Disclaimer: I do not own the Gundam boys, much to my disappointment.

The entire place was empty, burnt, and alone. As he walked the streets he knew so well his heart dropped. The village was silent. Eerily so. Nothing was left but a ghost town and charred remains.

While the air held no noise, his mind produced the noise for him. Screams, begging, the cries of his friends and family as they were tortured, raped, murdered. He stopped in front of the ruins that were once his life. A church that had raised him, a place he called home. That too was destroyed. Nothing was left. Nothing but him.

Duo sank to his knees in desperation. He had watched it all. He had suffered with them. He had died at their sides. And yet, he was still alive. He couldn't understand it and didn't want to. It was as though death had tasted him and then spit him back out. Ever since, Duo had wandered the ruined village for months a mere wisp of the person he once was.

In his desperation he didn't hear the gentle footsteps that approached him, not until a hand laid upon his shoulder in silent consolation. He didn't look up; he had no interest in any shallow attempts to comfort him. Several people had passed by the village. A few had tried to help Duo dig the countless graves, but it was his burden and they left quickly. Some had even tried to convince him to leave as well, but he couldn't find it in his heart to leave the place he knew he should have died at. The place he did die at.

"The living have no place in the land of the dead," the voice was masculine and deep. Duo still didn't look, but he heard.

"I am dead."

"No. Not like you should be." Now, Duo looked. He was tall with silver hair and dark eyes. He was old, but how old Duo couldn't even guess at. "I too am dead." At this Duo raised an eyebrow in question but stayed silent, "but not like I should be."

The man made a small gesture for the boy to follow him then turned and started to walk a bit down the abandoned road. Duo followed, if only out of curiosity. The man stopped in the middle of a small junction, what could have once been the central meeting of all roads in this town. Before Duo even saw him move he was screaming in pain and had a knife in his left shoulder.

"What the hell did you do that for? Are you with them? Come to finish the job?" Duo hissed as he pulled the knife out of the joint and gripped his wound. Blood was pouring freely between his fingers and he instinctively squeezed harder.

"Don't be a fool child. You called me here. So I came. I'm here only to teach you a lesson you would never be able to learn on your own. Now quit clutching your arm like a baby and follow me, you have a lot to learn."

A sneer burst from Duo at the stranger's audacity, "What in the hell makes you think I have anything to learn from you?"

"Why are you still holding your arm?"

"Because you put a gods be damned knife through it. Remember?"

"There's nothing to hold."

"There's a fucking hole!"

"There is nothing."

Duo was getting angrier by the minute. This stranger shows up out of nowhere and randomly stabs him. Now he was going to mindlessly dispute the fact that he just put a hole in Duo's shoulder? Duo let go of his injury and pointed to it, "There's a fucking hole."

"You survived."

He stumbled over his words then. Of course he survived, but was the stranger talking about the knife wound or the village? Somehow Duo got the impression it wasn't the knife wound. "Yeah."

"And you survived that." The stranger pointed to Duo's shoulder and when he looked, much to his surprise there was no wound to be found. Sure, there was a hole in his shirt and a little blood, but no wound.

"What the…" he fingered the area where it should have been, it was impossible that there be no wound, no lesion, not even a slight mark. Abruptly his head snapped back up to look at the stranger. "Wh…Who are you?"

"I am your teacher Duo, that is all you need to know."