Heero POV

I woke up with Duo wrapped around me the next morning. It was odd, normally Duo was up before me, though he'd never tell me how long he had been up. Sometimes I worried that I had woke him while making motions or sounds in my dreams, but he never complained about my nightmares, only commented on how tired I looked and suggested ways to get rid of them.

I sat up slowly, trying not to disturb Duo, and looked at his sleeping face. There were deep bags under Duo's eyes and I knew he wasn't getting enough sleep either. It worried me, but I had no idea what caused it so there was no way to try and help. Duo should have been getting at least six hours of sleep, even if he was up before me, so I just couldn't understand it.

I reached out and stroked Duo's hair, he always wore it loose to bed, and watched the multicolored strands twist around my fingers. I'd always been enthraled by Duo's hair, the way it shone and bounced when he walked. It was beautiful.

How could someone so beautiful care for someone so plain as I? I was lucky Duo even stood my presence, let alone took care of me the way he did. Yet my heart hurt every time I thought of the lover that must be waiting for Duo at his home.

Duo's eyelashes began to flutter and I could see that he waking. His eyes opened and revealed tired violet eyes. He looked up at me and smiled.

"Hey," he called softly.

"Good morning," I replied and couldn't help but run my hands through his hair one more time. Duo sat up and flung the blankets off, always one to start the morning quickly.

"How about we get breakfast in here today?" he asked as he disappeared into the bathroom. I grunted in acknowledgment. Duo always showered first, giving me a few minutes to straighten out the bed. I knew he'd call for Sara as soon as I got into the shower.

I liked the shower well enough once I got used to taking them, but I just never felt as clean as when I bathed in the river. I just couldn't imagine how you could get clean scrubbing with water that had been sitting in rusty pipes for weeks, it just didn't seem sanitary, which was probably stupid since the river bottom was covered in mud. I never voiced these protests to Duo, since I knew he'd try and fix them or worry about it too much, but they were there all the same. I sometimes wondered what my new home, Haven, Duo had once called it, would be like. Would it have forests and rivers like Wing had? Or would it be barren? I hadn't asked Duo, because I wasn't sure if I could go through with the move if he told me it was a wasteland.

When I came out from my shower, fully clothed but a little damp, breakfast was already laid out and Duo was sitting at the table.

He looked... edgy. A little anxious. Nervous even. Not a common emotion for Duo.

"Duo, what's wrong?" I asked. He gave me a forced half-smile.

"Heero... come sit down. We need to talk."

All the possibilities of what I could possibly have done wrong ran through my head. I hadn't made Duo mad lately, and I thought he was over the Hell drug incident. What was he going to tell me? That he had finally realized I was as evil as I had told him and he was leaving me? Maybe he never wanted to see me again! Maybe...

"Heero!"

I jumped and fell out of my seat onto the floor. I looked around, a bit confused, then realized I must have sat down at the table when Duo told me to, even though my mind was elsewhere. Duo was standing above me, a sad little smirk an his face.

"You back now?" he asked as he leaned down beside me.

"Yes," I responded.

"Look Heero, I'm sorry if I was acting funny earlier, but you have to stop panicking about everything I say," he told me, leaning closer and putting his hands on my shoulders, "I won't abandon you, I promised, remember? Trust me."

Things were getting... odd. Duo's face was only inches from my own and his eyes seemed to sparkle more than they had before. His lips were redder. I began to pant lightly, like I was having trouble breathing. The air of the room became thicker, charged with electricity. I stared deep into Duo's eye as he moved forward, closer to me. Something was building.

And in a moment Duo shook himself and it was over. He dropped his hands from my shoulders and stood up, shaking his head a bit.

"C-come on, breakfast's getting cold," he told me, his voice shaking a bit.

Well, that was a rather anticlimactic ending.

I wondered about my reaction to that a bit, but dismissed it as a fluke of the moment. What else could it possibly have been? Perhaps I was getting sick, there was a nasty bug going around.

