His ears ringing from the concussive force of the blast, his head aching viciously from its impact with the floor, Zechs felt awareness flow back into him and cursed silently as he pushed himself to his hands and knees, not noticing that he'd been lying half on top of something warmer and more yielding than the floor until he moved away from it.

Fighting dizziness, he got his feet under him and had to stop in a crouch as his lungs choked on all the dust swirling in the air, sending him into a wracking coughing fit that spiked the pain in his head until there were sparkles in front of his vision and he thought he would slip back into unconsciousness.

When the spasm passed, he lifted his head cautiously and looked around at the ruin of Treize's office, noting absently that he was a good three or four feet further into the room than he had started out. The sofa seemed to have taken the brunt of the blast, shielding them from the worst of the explosion's effects as he had intended – it was scorched and torn. The desk had been thrown hard enough against the far wall to splinter it into kindling, its papers strewn all over the room, torn and tangled with the shredded drapes and the shattered glass from the windows.

Remembering that he had been lying on something other than the floor when he woke reminded Zechs that he hadn't been alone in the room when the shock wave hit, and he looked down quickly. Panic seizing somewhere inside him as he took in the still, sprawled figure of Treize, he gripped the older man's shoulder to roll him over before the first aid training he'd suffered through as a cadet kicked in and made him stop. He knew better than to move someone who could very well have spinal injuries, and forced himself to settle for pressing desperate fingers against Treize's throat, feeling for the pulse. He couldn't quite suppress the sigh of relief that broke from him when he recognised the beat under his hand, weak as it was.

As though Zechs's touch were the needed catalyst the older man moaned softly, stunned sapphire eyes flickering open. He coughed feebly, rolled from the face down position he had landed in to his back and tried to sit up. Zechs caught his arm and lent him support.

"Slowly," the pilot instructed, and Treize nodded.

"Believe me, I'm not in any hurry. What the hell was that?"

"An explosion of some sort. I don't know what caused it, but there was more than one. It wasn't thunder you heard."

"I assumed as much." The general glanced around the room much as Zechs had and grimaced. "I suspect I have your reflexes to thank for my life – I couldn't have moved that fast on my own." He looked around again. "Actually, if you hadn't been here I would most likely have been sat at my desk in front of those windows – a somewhat unpleasant end, I should think."

Zechs shot his own second look at the wreckage of the desk and turned back to his friend with a forced smile. "I'm not thinking about that," he commented softly, and won a sympathetic chuckle from his general.

"Indeed, best not to." Treize coughed again, swallowed and got his knees under him. "Can you stand?" he asked.

"I think so," Zechs told him, doing so.

Treize nodded his approval and held out his right hand. "Would you mind?"

Shaky from the impact, his chest aching from the pressure effects of the concussion force he'd been exposed to, Zechs leaned forwards and pulled on Treize's hand as the older man pushed to his feet. Gaining his feet, Treize staggered almost immediately and the younger man caught the general's free left arm just below the elbow to steady him.

Treize's sharp cry shocked Zechs and he reacted instinctively, releasing his hold on his friend even as the older man flinched away from the pilot's gip and drew his arm against his chest.

"Treize? What's the matter?" Hesitantly, Zechs reached out again, worry rising as the general didn't move from the protective posture he'd assumed, cradling his left arm into his body and shielding it with his other hand. "Treize?"

Swallowing hard, Treize looked up, face pale. "I think my arm is broken. Your gripping it… rather hurt."

Zechs released the breath he'd been holding in a hiss between his teeth. "Fuck! I'm sorry, I didn't realise…"

Treize nodded. "I know. Neither did I till just now." He straightened his shoulders. "It's hardly your fault regardless."

Zechs shrugged. "Perhaps, perhaps not." He reached out again. "Let me look at it – we need to know how bad it is."

Cautiously, Treize relaxed the shielding clasp he had on his wrist and let Zechs take it in gentle fingers, setting his teeth into his lip to suppress threatening whimpers of pain. The younger man drew Treize's arm to him carefully and began running his hand over it, feeling for obvious deformity, or worse, any place where the bone might have torn through the skin. Convinced that it wasn't an open fracture, Zechs retrieved the knife he carried in his boot and used it to slit the heavy woven fabric of Treize's sleeve away so he could see the area clearly.

"Christ!"

Treize's quiet, heartfelt cursing as the fabric tugged against his limb before falling away made Zechs look up and offer a strained smile in sympathy. "Sorry – I'm trying not to hurt you."

"I know."

Arm freed, Zechs helped Treize shrug out of his jacket. "Why do you insist on wearing a shirt underneath your jacket?" he asked as the general's linen dress shirt was revealed.

"Habit, I suppose. I have to admit that right now I'm wishing I followed your example, and kept only to the undershirt."

"I imagine you are." Zechs looked down, squinting in the poor light and smoky air, and scowled when he saw that the white fabric was bloodstained. Hoping he hadn't been wrong about there being no exposed bone, he slit this sleeve too and got Treize out of his shirt, revealing smooth pale skin beginning to bruise and swell under a nasty looking graze.

