Heero POV

Over the next few weeks Duo took care of me so well that I would get angry at him. I would get mad at him for not letting me do anything, I yelled and screamed and said horrible things. Then I'd run to him and beg him not to leave, tell him I was sorry, and ask him to forgive me, promising never to do it again. Sometimes I'd tell him that I hated it when he held me, so he wouldn't touch me all day. By nightfall I'd be ready to break down. I would run up to him when no one was around and slam into him hard enough to startle him so that he wouldn't move. He'd fall to the ground and I'd lay on his chest as long as he allowed me. Then he'd kiss me on the forehead and take me to bed; it never lasted passed sundown.

It seemed like I couldn't live without him holding me at night and sometimes, when I realized how close we'd gotten, I'd become so afraid that I just had to push him away.

I started going from bouts of insane anger to horrible guilt and fear. All these emotions were so new and strange to me, I couldn't understand them. I didn't know why I was so mad at Duo and, when I would even mention my rape in anger, he would get this look of total self loathing and I would nearly die. How could I bring up something that I knew Duo felt guilty about when he had done so much for me? I was so afraid that he would finally give up on me and leave, but some of me wanted him to go, to prove that everything I knew was true. That I was nothing.

It didn't help matters that, while I was getting more sleep than I had before Duo came, I was only getting a maximum of six hour a night, sometimes less. I had nightmares all the time. Many were about Dekim and Barton, but more of them were about my past. Some were dreams where I would find my hands soaked in blood. It would ooze down my arms and legs until it covered me totally and I suffocated. Sometimes it was of my childhood, when I was trained by Lord J. He would come home to find that I hadn't completed my chores or my training exercises, it didn't matter which, and he would hit me and yell at me, telling me I was worthless and he should have never taken me. Calling me ungrateful and useless. Sometimes the dreams weren't even really nightmares. I would be back in my room when I trained under Lord J. he would have me reading books or doing questions, maybe even exercising outside. Either way, I would either look out a window or over my shoulder and see a bunch of kids playing. In the dream, I'm only eight or nine years old. I watch the children, but usually don't approach. The one time I did approach them, they all fell down dead.

Duo usually wakes me from these dreams, though he's been cautious about it since I attacked him. I was so scared when I saw that I was choking Duo that I forgot to even let go for a moment. He was nearly blue when I did release my grip. I was so sure that he would never want to see me again, I couldn't even touch him. How far, I wondered, can I possibly push him before he gives up?

He didn't give up then and he hasn't given up yet.

Things were different once his partner arrived. He and Duo went out every day to search for the dragons, but they hadn't found them. Even though it took Duo away from me for most of the day, I hoped he never found the dragons. I knew Duo didn't like stronghold, so chances were slime that he'd stay with me. If he found the dragons, he leave me and go back to the place that he come from.

"Hey Heero," Duo called me, entering the room, "Whatcha doin'?"

I hmmed a response and didn't look up, even though I really wasn't paying attention to the book I was reading. Duo came and sat on the bed next to me, his hands carefully running over my ankle. I was laying on top of the blanket, so he could easily feel the difference in swelling. I had only walked to the shelf to get a book, but it had only been a week since Duo had told me my ankle was sprained, not broken as I had thought, and I wasn't supposed to be walking. Duo frowned as his fingers found the growing lump above my foot, gently pressing down then releasing.

"Heero, you know you shouldn't be walking yet."

I made no reply. Duo sighed and continued, "Your going to make it worse. You don't want to have to be off you feet longer."

"I can walk to the bookshelf and back, Duo. I am not disabled."

"I never said you couldn't, I said you shouldn't. You need to heal, just like anyone else would. You're not a god, Heero."

"I will be fine. Stop pampering me."

"And why can't I pamper you? It's not like it'll hurt you."

"It will make me weak."

"What will? Healing? Letting your body recover from malnutrition?"

"You make me weak."

"How?"

"By making me want things I cannot have. By showing me things I wasn't meant to see."

"And why weren't you supposed to see them, Heero?"

"...They will hurt me."

"Heero, I won't hurt you."

"You wouldn't, intentionally."

"Heero," he said, taking his face in my hands. It was the first contact we'd had all day, since I had pulled away from him in the morning when he was leaving, and it tingled on my skin. "I will never hurt you. I will do everything in my power to stop it. You have to try to believe me."