I sat down at the table in front of Duo. We both ate in silence, I could tell Duo was trying to figure out something in his mind, so I tried not to disturb him. It wasn't often that I saw him so deep in thought. Once we both finished, we cleared away the breakfast dishes and put them next to the door for Sara to come collect, as was our usual routine.

"Heero," Duo started, "I need to tell you something," he said nervously, then didn't continue. All this dodging around the subject was starting to scare me, which made me mad.

"What is it?" I barked much more harshly than I had intended and immediately regretted it as Duo flinched. "Duo, I'm sorry..."

"No, I shouldn't be running around like this. I have to tell you this. Come sit down," he said, and led me to the bed. I sat down cross-legged on the left and Duo sat down on his knees on the right.

"Heero, I... When I first met you I made this thing... a-a bridge between our minds so that I could see you..."

"You couldn't see me?"

"No, no, that's not what I mean. I mean I could see inside you..."

I must have looked rather appalled because Duo retracted the statement right away.

"No! I mean I could see inside your mind... Ahh! I could read you mind, alright? I knew what you were feeling!"

All this came tumbling out of Duo like a flood and I could see that it had been building inside him for a while. It took a minute for me to process what he had just said.

"You could..." I started, horrified. Duo had known what I was thinking? He had seen inside me? All my moments of weakness? All of my pain? Had he only helped me because he felt sorry for me?

"You could read my mind?" I asked him quietly, but my distaste must have been evident.

"J-just your feelings, and only the more powerful ones. Heero, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have done it but I needed to know your intentions when we first met and I..."

"Is there no way to remove this... bridge?"

"...Yes," he muttered weakly, "there is, but I didn't use it."

I was up and out the door before I could even think of what I was doing. Duo's voice from the doorway brought me back from my rage, but he didn't dare follow me. He had been inside my mind all this time, laughing at me. Laughing at how pathetic I was. Laughing at poor, stupid little Heero. I had to protect what little pride I had left, so I ducked down the corridors and formed plans of how to avoid Duo until he left.

What I would do after that was a bleak mystery, but I couldn't go back to someone who had deceived my like that.

I spent that night holed up in a storage closet under some old rugs. The stone floor was cold and uncomfortable, but I knew it was partly because I had been spoiled so much lately. It wold be difficult to get used to my normal life again, especially since I couldn't have Master J remove my emotions like before.

I spent most of that night and the next day nursing my anger with thoughts of how Duo had betrayed me, being sure to keep far away from the thoughts of how kind he had been and how happy he had made me. As long as I kept my anger, I wouldn't be tempted to run back to him, but it was hard when I would feel these huge pangs of remorse, guilt, and sadness every so often.

I sneaked down to the kitchen hours before dawn on the second day, knowing no one would be there, to grab some leftovers and, hopefully, something I could hide away in the closet in case I couldn't get back to the kitchen in the next few days.

The kitchen was dark, the fires having been banked for the night, and I quickly threw some wood into the fire so I could see better. Quickly and silently, I moved to the cabinets and started pulling out things I knew wouldn't be missed.

"Heero," came a quiet voice from behind me. I spun around, dropping a box of dried apples. My eyes immediately found one of the large table situated in the kitchen. Quatre was sitting on the other side of the table, a book in hand and a cup of steaming tea sitting on a saucer in front of him.

"Quatre," I replied, reaching down to pick up the box.

"Why don't you sit down and have some tea with me?" Quatre asked, then got up and poured another cup of tea from the pot on the counter, then sat it in front of the chair next to his and took his seat. I really didn't feel there was much of a choice in the matter, so I put the box away, closed the cabinet, and sat down next to Quatre. Uncertainly, I stared at my cup.

"I won't go back to Duo," I told him decisively. Quatre paused sipping his tea for a moment, then sat the glass down.

"I never asked you to," he replied calmly.

"So you usually sit in the dark drinking tea in the middle of the night?" I asked him and he chuckled a bit.

"No, I knew you wold have to come down for food some time and you wouldn't come if you knew I was waiting for you."