Tugging his cravat from around his neck, Zechs used it to dab the blood away and then tied it in a loose knot around the graze to act as a makeshift bandage. "Can you move your hand?" he asked.

His skin losing the last of its colour and taking on a glaze of sweat as the movement caused pain to stab up his arm, Treize flexed his wrist cautiously. "It appears so," he murmured, and there was a tremor in his voice.

"All right."

Taking Treize's ruined shirt between his hands, Zechs tore three or four strips of linen from it, hunted up two thin, smooth-looking bits of wood from the remains of the desk and turned back to his commander. "You might want to sit down before I splint your arm," he suggested, not liking the way his lover looked.

Treize raised his eyebrows. "I doubt that's necessary. Get on with it, Zechs. My base is in pieces, I don't know why and I don't know how many of my people are hurt. I don't have time for all this."

The pilot nodded. "As you wish, then." Silently, he took Treize's good hand and drew it to his own shoulder, inviting the older man to hold on to him for support. Long fingers – betraying their owner's stoicism by shaking – locked into red wool, creasing the fabric under the strength of the grip.

As gently as he could, Zechs pulled Treize's arm straight and into alignment, cringing at the sensations under his hand, set the wooden splinters on either side and tied them into position. Vicious German cursing and choked off cries let Zechs know just how much pain he was causing and, as he used Treize's own cravat to form a makeshift sling and elevated the general's arm to rest against his body, the older man swayed, knees giving out on him. Zechs caught Treize with an arm around his waist, ignored the sudden ache blazing along his own shoulder blades, and held him. "I told you to sit down," he murmured, and was rewarded for his impertinence with a ragged laugh.

"Perhaps." Treize leaned forward and let his forehead rest next to his hand on Zechs's shoulder. "Fuck me, that hurt."

"I rather thought it might." Zechs brought his spare hand up and pressed it over Treize's on his shoulder, as if he could press some of his own strength into his friend. Laboured breathing slowed and settled, and finally Treize lifted his head and stepped away.

"I haven't asked you yet if you're hurt," he commented, dark eyes making a silent apology.

"I've felt better, but there's nothing serious that I know of."

"Good." The general took a deep breath. "I have to attend to the base…"

Treize's unspoken request for support was clear, and a damning measure of how bad he was feeling. Zechs hadn't known Treize to ask for help with anything in years. The pilot nodded, giving his assistance as quietly as it had been asked for.

The older man smiled at him, and turned for the door. Before he could move through it, Zechs had retrieved Treize's jacket from the floor, pulled the damaged sleeve inside out and slid it gently across his commander's shoulders. Battered as it was, the coat was a visual reminder of who Treize was – authority he was likely to need in the coming hours – and would lend him more warmth than the thin undershirt he was wearing would alone.

"Thank you," Treize murmured.

Daring, Zechs reached over, brushed sweat-dampened locks of hair back into place and smiled. "You're welcome, sir."

Treize returned the smile for a moment before he stepped into the corridor.

"Sweet merciful God!"

The corridor Zechs had walked up earlier that evening was a blackened, collapsing ruin.

The younger man stared at it in disbelieving horror as he and Treize made their way along it, occasionally having to clamber over piles of fallen rubble and duck around small fires started by burnt out wiring and fed by the debris.

"I suspect that office door was sturdier than we gave it credit for," Treize murmured, as he leant against a relatively clean and stable-looking section of wall, trying to catch his breath. "If that was all that stood between us and this."

Zechs shook his head. "I don't think it was the door. I think it was the windows and the way they blew out. Your insistence on natural light in your workspaces might have kept us alive."

"Hmm?" Treize pushed off from the wall and resumed walking. "What do you mean?"

The younger man scowled. "You'll have to ask someone who's properly qualified to be sure, of course, but I think the windows shattering gave the blast-wave a way out. Here, it didn't have one so it bounced back off the walls. I suppose that's what happened to the guard…" He trailed off, swallowing hard.

The two young sentries who had tried so hard not to let Zechs see them smiling at their commander's musical choices had still been at their posts when the explosion occurred. Treize and Zechs had found their bodies in the wreckage of the corridor outside the general's office, both of them obviously dead. One of them had been thrown into the wall hard enough to shatter his skull and then been pinned there by twisted shrapnel of his guard post, the cause of his death brutally clear. The other had been lying in the middle of the passageway with no obvious injuries except for a few cuts and bruises. Certainly nothing that would account for his death.

Beyond checking for pulses out of habit and making a note of the names given on the boys' ID tags so they could pass them to the search and rescue teams, there had been nothing either man could do for them. Treize had been clueless as to cause of death, and possessed neither the inclination nor the ability to make any guesses. It was enough for him that the boy was dead and he'd presumed Zechs was thinking along similar lines when the younger man moved on without saying a word.

Now, it appeared that assumption had been wrong. Treize looked at his friend with a mixture of morbid curiosity and genuine concern. "What do you mean?"

