I don't hold anything against any of them. Besides, I was better off with the Professor and his 'lil gang then running around my home colony." He paused for a moment, debating whether to give her any more information. She was trustworthy, he knew that, but even if he was the most open of the five, he still kept certain things sealed away. But her steady eyes were drilling into him for more information, he fidgeted before continuing. "The Professor taught me to read," he began to reason things out. "Fed me and cared for me. Sure, I'm just a pawn in the grand scheme of things, but he's done way more for me than anyone else would ever have. I guess you can say we're even."

"You were heavily sedated multiple times, beaten, and probably developed a breathing problem because of all that and you're not upset?"

Duo blinked a few times, his eyes locked onto the woman sitting at the other end of the console. "Breathing… problem..?"

"You're breathing is uneven at times."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah."

He was aware of it? She was almost certain that he wouldn't have been. "You know?"

"Kindda." He brought a hand up to his chest and rubbed it. "I can't remember the first time I noticed it, but it was definitely before I meet the Professor. Since it didn't impede me at all, he didn't look much into it." Sally tilted her head a bit causing him to chuckle at her expression. "I went through a full medical check-up when it was decided that I would be trained to pilot Deathscythe. It's not my heart skipping a beat, I don't have any holes in my lung or anything, and from what I understood, both my lungs and heart are working perfectly as muscles. It's just that slight hitch."

Sally frowned. That didn't sound right at all.

"How did you notice?" he asked with a quirked eyebrow.

She hesitated for a moment. "I heard it when you feel asleep next to me yesterday."

"Oh." He returned to the laptop, clicking a few keystrokes before unhooking the box.

"I only have training as a field medic, but if you'd like, I can get someone to look at that for you."

"Nah," Duo replied rolling up the cables. "Like I said, it doesn't affect me. I'm good."

"Just because it doesn't affect you now doesn't mean that it will remain that way."

Duo paused to think that over. He eyed the young woman again before offering a small smile. "If I survive this, sure."

"You're expecting to die?"

"We're all expecting to die." His grin was devilish and dark. "I was trained to go into battle without a better expectation. 'You will die before the final battle is over; your life is not your own, it belongs to the colonies', that's what I was taught."

The morbid ideology froze Sally to her core. Where they all really expecting to die, or was it just Duo? He did seem to have a macabre fascination with death, going as far as to call himself the Grim Reaper.

"Don't worry," Duo interrupted her thoughts. "I'm living on borrowed time anyways, I wasn't meant to have lived this long." He collected the box, laptop, and cables under an arm and smiled sweetly at her. "If I die, I die. If I live, I'll just figure out what to do next." He headed towards the door and paused for a moment, looking back at her. "If I die, I'm glad that at least someone will mourn me," he spoke softly. He was glad to know that she cared for him. Maybe not as deeply as he would want anyone to care for him, but she did a little. And that was a reassuring thought to say the least.

His smile was bittersweet and genuine. She could feel a lump forming in her throat and was rendered speechless. A look of worry filled her eyes. The door slid close behind him and she found herself deep in thought in the lonesome room.

She wouldn't be getting any paperwork done now.

A/N:Alright... second chapter. I think I got something here!