Summary: Duo, mentally and physically tired, faces death and realizes what he has to lose in life and what he will miss when his time comes.

Rating: PG-13, I stay on the side of caution. Mild swearing, depression, blood, stuff.

Disclaimer: Chapter Two! The title kinda makes no sense but hey we are not trying to make sense here are we? Um so you kinda find out more about Duo's situation and stuff and....Yeah I don't own anything but the story itself and have fun reading ok? Good. Done now.

Chapter Two- Trouble At Work

"Duo! Hey Duo, wait up!" Hilde called to Duo from her junkyard office.

"Yeah Hild?" Duo asked preparing to put on a fake smile for her but then remembering her birthday he tried a real one. They both walked in silence for a while and then Duo finally spoke.

"Ya wanted something Hild?" He asked when they got to the door of his office at the other end of the junkyard. Hilde and Duo shared the junkyard in the preventers complex of buildings. The first building of the multiple building complex was the PWP building (Preventers World Protection) which of course was headed by stick-up-ass Heero himself. The PWE (Preventers World Economy) building was headed of course by the blonde himself while the PWS (Preventers World Sciences) building had been taken over by Wufei. Trowa the old encyclopedia of useless knowledge was one of the main doctors in the PWM (Preventers World Medicine) building. Duo as you might have been able to tell headed the PWT (Preventers World Technology) building but he shared the responsibility with Hilde after the original junkyard she had was destroyed.

"Well...I just got in a shipment of computer components, most of them are kinda unsorted. wanted to know if we should bother sorting them or just throw them with the rest of the computer stuff considering how messy things are anyway." She looked around and shook her head, the technology building today was a hell-hole and today was a day that it was looking rather clean. She had tried to clean it a few times but found that it was pointless as Duo was such a messy person.

"Naw, Why bother?" Duo grinned looking around at the place himself. Walking into his office and going straight to his desk he opened the top drawer and pulled out a small book and card to go with it. He handed it to Hilde and smirked at the confused look on her face.

"What is this for?" She asked him following his moving figure with her eyes.

"Birthday present, you think I forgot?" Duo's back was to Hilde as he finished opening up the building.

"Oh! Thank you Duo!" She smiled at him and watched him immediately slid under the motorcycle he was building. He grunted and started tinkering around, so far no one was suspicious of his actions, this to Duo was really good.

It was about lunch time when Duo felt obligated to inform at least Heero, he had planned on letting ALL of the pilots know during the afternoon but found he was unable to due to lack of transportation home. Pulling Heero into a room that was relatively closed off, it took him a minute to figure out what exactly he was going to say to the perfect soldier.

"Duo what's wrong?" Heero asked, obviously confused as to why typical conversations were not being held.

"Hee...I'm kinda sick" Duo responded rather silently while staring at his feet. He did not want to see the reaction that Heero was bound to give.

"With what?" Heero looked stunned by the braided boys answer to his original question and wanted desperately to know the answer to this recent one.

"...uh...just a bit of internal bleeding..." Duo could scarcely be heard by his own hearing that he even wondered if Heero heard him. Heero tried to understand and even reason with Duo about what the boy should do but no sooner had the spandex clad boy started to talk Relena entered the room and started a conversation with Heero. Duo took the opportunity to leave and did so knowing well enough that Heero wanted to talk about it but he himself wanting to confront it later.

The day passed by rather quickly and it was such a day that Duo felt he might actually be getting better, that is until Trowa and Heero together pulled him aside and told him to get help himself or they would get it for him. He wanted so badly for them to understand his view on things, he wanted to fix himself on his own, without anyones help this time. They needed to trust in his abilities that he knew were hidden under all of that rubble.

It was about 1:15 or so, Duo never kept track of time when he was having a good day, when Hilde walked up to his desk and told him that the medical building wanted to speak with him and he needed to get there right away. His heart was racing and he had suddenly felt the urge to call up Solo and ask for a ride out of there, only to remember Solo was now just a memory. He wanted to run and was even more sure then when he had been on the bus that he could hide but again he felt that he was chained to this place, chained to the people that live and worked here.

Walking slowly he still managed to get there in record time. When he did get there he found Sally Po waiting for him, god at that point he was so ready to run.

"Duo, we need to talk," Sally began, "Now follow me as we go talk in Miss Nonnac's room."

Duo's shoulders slumped as he followed Sally obediently into the rather small room that was Miss Nonnac's office. During the war a lot of the former soldiers, including the pilots themselves had started to feel extremely overwhelmed with emotions that they had trained themselves to hide. When the Preventers formed they felt that it was a good idea to assign each person their own shrink, in street terms, just so that that person wouldn't feel so lost. Duo had rarely seen or even talked with Miss Nonnac mostly because he was too cautious around people and didn't believe in talking to "shrinks".

"Now Duo, we've heard from two other people that you overdosed on pills. Do you wanna tell us about it?" Sally looked at him disappointedly.

The braided boy sat in a chair and curled up into a ball, just wanting everything to go away and leave him alone. He knew his emotions were so close to breaking his barrier that he couldn't deal with any more stress from this. People were always bothering him about what he did wrong or what he didn't do or anything that would be considered bad about him and frankly he was sick of it. He was tired of having to smile everyday and then hear what others had been saying about him and pretend that it was nothing. It bothered him every time someone told him to shut up or to be quiet, he never used to be loud so why was he loud now?

Sally saw the boy fidget and then enter into his own world, he just sat there still and completely silent staring at the floor. He looked to be in deep thought, like his actions or her words caused him to contemplate something. She and Miss Nonnac were waiting and the silence was unbearable.

"Duo! Talk now."