Zechs didn't look at the older man. "Haven't you noticed that it hurts to breathe?" he asked.

Treize snorted. "I haven't noticed much hurting beyond my arm, I'm afraid. I'm more breathless than I should be, I suppose. Why?"

"It's part of the same thing that I think killed the guard. Part of why people within the blast perimeter of any bomb don't tend to survive…"

Treize flicked a dark look at him. "Is that what you think caused this? A bomb? I thought you said you didn't know?" He shook his head. "I don't need you keeping information from me, Zechs!"

The younger man balked. "I'm not!" he insisted. "Treize, any information I can give you is only going to be my guesswork – it's going to take a forensics team to sort out what really happened tonight." He drew a deep breath, winced and continued, "I can only tell you what I know and I'm not an expert by any means. I didn't say anything because I could be giving you exactly the wrong information!"

The older man reached out with his good hand. "Forgive me, my friend. I didn't intend for that to sound as it did." He stopped, thinking as they walked. "In fact, I shall offer you an apology in advance," he added a moment later. "I'm at less than my best, I'm taking it out on you and I'm afraid I'm likely to do it again before we're done with this. Tell me what you think happened here and let me worry about whether you're right. Even bad information is better than none at all."

"Is it?" Zechs asked quietly. "I'm not sure about that, but then I'm not the general here."

Treize smiled. "Quite."

"All right. To begin with – yes, I think this was a bomb. More than one, since we know of at least two separate explosions. Had there been only one, I might have put this down to an exploding gas line or something, but two? Within seconds of each other?" He shook his head. "It just doesn't seem probable that this was natural. It might have been accidental, but…"

"But you don't think so?"

"No, I don't think so. Two random explosions of lethal force on a Specials base – the base that's widely known to be our most under-equipped, most vulnerable station? Whilst you – our leader – just happen to be present? When there just happens to have been a failed attempt on your life within the last six months?"

"Three, actually," Treize interjected with a wry smile. "Four, if one counts the fool who got caught trying to sneak into the Luxembourg headquarters last month. He was shot on sight."

"Jesus Christ!"

Treize laughed at Zechs' horrified exclamation. "I said I was used to it."

"You didn't tell me there'd been more attempts!"

"Of course I didn't. In fact, I specifically banned Une, and Noin for that matter, from telling you as well. You didn't need to know."

"I didn't need…" Zechs choked. "When? What happened?"

"The morphine in my wine in October was the most ingenious – and came closest to succeeding." Treize smiled again. "Actually, that one came the closest to succeeding of any so far…"

Zechs flinched. "Please, don't remind me," he asked, knowing only too well how close Treize had come to dying. The occasional nightmare still flashed him those horrific minutes, from the moment he had realised something was wrong on.

That afternoon, almost mid-word, Treize had stood up suddenly. He'd reached across the table to knock the glass from the hand of a startled Lady Une just as she was about to take a sip of her drink. His voice too calm, he had told them that he thought the wine had been tainted, and that he didn't feel well.

Lady Une had bitten off her horrified cry and flown across the room to the caller to summon medical help, leaving Zechs to stare at his friend, frozen. Treize had met his gaze with regret in his eyes, murmured something and swayed, shocking the younger man from his numbness into movement. He'd cleared the table so fast he'd been able to catch the general as he collapsed, and had held him until the doctors arrived. Those endless minutes, listening to Treize fighting for every breath and slowly losing ground, watching as his skin drained and his lips and nails took on a bluish tinge, had been one of the few times Zechs and Une had ever known what the other was thinking. He wondered if Une had told Treize it had been the two of them together who'd started CPR.

He knew she'd never told the general how Zechs had found her crying in the corridor when the Doctor informed them Treize was going to live, and had, without thinking, pulled her into his arms until she could get herself under control. It was for that she had repaid Zechs when she'd sat with him the morning of his birthday, but it had never been spoken of between them, and it never would be.

"The morphine in my wine," Treize repeated now. "A shooter in the crowd at one of those interminable balls whilst you were on L2 – Une shot him before he could pull the trigger – and an assassin in my bedroom in Lvov. I broke her neck."

"Oh, my God…"

"Zechs… Milliardo… it's all right."

"It's not all right! How can it possibly be all right? All that, and now this! What the hell is security doing?"

Treize shrugged, wincing as it aggravated his arm. "Talk to Une about that. Internal Security and Intelligence are her bailiwick, not mine."

The younger man stopped walking. "Talk to her? I'll kill her! How can she be doing her job if something like this can happen?"

"Zechs…" Treize reached out again, intending to soothe the younger man, and stopped when a new voice echoed down the corridor.

Noin, dust covered and looking exhausted, broke into a run as she saw them, pausing only to flash her commanding officer an ecstatic smile as she threw herself into the arms of a very surprised Zechs.

It was only as Zechs caught her, reflex closing his hands around her slender form, that Treize noticed what she was wearing, and smiled.