A/N: This is where it all starts to go to shit. Do not expect the happiest of endings, folks. Those with low tolerance for angst should turn off their computers, hide in the corner shaking, and never, never look at my author profile again.


Logan's head snapped up as he heard Chuck's voice blow into his head with the force of a hurricane.

Logan, Rogue's having an attack! Get to Duo's room, quickly. I'll meet you there.

Claws burst from callused knuckles, and Logan ran from the room.

He found Rogue thrashing and screaming, Chuck's hands pressed to his head as he reached for her tattered mind. The door shattered under the force of a kick, and he turned, dropping into a fighting stance with his claws extended, snarling.

Heero leapt through the wreckage, madly gleaming eyes immediately locking on Duo's frozen body. Quatre and Trowa followed, guns drawn and pointed straight at him. Heero's head turned mechanically; seeing Duo's paleness, he snarled his rage and leapt forward, twisted and broken claws sliding forward. Logan slid into his path, muscular arms sliding around alarmingly thin shoulders, pulling Heero back against his chest, and muscling him out of the room. The boy fought with the mindless brutality of a demon, words indistinguishable in his growls.

"Heero!" Logan hissed into his ear, tightening his grip. "Calm DOWN!" The boy bucked against him, angered beyond reasoning. The animal in Logan howled at the challenge to his authority, and Logan, adrenaline running high from the tension and body reacting to the friction, responded.

Uncaring of pain, he bit down on the back of Heero's neck, growling against the skin. Blood, hot and coppery, burst across his tongue, and he swallowed it like a desperate man. Heero's fragile ribs shook under his grip, and Logan felt them crack. Almost tenderly, he licked the shuddering skin beneath his teeth, as if in apology.

Heero made a long, low noise, and, responding to primal instinct, relaxed, fingers twitching. The beast in Logan howled its satisfaction, its possession of the younger man. "Let's get out of here," Logan said.

"Duo needs me," Heero argued. "Yeah, so? What can you do for him? I want to talk to ya, anyway." Heero opened his mouth to retort, and immediately went limp once more when he felt Logan's teeth clamp down warningly.

"So you want to use me, too?" Logan heard the flat monotone creep into Heero's voice, and mentally winced. "No, that's not it at all. Listen, we'll talk it out, okay? And your friend Winner can call you when Duo wakes up." Heero sagged in his grip, silent.

'You just have to fuck everything up, don't you, Logan?'


Quatre bent down over Duo's frighteningly pale features, running trembling hands across the well-loved features, the soft lips, and straight, aristocratic nose, at odds with his gutter-rat beginnings.

He and Trowa had immediately dragged Duo out of their bedroom and to the attic, collecting Wufei on the way. Now they all sat in a cleared space, newly empty boxes of Christmas ornaments piled high around them. "This is a nice Christmas present, eh, Trowa?" Quatre muttered, reaching back to stroke the golden fur of the massive lion behind him. Trowa had elected to shift forms, his hearing being much better in the feline one. Trowa made a rumbling noise of agreement.

"Logan took Heero to the roof," Wufei said, fingers restlessly moving over his gun, assembling and disassembling it. Quatre made a noise of acknowledgement, bending over Duo and peeling back an eyelid to check his pupils.

Duo twitched in his grip, Quatre immediately rocking back onto his heels, hands held out to show his lack of a weapon. The American looked around frantically and seized Quatre's shoulders, shaking him.

"Rogue? Where is she?"

"I- I-"

"Where?" Trowa growled warning, tail flicking back and forth and emerald eyes fixed on Duo. Duo let go of Quatre at last, leaving him to rub feeling back into his shoulders, and stood, running out of the attic and down the stairs. Wufei met Quatre's eyes wearily as the thumps of Duo's bare feet faded, brow arched in a sardonic smile.

"Shall we go and save the day, then?"

"What else do you expect?"


Rogue was lost.

She screamed with terror, but her voice was unheard. She shut her eyes but still saw.

Saw huge robots tearing each other apart with graceless fury, and the men and women inside them fall into the void of space, hands clawing at their throats and faces bulging, blackening-

She stared down the barrel of a gun, Heero's blue eyes cold- cold as ice and space- and hard as diamond. "Do it, Yuy," she heard herself say in Duo's voice. The gun wavered, shuddered, Heero's face momentarily slid into an expression of bone-deep agony, and then the gun lowered.

The blade of a knife ran down her chest, dulled and blunt, and her skin opened like a flower, crimson flowing down to drip into the already thick pool of blood. Her torturer, smiling like a demon, stepped closer, and ran a finger down the slice, lifting the blood to his lips and licking it off.

