Heero lay beneath the nearly completed chassis in an exhausted haze. He, Quatre, Wufei, Trowa, Milliardo, and Howard had been working around the clock to construct the device in as short a time as possible by utilizing rotating eight-hour shifts in a twenty-four hour work schedule. Unsurprisingly, Heero had decided it best to work as a team with Milliardo, as the two of them together could fine tune and troubleshoot any work completed by the others with a cohesive end goal in mind. And though Heero's rotation generally ended near ten o'clock in the evening, Heero had opted to work through the night to finish the final touches.

Everything had come out more or less according to plan. The chair from the cockpit had needed to be replaced, as the original had been all but destroyed upon removal from the suit's core, so Trowa had removed a passenger shuttle's copilot chair as a replacement. Wufei and Quatre had taken the liberty of rigging six monitors in such a way that they could be moved and rotated freely, so that the pilot could view them in a traditional array or they could be fanned out for display to an audience. The wiring of these had taken Heero nearly five hours in itself. Howard had taken it upon himself to meticulously clean each control panel, throttle stick, pedal, and button, upon some of which traces of rust-colored blood had dried in the crevices. This had arguably been the most difficult job for any of the workers. But now the end was in sight, and even the smell of breakfast had not been able to draw Heero out from beneath the metal chamber.

He paused for a moment, rubbed at his forehead with his fingers, and closed his eyes. The control panel for this suit had always been too complicated for his liking, but then he'd had Duo do most of the work on the hardware when it was initially built. That was Duo's specialty. Presently the seventh and final bundle of wires lay across Heero's chest, waiting to be soldered to their output, but Heero had already finished all of the monitors. He plucked up the bundle and drew it close to his weary eyes, examining the colored plastic sleeves. But he could make no sense of the group. It did not match the others.

"How are you doing under there, Heero?" he heard Howard calling, and when Heero turned his head just right he could see the old man's work boots. "Still awake?"

Heero grunted his reply lazily and lay his head back on the ground, closed his eyes in frustration. "There's a rogue bundle down here."

When Heero looked back, Howard's face had taken the place of his feet, and the old man peered over the rims of his ubiquitous sunglasses curiously. "What do you mean a rogue bundle?"

Heero held up the wires and rolled slightly onto his side: Ground clearance barely allowed him to lie beneath it. "I've already done the main displays but this is extra. It's got most of the same components…" he paused to stifle a yawn with the back of his hand, "…as the other monitors but there's no output. It's like there's supposed to be a seventh display."

"So add in a seventh display," Howard said bluntly. "You need to get out from under there and go to sleep as it is. Your wife has been bugging me since eight o'clock this morning as to why you never came to bed last night."

"I told her I was going to be late…What's the time?"

"It's getting close to noon. How long have you been at this?"

Heero looked at his hands and began to count his fingers. "Twenty…"

But Heero could not finish his statement, as he felt a hand wrap around his ankle, and before he could wrench it back, Howard had pulled him out from beneath the chassis. The light stung his eyes, and Heero raised his forearm to block it out. Still, he could see Howard's judgmental expression gazing down at him.

"If you've been down here long enough that you're counting the hours on your fingers," Howard reprimanded, "it's time for you to get some shut eye."

"I've just got that one bundle left and…" But Heero stopped short, realizing the futility of his argument halfway through the phrase, partially due to Howard's unyielding expression.

"What do we have left to do?"

Heero pushed himself up and rubbed the back of his hand sleepily over his eyes. He draped his arms over his knees and stared at the floor, fidgeting. "Got to wire that bundle in—which is to say we've got to figure out where it goes, then wire it in. Got to connect the main power. After that I think we're good to switch on and make sure everything works."

"So we're two connections from going live?"

Heero shrugged. It certainly seemed that way, but as was typical for him, he wanted to continue working until the job was done.

"Yours and Zech's shift is supposed to start back up at two. I'm going to go ahead and call the other boys in here as well to get this finished," Howard instructed. "You at least go get yourself something to eat—have you eaten?"

Heero shook his head. Now that he'd stopped working, however, he felt a pang of hunger. "Not since yesterday morning."

