Author's note: I know it's been 14 years, but yes, I'm finally getting back to this story. I've even mostly finished the next chapter. I hope you enjoy!

The trip from Deathscythe's hiding place back to school campus is a bit of a blur in my memory. I was crashing from the adrenaline of the fight, and my shoulder ached like blazes, while the gash on my arm burned. At least the bleeding had stopped, as the stain on the gauze was no longer getting larger.

I reached my dorm building and glanced up at the window to my room, looked at all the convenient hand holds on the wall between it and me, and knew, just knew, that there was no way I could make that climb, short as it was. I'd punished my shoulder enough piloting Deathscythe, then covering the gundam with the camo net. I'd improvised a sling out of more gauze from the first aid kit to give my arm a little support, but still...

I needed a plan and I needed one now. Wracking my brain, I decided a diversion was in order. Something to get the night duty guard to leave his post, but what? I was not firing on all cylinders at this point, and my mind was cooperating even less than my arm.

An emergency exit, I decided. They weren't covered by cameras, so they wouldn't be able to identify me as the culprit. Pick the lock, prop open the door, then hide. When the guard came to investigate, sneak around the front and to the dorm. Piece of was for times like these that I kept lockpicks stashed in my braid...

I circled the building, scoping out the three emergency exits to see which ones had the best cover nearby. Two faced onto open courtyards, so they were no good. North side it was.

I grabbed a branch from under some of the nearby trees to prop the door open with, then went to work on the lock. Like much else about this school, the lock was simple to the point of carelessness. Sure, an alarm would sound, but someone in good shape could be in, up the stairwell, and into the second floor hallway before anyone arrived.

However, I was not in good shape, not anymore. Exhaustion and agony had me almost weaving on my feet. Quickly ascending a flight of stairs was beyond me. I'd have to climb one when I entered through the front, but the guard would be busy looking around the open door. It was on the opposite end of the building from my dorm, and trying to figure out what had tripped the alarm would take him more time. At least, I hoped it would. Was counting on it, in fact. Otherwise there was no way I'd climb those stairs in time.

Door unlocked, I opened it and quickly inserted the branch to keep it from closing. Ghosting back under the trees, I crouched and waited. I didn't have to wait long before the guard arrived, who noticed the branch and started looking around. Apparently he was more concerned with someone entering the building than leaving, because he went inside, leaving the door propped open behind him.

As soon as he was out of sight, I hightailed it to the front entrance. Well, I tried to. Had to slow my pace when my head began to swim. Guess I lost a good amount of blood on top of everything else.

I made it to the entrance without incident, though, and was up the stairs and in my room with none the wiser. It could have gone so, so wrong, and I thanked my lucky stars that I'd made it in one piece.

More than anything, I wanted to flop on the bed and crash, but I needed to clean my wound immediately. I'd had no time to disinfect it, and going to sleep without tending it would be worse than folly.

So, I pulled out my duffel from under the bed and extracted the much more extensive first aid kit I had stashed in there. I was going to have to do this without running water, since going to the shared bathroom was too much of a risk. So, hydrogen peroxide it was. Stitching it was going to hurt like a bitch, what was a little more pain?

Why hadn't I sprung for a topical anesthetic when I'd stolen the supplies for this first aid kit anyway? Oh well. I thread the curved needle from the spool of surgical thread, gritted my teeth, and started to sew. Between the involuntary flinching and the fact that I was doing this with my non-dominant hand, this was not going to be pretty...

An excruciating few minutes later, I tied off the thread and sterilized the wound a second time for good measure. Fresh bandages finally in place, I did flop into bed, sans pants but unfortunately still in my sweaty shirt. Sure, I could probably have taken it off, but my shoulder had taken enough grief, and morning would be soon enough for that torture. For once, for once, I fell blessedly straight to sleep. Not even my demons could keep me awake after the events of that night.

The next day in Phys Ed, we were running again. Thank God, because while running was not exactly fun with a recently-dislocated shoulder, it was much gentler than playing basketball would have been,, especially since it was my dominant shoulder. I was wearing a long-sleeve shirt to cover up my bandaged forearm - it was better for people to think I'm weird for wearing long sleeves while exercising than for them to ask questions about my injuries.

Heero pushed himself as hard as he had the first time we did the three mile course, but I took it even easier than I had before, finishing in about 25 minutes. This time, Heero sought me out. I was sitting away from the other students - hey, I could be antisocial too - when he approached me.

