Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam W the characters, or anything. That is all, enjoy the story, and please review it...la la la laaa!

Duo screamed in pain as the paramedic team struggled to keep him still on the gurney. One guy managed to put him in a neckbrace without grazing any of the massive burns on the teenager's chest and shoulders.

"I think his ribs are shattered, we've got bruising and swelling on his abdomen."

"Hold still, kid, I'm trying to help you here!"

"Make it stop...! God, make it stop!"

"His femur's broken in half. Kid, we're gonna have to reset it. Greg, strap him down, he's tearing at his I.V. drip."

"I...I can't breathe..." Duo whispered, blinking blood from his eyes. His busted lip was swelled to the size of an average water balloon.

"What's your name, kid? Tell me your name...where are you from?"

Duo gritted his teeth and hissed,"My name is Daniel...Daniel Maverick...I'm from..."

Crack.

"Aaaaaaaaahhgh!"

In another hospital, miles away, a team of surgeons were desperately trying to save the life of a brave soldier lying, literally ripped to shreds, on the table. His legs and an arm were shattered to bits, the right side was nowhere to be found. His face was a mass of blood, and numerous patches of skin were burned off his body. Massive head trauma forced the doctors to induce a coma, and they highly doubted he would ever wake up and think 'normal' again. They shaved all the hair off his head, or what was left of it, to stitch together the flaps of bloody scalp that dangled from his skull. He broke both collarbones and five ribs from the sturdy harness that strapped him into the seat of the cockpit, puncturing a lung and causing a hemmorhage. Nurses were forced to clean out the blood bank in order to keep his body well supplied with the life-giving fluid.

"Don't give up, now! Stop the bleeding and prepare him for operation, we need to patch up that lung...we'll probably have to screw and glue all those bones back together, and..." the head surgeon added a myriad of "things to be done" to the growing list. At last he sighed...he had never before lost a patient on the operating table, and he wasn't about to now. This poor kid was looking like a human ragdoll, stitched together by a five year old and made to undergo hellish torture. Luckily, he was already in a coma, injected with doses of anesthetics and tranquilizers.

"Hey, we've got a man from the Sweepers come and bring this freakish thing in," a man outside the operating room called through the glass window. He was carrying an ice chest full of ice. "It looks like a human arm. Got any idea who it might belong to?"

A nurse scurried out and snatched the icechest from his grasp, whipping it open to reveal a grisly, pale, frazzled arm, miraculously intact.

"Thank you. Do you know this man?" she gestured to the prone, lifeless figure on the operating table, who was still pouring blood from his stump of arm.

The man paled. "Uh, no I don't...just take care o' him will ya?" he turned on his heel and hurried away before he could register the gory sight in his brain. Was that even a human? It looked like someone threw him in a meatgrinder.

"It's confirmed doctors, it looks like we found his arm. There will be no need to close off the stump. Let's continue working on him and hope he pulls through..." the surgeon's voice sounded hopeful, but not as confident as he had intended.

Trowa and Quatre were slowly coming down the stairs of his mansion. Trowa was deep in thought, as usual. He was thinking about that recent mission that Heero and Duo had gone off to complete. It had sounded like a decent mission, but they should've been back by now.

Suddenly Quatre doubled over in agony and cried out in terrible pain. He fell to the steps and clutched at his chest, trembling from head to toe, his forehead beaded with fine droplets of sweat.

"Quatre!" Trowa exclaimed as he watched Quatre fall. He quickly knelt down next to the figure teetering on the steps.

"Trowa..." the blonde teenager whimpered as the tall boy rushed to help him up. "I think something's gone terribly wrong in space...Heero and Duo might not've made it out alive...I think Heero is...is..." he buried his face into Trowa's shoulder and began to weep in terror. "I just have the feeling that one of them might be dying, or...I don't know... I just feel their agony...

Trowa wrapped his arms around Quatre, trying to be supportive. "I was just wondering about that mission of theirs...shouldn't they be back by now?"

"They were due back yesterday morning, as a matter of fact." Wufei appeared out of nowhere. Trowa turned Quatre loose and swiftly turned towards Wufei.

"What are you talking about?" he asked coldly, staring out from under the mass of brown hair. His partially-hidden eyes flickered with emerald sparks. "They couldn't've miscalculated...this mission was far too easy for them..."