"Go get yourself something to eat and then go to sleep. We'll figure out the power situation." Howard paused to pull Heero up by the wrist. "Go on, now. We're professionals as much as you are and I've been doing work like this since before you were even thought of."

As Heero walked toward the workroom door he could hear Howard mumbling something about carrying the world on his shoulders and letting someone else help out for a change. It was nice to hear the old man so lively again.

Everyone seemed to have gained some energy since Heero laid out the plans for the chassis. Perhaps it was that all had some new goal, something to work toward and unify in favor of. It could also have been that the trial was growing near, and despite the best efforts of all, no one felt ready to face a court. Whatever it was, the crew acted with new purpose. Even Duo had seemed more forthright in the days since his outburst. He'd not spent his time locked in the medical bay as most thought he would, but instead stayed outside in common areas: The galley, the bridge, and very rarely the workroom. And though he remained mostly quiet, when he did speak it was with confident—albeit wholly false—authority, in what Noin and Sally Poe adoringly called command mode.

Heero found Noin and Poe seated in the galley at a table in the corner opposite the door, apparently engaged in involving conversation. He fetched a tray laden with twice his normal portion, and made his way over.

"Your wife was looking for you," said Sally genially as Heero sat.

"I've heard."

"I thought I was the one eating for two," Noin added.

Thoughtlessly, Heero pushed his tray toward her, and Noin helped herself to his portion. The sharing of his food didn't bother Heero nearly as much as the lopsided grin that Sally wore as she watched them eat.

"You two are more like siblings than Milliardo and Relena ever were."

Heero, unwilling to dignify the statement with a response, took a particularly large bite and kept his gaze low, but Noin laughed right along with Sally.

"At any rate," Noin said between bites after the laughter had died away, "you were saying…"

Sally nodded, right back to business. Heero thought her face looked awfully stern considering the sudden shifts between joking and other conversation. She said, "It was pretty sad, if I tell you the truth. We thought the two of them would get married long before Heero and Relena did."

Heero choked slightly on his food and spluttered, "What?"

"Sally is filling me in on some details about life while I was away on Mars," Noin replied, casually pinching another mouthful of food from Heero's tray.

"Well," Sally continued for her, "she came to me asking questions. I guess Hilde is supposed to arrive on ship tonight."

"I wanted to make sure I hadn't stirred anything up…" Noin paused contemplatively. "I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to cause any more drama."

Heero felt his face screw up with undue confusion. "Why is she coming here?" He knew at once that his voice had sounded too brusque.

"I did make a mistake, didn't I?"

"I never said that," Heero corrected.

Sally cleared her throat and leaned forward. "Well, you've got to understand, Noin, that they were together for a long time. A long time. And then the One Year War ended, and then the whole Operation Meteor thing happened, and things settled down. Hilde came to stay here on the Peacemillion while Duo tried to figure out what he was going to do with himself. Heero found work thanks to Howard, but Duo wasn't sure that he was a good fit for any of the jobs that Howard had, he knew he wouldn't be fit for higher education…"

"He's an idiot," Heero interjected, and when Sally and Noin shot him incredulous glares he clarified. "He would have been fine."

Sally shrugged, apparently unwilling to agree or disagree with the statement. "At any rate, Hilde suggested settling down and he got squeamish. Wouldn't really give her a good reason why he didn't want to. Then the military started throwing jobs and money at him and it seemed like he just couldn't refuse."

Heero contemplated for a long moment after Sally finished her explanation before deciding to correct her. "That's not entirely true," he said, and then took another bite to bide his time and register the women's reactions. "He went looking for them, they didn't come after him. And he did that long before Hilde ever came to Peacemillion—it was almost right after the war. He asked me if I wanted to talk to recruiting with him but I declined because Howard had a prospect for me as a private contractor."

"At any rate," Sally said, and Heero was not offended that she had interrupted him, "it was sad when they called it quits. Hilde left with barely a word to anyone and Duo just kind of shut down for a while. He went down to Earth for training and such, came back shortly thereafter with orders, with an arrangement from his commanding officer to seek partnership with Howard for research and development, and that's stuck ever since. It wasn't for another month or so after he took his bunk aboard the ship that that he seemed to calm down and get back to normal, but whenever he was on military business it was always…" she stopped to grope for a word that seemed not to come.

