Author's Note: Obviously, it's been a good long while since I updated. There are, of course, the usual apologies and excuses. But I can only say that my updates will continue to be sporadic. I enjoy writing this, I enjoy sharing it with you. But life requires the majority of my attention. Thank you, for your patience, your interest, and of course, your encouragement.

I realize this fic is a bit odd. The brokenness of it, the strange, stream-of-consciousness sort of narrative. I do not ask you to bear with me if the style bothers you. I can only say I will write other fics, that might be more to your taste.

Pairings: 2x5

Warnings: Language, General Darkness

The past is more story than memory. We rewrite, rebuild, recreate. Pick some details and dismiss others. In time, what we believe to be our memory resembles reality only along the edges, in a fuzzy, hopeful way. It's a fancy, clever sort of lying.

I've never been all that good at lying. When I think back to the war, I can't play the game the news does. I can't paint myself a hero. I know what I did, I know the joy I took from those actions. I will always know what I'm responsible for. It makes me wish I could lie. If not for myself, then for the sake of the others. Because I can't do any better for them, allies and enemies alike. To me, Treize will always be a bloodsoaked madman, no matter how the press likes to paint him.

I can tell it's different for Wufei though. As he speaks of what he knows, there's a sort of awe in his voice, hidden beneath the stoic lack of intonation. He's impressed, that Treize has done this, somehow brought himself back from the dead. Me, I'm just angry.

Who might I have been if not for Treize? Maybe someone almost human.

"Listen," I say, because most of what Wufei is explaining is that they know nothing. Nothing that I haven't already seen in the files he gave me. "Lets just go with you don't have a clue what he's done or how the hell he did it and call it a night, alright?"

The interruption cuts Wufei off mid-sentence. But he allows it; his smirk says that he expects this sort of thing from me. A lack of discipline, a lack of interest in the details. I'm projecting. I'm remembering a small room, the stuttering tightness of my lungs as the oxygen thinned. I'm remembering how he looked at me. The look he's giving me now is different. It's also harder to read. I'm intimate with Wufei's anger. This look is more expectation than hate.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

I realize I've been staring. "Nah."

He looks concerned. He probably thinks I'm going to compromise the mission. "If you're ill--"

See, what'd I tell you? I consider a couple expressions before settling for patented Duo grin number three, guaranteed to charm and reassure even the most tight assed of Gundam pilots. "Not sick. Just crazy. Probably no worse off than you, though."

His expression tightens, concern narrowing into irritation. He thinks I'm kidding. It'd be nice, wouldn't it? We could be kidding. The war never happened. Or it did, but it left no scars. We are spry, nimble, sane. I don't wake with the painful slowness of an old man, fighting past the pain of old breaks and bullet wounds. I do not scream in the night.

Yes, lets all be fine.

"Listen," I say. "Don't worry about it. If I lose track of who to shoot, you'll be the first person to know."

Lie? It's hard to say. I'm betting he will be the first to know. After all, if I really lose it, he's probably the one I'll be shooting at. That'd be his first clue, I'd think.

"You used to play chess." He says, and I spin the statement round, trying to find somewhere to jam it into the existing conversation. No luck. He is officially the worst Gundam Pilot at segues. I'd give the award to Heero, but when has he ever cared enough to segue?

I want to say, 'huh' but it comes out, "So?" It sounds like a challenge. As if my chess days are some dirty little secret. "It's been awhile." I add, by way of recovery.

Wufei pushes a few buttons on one of the side consuls and the dark screen below it resolves itself into a black and white grid. "White or black?"

I don't want to play chess. I don't want to sit and talk and breathe with him. We are not friends. We were none of us friends. And if it's me and it's Treize both stained with blood, then it's him too. It's everyone who ever piloted one of those goddamned beautiful machines. All sins equal.

Lie, there.

Wufei never took down a ship full of pacifists on false intel. He never handed control of the Alliance to Treize.

Wufei killed Treize. Ran him through.

And now I don't want to play chess with someone who can actually claim to have stood for something. So, there you go. The reason I spend my time in a spaceship, working for Howard and keeping to myself. Can't stand people when I know they're just as bad as me. Or, apparently, people that are better.

"I'll take white then," says Wufei, moving his pawn out.

And it's not as if I even decide to play. I just react. I move a piece because now he's attacking, and I have to respond. Because I can't leave myself undefended.

It occurs to me that Howard is right. I shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be doing this. I need to shut myself away in a little box somewhere in space, where I can keep track of all the scattered fragments of my mind.

Wufei is moving his rook and I am trying to breathe and there is no air in the room again. I move a knight. He counters.

He's talking and that seems like a bad idea. A waste of air. The words come without definition, a series of sounds but no meaning.

"Duo." That one's familiar. The sound I chose to mean myself. When did he grab my wrist?

I find myself inhaling again, the dry, metallic air filling starved lungs.

I wait for him to speak, for the predictable accusation of weakness. I'm ready to fight it. This insanity is so much less than I deserve. But I can still fight. Put a gun in someone else's hand, point it my way and I do just fine.

What Wufei says, in his usual dry tones, is, "Heero will not sleep in Relena's bed. He says he sleeps too well. He doesn't know what he might sleep through. He has a chair, by the door."

"I just, forget. Sometimes. It's worse. With you. Here." I don't try to find a smile. "No offense."

He doesn't seem to take any. "After we take care of this, I'll see to it that you are left undisturbed. I will not--" he hesitates, "visit."

"That'd be nice." I say. And I'm pretty sure I'm joking, but neither of us smile.