"Mmm… sweet." She felt unfamiliar lips twist into a smirk, and cracked and bleeding tongue shape words that hissed dryly out of her mouth.

"Didn't know Oz employed fucking vampires." The man's face was impassive, and he ran coarse hands over her face, probing the bruises. "You have very nice bone structure," he remarked off-handedly. "I'll enjoy ruining it." And all was pain and brightness-

She held Quatre's trembling body to her chest, rocking him as he keened lowly, hands pressed to his head as he tried to keep out the deaths of thousands. Zero whispered in her head, as it did in all of theirs. The sound of footsteps made her turn, and silently offer Quatre's shaking form to Trowa, who took it with saddened eyes and cradled him like a fragile porcelain doll-

"Rogue!"

They stood back-to-back in the streets of New York, watching Wing Zero fragmenting and falling to shreds as it fired the Buster Rifle once more. She glanced at Zech's face, then Trowa's, Quatre's, and Wufei's, and grinned. Well-loved and well-known faces, the three she could trust beyond all others, the three she depended on. With deliberate movements, movements practiced a thousand times before, movements, somehow, she had always known she'd perform, she moved a hand to the self-destruction switch-

"Rogue!"

Sobs hitched in her chest, limbs trembling as she woke from a nightmare of Father Maxwell's grinning corpse tracing ice-cold lips over her face, cold and rotting hands skimming over her body with the considerate touch of a lover. Eyes wide and frightened, she stared into the darkness of her small room.

A warm hand settled on her shoulder, and she turned to meet Quatre's understanding, aquamarine gaze. Trowa stood uncomfortably behind him, shifting from foot to foot. Even Wufei, the prissy guy, sat on the window seat, looking sulkily concerned. Heero was guarding the doorway.

"It's okay," Quatre whispered, "It's okay. We all understand. We love you, Duo. It's okay. Everything will be okay."

And for one paltry moment, she allowed herself to believe that-

"Rogue, can you hear me?"

"Professor!" she screamed, squeezing her eyes shut against the montage of faces blowing apart into shattered, red-slicked bits. Shattered by her hand. A strong hand reached for hers and jerked her out of the nightmare.

She woke sobbing, clawing at the sheets beneath her as she shook her head, trying to erase the memories of thousands dead, bulging and blackening and dying by the hand of her friend, the braided, beautiful boy who drank and played poker and smiled constantly and called her 'Roguey.'

No, not Duo. Not him, please God not him. Don't let those long-fingered pale hands be soaked with blood as she knew they must be. Swallowing her tears, she lifted her head to meet the calm gray gaze of the Professor.

"Professor. He- he- he killed them! He killed all of them!" Duo came tearing into the room then, eyes wild and dark, pale as she was on her worst days. The other three followed, one in the form of a lion that took up an entire corner of the room. Duo's violet eyes zeroed in on her, and, swallowing, he spoke.

"R-Rogue? Rogue, are you okay?" He took a step forward, hands outstretched, palms-up, as if in supplication. Rogue began to shake. The hands that had killed thousands, the hands that belonged to the boy that was Death incarnate, Death wearing the guise of an angel. The hands that were drenched in blood, reaching for her to take-

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" Her voice sounded horrifically strange to her own ears, raw and bloody with screaming. Duo stopped immediately, and the dark eyes filled with hurt, hurt so bone-deep and wearied that it made her want to reach and comfort him. She made a sound, and Duo took it as encouragement, stepping forward again.

"Murderer!" she hissed, scrambling back to press herself into the headboard. "Murderer! I saw it! You killed them all! You killed all of them with your fucking bombs and guns and whatever the hell that giant robot was! You bastard! I can't believe I let you touch me!"

Duo flinched with each word she spoke, and as she stopped to take a breath, chest heaving, his shoulders slumped and his hands dropped to his sides. He said nothing for a moment, and reached behind himself, groping for a friendly hand. Quatre took his hand and squeezed it.

"I don't expect you to understand, Rogue," he said quietly, heavily, as though each word was dragged out from the abyssal depths of his body. "Hell, I don't even understand it, myself." He pushed his hair back fretfully. "I'm… sorry."

She sneered at him. "The only way you can apologize now is to explain what's going on in that head of yours. Like, what those robots were, and those space battles. If you tell me why you killed all those people, maybe… I'll understand." Duo closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Quatre and Wufei glanced at each other, and then, seeming to come to a decision, nodded slowly.