"I'm just saying," Wufei interrupted, "that maybe this whole thing was a set-up or something...I've got reason to believe so...so why don't you shut your damn mouth and get back to hugging your baby angel?" The Chinese turned on his heel and stalked from the room.

"Wufei is unsettled...Maybe he knows something is wrong." Quatre muttered. Trowa sighed and gave Quatre a helping hand as the boy stood up. "Thank you, Trowa."

Voices were slowly coming into earshot. A door shut somewhere, and then a child screamed in fright or agony. Whichever one it was, he couldn't tell. His brain was too muddled to comprehend anything. Darkness became his world, and it was mostly silent, save for the humming of the machines, and the sound of the respirator breathing pure oxygen into his lungs every few seconds. The sting of the needle in his arm, the cool white sheets, the antiseptic smell... He knew nothing, yet he felt everything...His eyes fluttered briefly, blind and unseeing, as he drifted off to sleep again, the calming effects of the sedatives flooding through his body. He was warm and fuzzy...nothing could hurt him...it was pure bliss...

Duo couldn't move. His arms were lead weights, and his head felt like it was in a steel vise. He heard a discreet sigh of relief somewhere nearby, and someone waved a hand in front of his face. The amythest eyes briefly followed the blurry images before the lids slowly closed, sealing him in another hour or two of deep sleep.

Was that you, Heero? Please let it be you...please...

The nurse carefully attached another IV bag to the stand by Daniel Maverick's bed. Daniel Maverick...what a unique name for someone otherworldly. She'd never seen anyone like Daniel before. Young people these days were pretty rare...always going off to war to get themselves killed, or going missing, even ending up as prisoners of earth, those poor kids. They were all babies in her mind. Humankind's hope of the future being killed off before everyone's eyes. Some never even got a chance to experience puppy love. What was the world coming to? Oh well...this was war...

The nurse sat down for a minute, to monitor Daniel. His cast bound leg was elevated on a smooth fluffy pillow, and his toes stuck out from the end, like little pink piglets in a bed. His bad arm was wrapped up with bandages, as well as his bare chest and most of his shoulder. The cut on his head took four staples to close, and that would be removed in about three or four days. The rest of the wounds would take weeks and even months to heal, depending on how well the doctors stitched him up and straightened out his broken bones. He had such a handsome, heart-shaped face, and his long chestnut hair was tied in a knot in the middle, and made to fall to one side, where it laid to rest in the crook of his good arm. Someone had taken the liberty to tie a cute pink ribbon around it, to keep it from tangling. The oxygen mask over his nose and mouth hid most of his features, and she wondered where his family was, if he was in any sports, and if he had a girlfriend. She decided to go to the lounge and drink a cup of mint tea.

Daniel coughed. The nurse blinked in his direction and saw that he was awake...barely. His eyes rolled in their sockets lazily, as he tried to recognize something of his surroundings. His hand appeared to raise itself up to touch his face, but it flopped uselessly onto his chest and stayed there.

"W-where'm I?" he muttered as if his lips were numb, his tongue made of stone.

"I'm your nurse...is there anything I can do for you?" she touched his bandaged hand gently and held it.

"H-heero...wh-where is he...?" "Daniel" made a weak attempt to sit up, but was unable to. His ribs must've kept him from doing so.

"Heero? Who's Heero?" the nurse listened intently and put a restraining hand on his shoulder as he made another attempt to sit up.

"My...friend...is-is he alright?" the teenager valiantly tried to keep his voice steady.

"I'm sorry, Daniel...I don't know who 'Heero' is. I don't think he's here at the hospital."

The boy's long braided hair fell into his eyes as he turned his head away to stare out the small window of the hospital room. "But I want him...where is he?" Tears slowly formed in his eyes and slid down his pale cheeks.

The nurse opened her mouth to say something, but changed her mind. Instead, she reached into a drawer, took out a bottle of clear liquid, and filled up a hypodermic needle with it. She inserted it into the IV bag and slowly squirted the contents of the needle inside. Seconds later, the boy's head drooped sideways again and his breathing slowed. The lady calmly repositioned his head to a more comfortable position and tucked him in. She then left to get her cup of mint tea from the lounge.