"It was always business," Heero completed her sentence, and though the word was redundant, it fit. Heero recalled that time with mixed feelings: He had always somewhat despised Maxwell's flippant attitude toward everything, so the change had been refreshing, and yet it seemed altogether eerie to see him so well disciplined. If Heero was honest with himself, that was the point in his life when he began to loosen up, in order to bring back the Duo Maxwell that everyone had come to rely on. That was the point where he, Heero, had learned to crack a joke, sometimes at his own expense, just to get a rise, just to lighten a mood. For the most part it had worked, and Duo had come out of whatever funk he had been in. And while the two were certainly closer friends after that point—brotherly, even—neither had emerged from the incident unchanged.

"So did I make a mistake by inviting her to the ship?" Noin said, and she sounded slightly perturbed.

Heero shook his head at the same time Sally said, "No. Just think of it like this…When those two broke up it was like watching your favorite childhood fantasy crumble."

"My question is why," Heero asked, and he pushed the remainder of his food toward Noin. "Why is she coming now?"

Noin shrugged. "Well, I contacted her at Duo's request. And it was a fairly desperate request. When I spoke to her she said that she had wanted to contact Howard, at the very least, after she heard about the colony disaster, but she was afraid that it would be somehow inappropriate."

Heero shrugged. "No better time to get back with your ex-boyfriend than after he's blown a colony to hell," he said sardonically. Sally cast him an angry look, but Heero shrugged it off. "Point is that Hilde wasn't necessarily wrong. It wasn't really her place to contact us."

"Regardless," said Noin seriously, "she'll be here before dinner."

ф

Duo sat in his bunk on his bed and stared at the covered window, waiting. Since Noin had confirmed that Hilde was en route, a balloon of anxiety had inflated in his stomach such as he had never felt before. The feeling was not altogether negative, not by a long stretch, but was instead what Duo would have called nervous anticipation, a feeling of desire and terror and expectation all rolled together.

Admittedly, it was not until recently that he'd given much serious thought to Hilde at all. Duo truly believed, if she had heard anything of the colony disaster and his part in it, that her feelings of resentment and hatred toward him would amplify. He believed that if she had wanted to see him again before now, those feelings would have disappeared at the moment the colony exploded. Yet there had been some tiny voice in the back of his mind that said otherwise; the same voice that expressed subtle jealousy at Heero and Relena's remarkably stable relationship. That voice believed that such stability could belong to him as well, if only he gave it a chance.

So he sat in his bunk on his bed, staring at the covered window, waiting and pretending that everything was as it had always been. He would be happy to see her. She would be happy to see him. They would embrace. The world would continue on…

But Duo knew otherwise. Too much was looming on the horizon for him to feign ignorance. His trial was in eight days. Already that evening after dinner he was scheduled to begin the highly monitored regimen of Quell to prepare him for demonstration of the mobile suit operating system. He told Heero that he would go take a look at the chassis and help with final preparations once the drug kicked in and the odds of anxiety decreased. The entire crew of the Peacemillion, except for perhaps Noin and Heero, walked on eggshells whenever he showed his face in a room. There would be no way for Hilde to believe that he was the same man as when she left. No doubt she had watched the news, seen the explosion, read the articles.

Duo could not say what time it was when the door slid open and Noin poked her head in to say that he had a visitor. Duo couldn't bring himself to look up, even when he felt the bed depress beside him and heard the hiss of the door as it closed. All he could do was fidget.

"You've looked better," said Hilde quietly. Her voice sounded tentative with a slight tremble, though Duo could not be certain of the cause. "How do you feel?"

"Sorry," Duo replied in a small voice, "about everything."

Hilde turned on the bed and drew her legs up to sit cross-legged. Duo knew from the shift in her posture that she was staring at him, waiting for him to say something else. Instead he shot her a sheepish glance. She looked exactly the same as always: short cropped hair, well-manicured if plain-faced, with an expression of complete understanding.

Duo fidgeted.

"I was surprised that Noin contacted me," Hilde said conversationally. "I thought she was on Mars."

"She was."