And I broke. I dropped the book I had been reading and lunged into his arms, which were, as always, open and waiting. I was so scared that someday Duo would find the dragons and I would wake up to a cold, lonely bed in a small closet again. So scared that I wouldn't be able to shut everything down again. That I would have to live every day like that.

I didn't think I could do it.

Once the shaking in me had stopped and Duo had held me until I felt warm inside again, he started talking to me. Not talking about anything important, just talking.

"Say, Heero, how far in these woods have you been?" he asked, not expecting or receiving an answer, "Not too far, I guess, they probably kept you pretty close to the castle. Man, they have this super waterfall at the end of that river out there! It must drop a hundred feet! I'll take you to see it sometime, huh? Noin will want to see it when she gets here. Did I forget to tell you? She's Zechs' wife. They usually partner together, but it's kinda hard to do when your in labor so she took this mission off. Sally's a doctor, she's comin to look after the baby while we're all out hunting the dragons. Quatre's coming too. He's a great guy, you'll like him, he's desert raised and he's got this awesome blonde hair. I hope Noin's baby has her tracking skills. Noin can find a dragon in five minutes in the dark. She's so cool. Then it usually only takes Zechs and me a couple of minutes to get rid of the problem. Hilde's good at tracking down dragons, too. I don't know, maybe it's a girl thing. Then again, both Hilde and Noin learned to track from their fathers so that doesn't make any sense either. Oh well. Hey, babe, you okay down there? You're holding on kinda tight. Everything alright?"

I nodded, but I wasn't. Duo was going to leave me. It was strange. I didn't feel sad, or angry, or anything. I just felt... empty. My worst nightmare come true, and I felt nothing.

"Why don't we go down and get some dinner?" Duo asked, plastering his trademark grin across his face. "As long as you let me help, you shouldn't hurt your ankle."

I briefly considered pinning Duo to the bed for the rest of my life, but disregarded the plan as impossible. I didn't want to move, but realized that Duo's stomach was growling under me and he probably hadn't eaten since breakfast. Slowly, I disentangled myself from Duo. He got up, giving me a smile, and stood next to the bed. I got to my feet and let him hook one of my arms over his shoulder, taking the weight off my injured foot. In this way we walked down to the dining hall. I was almost glad for my injured ankle, otherwise I would never have allowed Duo so close in public.

Halfway through dinner, a servant came rushing into the hall to announce a group of people were approaching. Zechs immediately stood and went out to meet them.

I had mixed feelings about that man. I didn't know him well enough to trust him, but Duo liked him and he had never tried to hurt me. I'm not sure that he liked me, I tried to stay as unobtrusive and quiet as I could when he and Duo were conversing, but I think that only made it worse. It didn't help any that my first memory of him was this strange, dream-like picture of his eyes then everything went dark.

Zechs came in about twenty minutes later with a black haired woman with a baby, a blonde haired woman, and a blonde man. It was easy to match names to the description Duo had given me, though I was glad to see that the blonde woman didn't have wings and was obviously human. I had been worried that I might not be accepted by Duo's friends because I was not a demon, that put some of my fears to rest. The blonde man had white wings with gold-tipped feathers. It was very beautiful and it made a perfect picture with his fair skin and blue eyes. The dark haired woman had deep navy blue wings, and all I saw of the baby was that it was a girl and had brown hair.

I felt my heart drop when Duo left the table to go join them and play with the baby. I sat back in the corner, watching, but not interacting other than when one of them came up to introduce themselves. A startling thought came to me out of nowhere. "This is how it's going to be from now on."

Duo left at nearly dawn the next morning, saying dragons move slowest in the morning since they were cold-blooded. He warned me, as he always did since the incident with the guards, not to go anywhere alone. He locked the room's door from the inside when he left.

Alone, lying there on the bed with nothing to do but contemplate how alone I was going to be in the future, despair hit me.

I nearly threw the door open when I heard a knock, ignoring my ankle in favor of something more distracting. I didn't even bother to find out who was on the other side.

Master J stared me in the face as soon as the door was opened and I wished that I could have turned back time and kept myself from being so stupid.

"The demon will hurt you," master J told me, "I can keep you from being hurt like that."

I knew he was talking about retraining me, something I had feared in the past, but, at that time, all I wanted was to stop hurting. It was like hanging a bone in front of a starving dog. Nothing mattered. Without even thinking about it, I nodded and followed Master J down the hall and into hell.