"You're favoring your right arm," he said bluntly, then sat beside me and took a pull from a half-empty water bottle. "How bad is it?"

I grimaced. "The run didn't help, but taking it slow made it less bad than it would be. I'll live."

He looked at me carefully, assessing, then nodded. I was half expecting him to berate me for being careless enough to get injured in the first place, and wasn't exactly sure what to do with this calm acceptance. Then his earlier words came to me - the ones that had been haunting me.

'You stand out.'

"Worried someone will notice and come to conclusions?" I challenged.

He shook his head, surprising me again. "It's not obvious unless you look for it. I doubt the teacher noticed and the girls who keep staring at you aren't looking at your shoulder."

"The girls who… what?" I asked. This was not the analysis I was expecting.

"Some of the girls watch you, a lot. Surely you've noticed," he responded, looking at me askance.

I hadn't. I'd been so wrapped up in the mission and in figuring him out, I hadn't been paying close attention to the other students. Not after the first few days, when I'd decided they were all insipid drones and not worth my time. A bit elitist of me, maybe, but honestly, there wasn't an interesting one of the lot of them. Not when I had Heero to pay attention to.

Warning bells started going off in my brain. I was too preoccupied with him, getting too close, for all that he kept me at a distance. I had to do the same to him, had to, because I just didn't have it in me to cope with causing yet another person the sort of damage that came from being the recipient of my attention.

The bell rang and I was grateful for the excuse to get away. I wouldn't be showering in the locker room this time - the showers in the dorm would be pretty empty, much better chance of not being seen with a giant bandage on. So I muttered a goodbye to Heero, went to grab my backpack out of my locker, and hightailed it back to the dorm. So what if I skipped my last class so I could take my time? Boring as the other students were, I couldn't believe that never happened. And bonus, less chance of seeing Heero in the hallways. Besides, we were moving on soon. Hopefully, in different directions.

It was just a matter of days before we got the next mission. To my dismay, it was a mission for both of us. Distance from Heero would not be an option, not yet. Soon, I promised myself. I'd think of this as an opportunity to show Heero I could complete a mission without fucking up. But if I thought my injuries meant the previous mission went poorly, well, it was nothing compared to what was to come.

The next mission, I still have nightmares about.

We were headed to the Arabian Peninsula, to intercept a shipment of Tauruses on its way to Siberia. There was a catch, though. There were two routes planned, and we didn't know which one was the real shipment. One went by land, the other by air, and we had to attack them both or risk letting the Tauruses reach their destination. This, we could not allow.

The Tauruses were going to be upgraded with a new mobility system that would enable the computers onboard the suits to learn from accumulated battle data, and there was a potential that this system could lead to the machines overriding pilot commands. I'm sure you're familiar with all the science fiction stories about sentient machines leading to the doom of all mankind? Well, that wasn't out of the picture if this system was implemented. Of course, by the end of the war, we would see much worse, but at the time, the situation seemed dire.

Heero planned to attack the air route while I took care of the train that was being used for transport on land. It seemed like a good plan, as it played to our gundams' relative strengths. Perhaps it even was a good plan, but we did not reckon with the enemy we would be facing.

Heero had felt the effects of Colonel Une's ruthlessness before. She'd sent mobile suits to attack him while he was attending a different school - a school for Christ's sake! Full of children. Well, they were teenagers like me, but it was easy to think of other teens as children when they were civilians.

In any case, she was in charge of this plan we were determined to thwart, and if attacking a few children seems ruthless, it was child's play compared to what she had in mind for the coming battle.

I look to Heero and frown, seeing the far away look in his eyes. Has he been paying attention? Of course, the next part of the story is a difficult one. Maybe that's why.

Still, he has yet to react. Once, that wouldn't have surprised me at all. As you have heard, he was very committed to not reacting in the first days. But over the years, he has lost much of his early conditioning, showing his emotions more freely and becoming less reticent.

It must be the difficulty of the memories, I decide. He's reverting to his old training to cope.

I feel a twinge of guilt, knowing this is difficult, probably even painful for him to relive. I can't stop now, though. He needs to see, to understand why he must leave me. This story is my only hope of making him do so.

It's been a long day, however, and it's about the time that Heero usually leaves. Time enough to continue tomorrow.