Again the conversation died, and for a time the silence felt awkward. Another timid glance told Duo that he was not the only one nervously wringing their hands. He had clearly made Hilde feel uncomfortable. She did not return his glance and seemed a mirror: Hands folded in her lap, digging beneath one fingernail with the other, rubbing her palm with her thumb. The look was somehow endearing.

It was then that a surge of confidence hit, seemingly from nowhere, and Duo moved to swift action. Without thought or hesitation, he turned and locked eyes with her, and before she could move to protest or pull away he kissed her. For a moment Duo could feel her body tense, a reaction borne of surprise, but she relaxed just as quickly, and the embrace ended no differently than it would have in the years of the war.

"Sorry," Duo said quietly and sincerely upon breaking away.

Hilde had taken on a very bright shade of pink. "You don't need to apologize for that."

"I'm not," Duo reclined slightly and turned his eyes back to the shaded window. "But I asked you here…Or I had Noin ask you here…Because I need to tell you something." He leaned forward uncertainly, his hands folded between his knees once again. But this time Hilde moved closer, so close that their thighs touched on the bedspread, and Duo felt heartened. "I brought you here because I need you to be here. It's a selfish reason, really, but I need you."

Hilde leaned forward, too, and joined Duo in nervously fidgeting. "You didn't need me the last few years, though," she said dryly, and though the words stung as truth Duo could hear no animosity in her tone.

"At 1900 hours today I'm going to be injected with an emotional suppressant so that I can simulate the conditions of my capture and the destruction of…" He choked on the word and raised his fist to his mouth, feigning that he was clearing his throat. But he did not finish the statement, hoping that Hilde would understand. "I want you to be here so that I don't lose touch. I need to keep my feet grounded somewhere… And you always kept me grounded."

"That's very sweet," Hilde said, and her voice was small now. "But why are you having a change of heart so suddenly? We ended things, and not really on good terms, Duo. You know that. Asking me back now… After everything that's happened…"

"That thing I needed to tell you," Duo said. "I made a mistake. I made a terrible, terrible mistake when I chose a job over you. I don't expect you to forgive me, but I need to explain why I made that decision. I lied to you way back when, and I have to at least make that right."

"Duo Maxwell, who never tells a lie?" Hilde said incredulously.

"I got scared," Duo continued without acknowledging Hilde's sarcasm. Again he peeked at her to find her face a mask of concern. "I got scared of the idea of you and me. I mean, you know everything there is to know about me—how I grew up, and how I got to pilot the gundam, and the terrible things I did way back when, and all the things that brought me to now… But when the time came for me to really commit I couldn't."

"Why?"

Duo shrugged, half because he really didn't know, and half to stall while he suppressed the welling lump in his throat. "You know I never had a family. Not a real family. I don't know what it's like to have that. I don't know what you're supposed to do when you're a part of that; I don't know what you're supposed to be. I didn't want to disappoint you."

Hilde laughed, and Duo found himself alarmed by the sound. He couldn't remember the last time he'd heard such a genuine, happy noise that wasn't corrupted by evil intent. But Hilde let it go with abandon, and Duo felt his chest warm.

"That's really it?" Hilde laughed. "That's it?"

Duo nodded, his face still grim. "I never learned what to do. I didn't want to screw up."

"Well the biggest screw up for you seems to have been signing on to the service, all things considered," Hilde said joyfully, and then as she continued her voice softened. "You never screwed up. I don't think you could screw up. Just because you didn't have parents doesn't mean you're incapable of loving someone. You loved me. You love Howard. You loved the Father and the Sister when you were in their care."

Unconsciously, Duo grimaced at the mention of his family of the church, and Hilde stopped speaking abruptly. "And look what happened to them," he said, downcast. "Everyone I care about ends up completely miserable and suffering or they end up dead."

Hilde wrapped her arm around his shoulder. "Eventually you're going to have to stop blaming yourself for what happened when you were ten." She sighed and squeezed his arm, a comforting gesture that did little to ease his worry. "I'll stay, regardless. I'll help you however I can, because you need it right now. I've spoken to everyone aboard this ship who knows you, and every one of them said that you need to be around people. No matter what you do, I'll stand by and give you whatever you need."

Duo nodded. It was all he could ever have asked for.