"So you want me to go back to Duo."

"Yes, and no. I want to know why you left him."

"He told me he could read my mind. He said he had this link to show him my thoughts."

"A sub-kinetic mind link. It can't transmit thoughts on this level."

"You knew!"

"Yes, I knew. I was the one who convinced Duo to tell you, though now I can see why he didn't want to."

"Can you help me remove it?"

"I could, but I won't. Not yet. If you really want to break your contact with Duo, he'll remove it himself before we leave. Just remember, if you break the link and refuse to come with us, you'll probably never see Duo again."

I nodded silently, even though something inside me was crying out. Never see Duo again? I didn't want that! But after what he had done, could I trust him again?

"But you really don't have to worry, the only thing that can be transmitted through a link on this level is emotions. You've been driving Duo crazy with all the rage you've been sending."

"I've... what?"

"Duo's been picking up on your rage and it's been affecting him. Haven't you been feeling any emotions coming from Duo? He's been pretty sad lately."

I thought back to all the times a quick but strong burst of sadness had hit me, an emotion that I couldn't track to any source, and realized they had probably come from Duo. He was sad that I left? But, why would he be sad? I was just a pest to him, after all, it must have been another trick. Strangely, it was hard to bring myself to believe that.

"So Duo's been feeling my emotions... and I've been feeling his?"

"Mm-hmm. The link works both ways. As much as he can feel your emotions, you can feel his."

"Then why haven't I?"

"You have, you probably just didn't know it. In order to feel the other's emotions at will you have to learn to follow the link. You can also send emotions across the link to make the other person feel better. Sometimes it's hard to control the link, right now Duo's so grief-stricken that he can't help but let his emotions escape to you, he wasn't doing it on purpose. Once you learn more about the link you could erect barriers to keep the other out of some parts of your mind or to keep them from feeling some of the things you feel, but you won't need that since you're severing your link."

"Why... why did Duo link with me?"

"In the beginning, he probably just wanted to know what you were doing, that you weren't going to kill or sell him. He linked with you to see if you were feeling greedy or angry. If you were, he would have killed you and the bond would have been severed, but he probably needed your help and didn't want to have to kill you. Of course, this is a dangerous and stupid way to find out someone's motives."

"Why?"

"Because if the person he had bonded with was stronger of mind and will than him that person, or creature, could have taken over his body and mind, trapping his soul. Because someone can only willingly bond another person to them, it's not often that someone's soul gets taken, but with Duo injured and linking with a stranger... it put him in a very dangerous situation."

"But I wasn't willing to bond with Duo, how did he bond with me."

"Heero... were you very lonely before Duo came? Even though you didn't understand the offer, sometimes a mind that is want for human contact will accept a bond just to be close to another person. You accepted the link without fully understanding it, but you did accept."

"Oh."

"Anyway, Duo probably didn't take the link down after that because he was too weak. Zechs told me Duo was in a fight with a dragon before you found him, right?"

"Yes. He had a large gash on his chest and had been bitten by one of the fangs." An image of a weak, injured Duo flashed across my mind, his eyes burning embers, and I felt a pang of longing that I was certain didn't come from Duo.

"Oh my. Duo's always been reckless. He's just been calming down lately, but... oh well. I'm sure he'll be fine."

"You don't think Duo will do anything reckless, do you?"

"I don't know. Duo lived for adventure before he met you, it's only reasonable that he'd go back to that life. But let's move to a better subject. Zechs is going to be lord of this hold, maybe he can find a position for you once we leave."

"Zechs is staying here?"

"Yes, with Lord J gone and no one in line to inherit the estate, king Trieze gave it to Zechs. Noin and Mei will also be staying, Sally is going back to Haven with Duo and me. I believe that's why Duo told you about the link now, he wanted Zechs to raise the level of your link. Otherwise he might not have told you about it until we were all back at Haven, he really doesn't want you to stay here. He still doesn't, that's why he asked me to find you and convince you to leave here, even if you don't want to see him anymore."