"Alright, then." Duo said. "Alright, then."


Heero struck the match with trembling fingers, lit a cigarette, and swallowed the smoke. Logan, sitting behind him, propped against the chimney and looking comfortable in the icy weather, watched him, making his nerves tingle, his mind screaming possible escape routes and ways to incapacitate the watcher.

Or at least, that was what his mind should have been doing.

The silence in his head was odd and frightening to him, who had lived three years with the mad ravings of the Zero System his only constant companion. And yet Zero seemed to accept this man behind him as alpha, as strong enough to hand its host over to, strong enough to protect its host from himself.

He almost felt safe.

Heero would be lying if he said that Logan didn't affect him. The man seemed almost foolishly kind at times, but deadly enough to back it up. He almost… seemed like what Heero needed. Someone to keep him from trying to do too much, someone who could command him well. Someone to give him a mission, a goal to work towards.

'Not like J,' Heero thought with an inaudible snort.

"What's so funny?" Heero glanced at Logan through the fringe of his bangs, and lifted a corner of his lip in a slight smile.

"When I'm around you… I almost feel safe."

"What do you mean?"

"Zero accepts you, so it no longer rants when you're around. The silence is a rare gift." He shrugged. "I feel as though I can trust you with myself; that I can trust you not to break me apart like J did, and remake me for your own purposes. When I'm around you, I don't feel like I need to hide in a corner or shoot everyone that looks at me."

"You're shivering." Heero took a drag off the cigarette, blinking. "What of it?" Logan rolled his eyes heavenward, and opened his arms. "C'mere, you. You're gonna freeze to death if you insist on wandering 'round in only that silly T-shirt and jeans." Heero met the whisky-brown gaze searchingly. Logan sighed.

"I'm not going to hurt you, kid. You'd probably gut me if I tried." Heero thumbed the safety off on his Glock, and cautiously moved over to settle in between Logan's spread legs. He rested the Glock in his lap, shivering when he felt warm air gust over the back of his neck as Logan laughed.

"Yeah, I get it. You're willing to kill me, got it. You can stop waving that gun around now." Heero said nothing, leaning back warily. Muscular arms came up and wrapped around his chest, pulling him back to rest against a broad chest. He felt Logan sniff the back of his neck.

"Ya smell nice."

"Like blood, I'm guessing," he said drolly.

"More like gunpowder and smoke. I'm… glad you feel safe around me." Heero cast about for something to say, some way to answer that simple admission of caring. He felt a kinship with this man, felt as though he could trust this man with his burdens and his secrets, his guilt and his memories.

"I… am, too. I've never felt safe, before."


Wufei glanced at his comrades as they sat on the couch in the main living room. He, frankly, had argued for lying about their pasts, but moralistic Duo refused to. No matter. Quatre was twisting his fingers together, worrying his lower lip so badly that blood welled up in the scrapes. Trowa finally noticed and gently separated his lover's hands, taking them into his own. Wufei squeezed his eyes shut as the pounding headache in his skull intensified, almost as if in warning.

Summers and Grey were sitting almost on top of each other, staring at the pilots distrustfully. The newcomers (the Brotherhood and the Acolytes, if he remembered their names correctly) ranged around the room, the Frenchman's red-on-black eyes riveted on Duo's weary face. Rogue, wrapped in a worn flannel blanket, sat shivering before the fireplace, paler then normal. Logan leaned against the doorframe, dark eyes focused on Heero's shrunken, apathetic form.

"Okay," Duo said at last. He swallowed. "I- We'll tell you where we're from. But-" he cut off Grey's question ruthlessly, "-the first time we're interrupted, we're stopping and leaving. Got that?" There was a murmur of assent. "Okay." Duo glanced at Wufei, pleading with his eyes for the most scholarly of them to take the burden of history from his shoulders.

Wufei smiled slightly, met Pietro's cerulean blue eyes, clasped his hands together, and began to speak in what Duo had sneeringly referred to as his 'you're an idiot and I'm not' voice.

"In the year 2357," he paused, waiting for interruptions, but finding none, continued, "the countries of France and Germany got into a nuclear standoff with one another. Both wanted a monopoly on the valuable technology that had been created recently in a top-secret European Union laboratory. This technology was a computer system capable of processing input from a system of fifty gyroscopes at a speed hitherto unknown. It was used to create the first operational Mobile Suits.