"Duo wanted to raise our link? I don't understand."

"There are only two levels of mind linking; weak and strong. A weak link is easy to construct and can only allow minimal communication. With a stronger link, you can not only feel more and deeper emotions, but even some thoughts. Even memories and dreams can be shared. And the range you can feel each other is much, much large than with a weak link. But it's difficult to raise a link from weak to strong. Both participants have to go into a trance and drop all their mental barriers in order for it to work. That's were Zechs comes in. It's fairly easy for people with magical blood to learn trances and such, but it would take months or even years for you to learn because of your human blood. So Duo was going to have Zechs put you into a trance so that your mind s could meet. You would still have to drop your own mental barriers, but the process would go a lot faster."

"Why would he want to do that?"

"Because he cares about you. He wants to be closer to you. That's why."

I looked out the window, the sun had just started to rise. Did I dare to believe what he said? That Duo had really kept the link because he cared about me? But if what he said was true, what had I done to Duo? How could I face him knowing I caused him so much pain when he only wanted to help.

"I had better go," Quatre told me, rising from the chair, "Think about what I said. And remember, even if you don't want to see Duo anymore, I can take you somewhere else, somewhere you can start over instead of this place, which probably has lots of painful memories. Duo'd kill me if I forgot to tell you that."

"Quatre," I called as he reached the doorway, "Where is Duo?"

Quatre paused, his face unreadable, "He's in your room, the old one that's the size of a closet," he told me, then left.

There was a sour taste in my mouth that no amount of tea would wash away. Quietly, I stood and walked out of the room. I began walking the halls aimlessly, letting random thoughts come and go. I thought about the time Duo had taken me to the roof to watch the sun come up. I thought about the jacket he had bought me. I thought about the time I had rushed out of the bathroom, when I was on Hell, so certain he had left only to find him standing there. I thought about the nights in my room, talking to him and listening to the sounds he made. I thought about the times before Duo.

I found myself standing in front of the door to my old room, a room that had never been more than a place to sleep. Even though the room was tiny and cold and dirty, Duo had given me a choice in whether or not I wanted to leave. A belated choice, but a choice none the less. And he would have stayed with me had I chosen to remain there, didn't that merit something?

As quietly as I could, I pushed open the door. Duo was sleeping on the cot, the light from the single widow played upon his loose hair. My blanket was thrown over him and my pillow clutched in his arms. He was still in the clothes he had on when I left.

Silently, I crossed the room and leaned over the bed. Duo's face was downcast even in his sleep and there were two shiny paths starting at his eyes and traveling down to his chin.

Tears? Duo was crying? Guilt overwhelmed me. I hadn't meant to hurt Duo, I had just been scared. I still couldn't believe someone would want to help me for no reason, that anyone could care about me. Had I ruined everything? Could Duo forgive me for running out like that? Was I brave enough to ask for forgiveness and face the rejection that might come?

I couldn't help but lean down and gently trace the cool tear stain on his cheek. Duo's eyelashes fluttered and he slowly opened his eyes.

"Hee-... Heero?"

I froze. I thought about running, but knew if I did that there would be no coming back. I thought about saying something, but I couldn't find the words. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Dejectedly, I looked at the ground.

"Heero, I-I'm so sorry. Please, I didn't mean to..." Duo's voice was thick with emotion. I looked up at him sharply. Duo was staring at the blanket twisted in his fists.

Cautiously, I crept up onto the bed beside him. He looked up at me with watery eyes as I slowly approached him. He looked so surprised when I rested my head on his chest and curled up against him. The emotions ran high and words began to tumble out of us both.

"...So sorry... shouldn't have left you..."

"No... my fault, I should have told you..."

"...didn't mean to hurt you..."

"...thought you were never coming back..."

"...so lonely..."

"...missed you so much..."

Once all the emotions were spent, all the apologies said, and everything forgiven, we both laid in the other's arms, emotionally and physically spent. And for the first time since I had run out, things felt right.