Before that time, mobile suits, or MS as they were jocularly called, were unable to be used, because they inevitably overbalanced and fell, destroying both the suit and the pilot. The gyroscopes alleviated this problem." He looked around, and seeing the expressions of disbelief and confusion, elaborated.

"A mobile suit is basically a mechanical humanoid war machine, generally ranging from thirty feet high to one-hundred. They require a human pilot to be utilized effectively. But no matter.

A French family, the Peacecrafts, who had made a fortune out of providing materials to EU laboratories, mobilized their massive private army and quickly took over Europe, renaming the entire continent the Sanq Kingdom, in honor of the family's founder, Milliardo Sanq Peacecraft. Once they had gained victory, they threw away their weapons and began advocating complete pacifism for every nation on the Earth, a contemptible and idealistic plan.

While this was going on, Japan completed building the first space colony cluster, L1. A colony cluster is a grouping of up to twenty ovoid, metal space stations, each capable of housing up to half a million civilians. In honor of this achievement, the dating system was changed from A.D (Anno Domini, which means 'In the Year of Our Lord') to A.C, After Colony.

Other countries also began building colonies. The United States built L2, Sanq L3, Saudi Arabia L4, and my own nation, the People's Republic of China, built L5. At this time, the United States, using its considerable economic might, forced the rest of the world to join a new group called the Earth Sphere Alliance, or ESA, which would govern both the planet Earth and its outlying colonies.

It was decided that one person would be elected King or Queen of the entire Earth Sphere, although their job was largely ceremonial. The nations would mostly be free to govern themselves. However, the ESA began to discriminate against the colonists, treating them as second-class citizens, inferior to Earth-siders. When the colonies protested, the ESA cut off trade between them.

A colonist leader named Heero Yuy- the man our Heero's alias is after- was assassinated by a secret paramilitary organization called Oz, that worked inside the ESA.

Five scientists, one for each colony cluster, swore revenge against Oz and began to build, out of a metal that we know as gundanium (but in your world is adamantium), five huge, unstoppable mobile suits, called the Gundams.

They chose and trained five pilots for the Gundams- us five. Heero had much more training then the rest of us…" Wufei trailed off, refusing to speak about the rest. Quatre took over.

"We were sent to Earth disguised as shooting stars in a operation called Meteor. None of us knew that there were other fighters, so we just ran into each other. I unified all of us into one group. We… made many mistakes." Duo laughed hoarsely.

"Damn right, Q-ball!" Duo brushed cursorily at his eyes and said, "The leader of Oz, Treize Kushrenada, manipulated us into killing a group of what we thought were Oz leaders. They weren't, though. They were Alliance leaders, meeting to discuss forming a peace treaty with the colonies.

After that, the colonies went totally batshit insane and stopped trusting us. A few weeks after that mistake, Oz took over the L1 colony cluster and threatened to blow it up unless we surrendered ourselves and our Gundams. Heero blew himself up, sacrificing himself and his Gundam for the colonies." Duo slowly became aware of a low growling noise, coming from Logan, whose dark eyes were fixed on Heero's hunched body. 'Interesting; didn't know he was so protective of Hee-chan.'

"We kept Oz on the run for three years. We were captured and tortured many times, but always managed to escape. Well, time went by, and eventually the scientists created a computer system called the Zero System. Zero was an artificial intelligence that allowed a mobile suit pilot to assimilate themselves into the suit, speeding up their reaction time ten-fold. On the first test run, though, the pilot went crazy.

We all came in contact with Zero at one time or another, but now Zero lives in Heero. Eventually we destroyed Oz, and won freedom for ourselves and our home." Duo looked around the room and spread his hands.

"We are the Gundam pilots. Assassins, terrorists, freedom fighters, zealots. Any questions?"

"Yeah. How the hell are we supposed to believe that?" Evan said brazenly. Heero lifted his head, dark eyes drilling a hole into Evan's head.

"Would you like to live it yourself?" Evan swallowed and then said confidently, "Fine. Professor?"

"Are you sure, Evan?" the Professor said. "I'm not sure you have the mental-"

"Do it, okay?" The Professor closed his eyes and sighed. "All right. Wait a moment." For a moment there was nothing but silence, and then it was broken by Evan's earsplitting screams as he fell like a puppet without strings, writhing on the floor. "STOP IT! STOP IT! For God's sake, stop it!" The Professor cut the connection, and massaged his forehead. "Would anyone else like to try?'

There was nothing but silence in the room.


A/N: Next chapter, Trask's plan comes to light, and the pilots and mutants are forced to fight for their world. Romance plays a part, as well.