Quatre scowled. His face had been stuck in a mask of anger for half an hour as he'd made preparations for the injections, and his mood that whole day had not gone unnoticed by the crew. But the time for objection was passed, and now Duo was reclined in an armchair aboard Quatre's vessel waiting nervously and hoping that there wouldn't be too much more conversation. As far as Duo was concerned, the decision was his to make and his alone, and Quatre would be bound to respect the choice.

It took Duo by surprise then, when Quatre finally came at him with the needle.

"I hope you're sure this is the right thing to do," Quatre said as he approached. "You know that I don't."

"I know," Duo conceded. "But it has to be done."

Quatre held the syringe up to the light one last time, double and triple checking the numbers, and looked to Duo with a great sigh of frustration. "I don't know how this is going to feel or how you're going to react, so stay seated for a while after I'm done, okay?"

Duo nodded. He'd expected some of the gentler man's anger to come out in the poke, but Quatre's touch was smooth, so tender that the only feeling there was the tiniest prick, like an insect's bite, and Quatre spoke softly the whole while about how genuinely glad he was that Hilde was able to be aboard the Peacemillion for the proceedings, that he hoped the two of them might reconcile despite the current hardships. And before Duo could thank Quatre for the sentiment the thing was done, and Quatre walked back toward his work table to dispose of the sharp.

A very warm and slightly familiar feeling spread through Duo's body not unlike the pleasant numbing sensation of too much drink too fast. It felt as though he was sinking into the fabric of the chair, and he closed his eyes, suddenly quite tired. He nodded when Quatre asked if he was all right, but the words sounded far away, and after a moment Duo realized that he felt very slightly dizzy. He rubbed at his face. The dizziness turned to subtle nausea, and the nausea slowly gave way to the familiar feeling of nothingness to which Duo had grown so accustomed in captivity. All the while he sat in the chair, eyes closed and breathing deeply while Quatre went about his business.

"I think it's done," Duo said coolly after a time, and he heard Quatre's footsteps approaching. "Which is to say I don't feel nervous anymore."

"That's a good sign," Quatre replied, and Quatre plucked up Duo's wrist and paused, and when Duo looked up he noted Quatre staring at his wristwatch. "Steady pulse. You look all right. We'll need to get you back to the medical bay on Peacemillion to do thorough testing and make sure our baselines are—"

"I don't want to stay in the med bay anymore," Duo interrupted, "I want to go back to my own bunk." The tone in his voice startled him. He'd spoken matter-of-factly, with the confidence of a man who knows what he wants and doesn't care what others think about it. It was the tone he might've taken before all of this madness had started. Such was the effect of the drug. And then he added, inexplicably, "And I want to see the video. I need to remember what happened before I face a court martial."

The look on Quatre's face might have made Duo laugh under different circumstances. Quatre's nose had curled in such a way that it looked like he'd smelled a dead animal, and his eyebrows were knit so tightly that a deep wrinkle had formed between them. But the expression faded quickly, and Quatre returned to pure professionalism.

"Well, it's definitely working," Quatre said. "I'll let Sally and Howard know your wishes for quarters, and I'll get Heero to set you up with the footage tomorrow, as long as you're sure you're ready for that."

Duo nodded curtly. "I'm ready."

Ten minutes later, a numbed Duo Maxwell exited Quatre's ship through the docking tunnel, heading purposefully toward the hangar's oxygenated workroom where he said he'd meet Heero earlier in the day. He found Heero, Howard, and Milliardo crowded around the disembodied cockpit, Heero in the pilot's seat with a look of consternation about him.

Duo stared for a while as the three men worked, contemplating the device before him. In a way it struck him as familiar, and he looked at the cockpit with the same sense of remembrance that he'd had when the sensation of the Quell flowed through his body. He knew it, somehow, and somehow he knew it was wrong.

"You're missing a part," Duo said from the doorway as he watched, and Howard looked up, startled. Duo motioned toward Heero, who seemed not to have heard, and Howard gave Heero the slightest nudge with his elbow. "You're missing a part," Duo said again after Heero had looked up.

"What part?"

Duo approached the machine tentatively, and Milliardo, and Heero cleared away from it. The two younger men appeared as though they were fully invested in the task at hand, but clearly Howard was more interested in Duo. Howard stared at him until it became uncomfortable, and Duo shot a glance up at him.

"How are you feeling?" Howard asked.

"I'm not," Duo replied, and it was truth. He knew that he should have felt a slew of emotions: Happy that he was able to think clearly again; nervous at Howard's obvious concern; guilt about the stress he'd put the old man through; terrified at getting back in the cockpit. But Duo felt nothing, and for that he was thankful.

"So it's working, then," Howard said.

Duo shrugged. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"What is missing?" Heero asked curtly.

Duo leaned into the cockpit and looked it up and down. He remembered the setup clearly: the keyboards and switches he'd wired into the old mobile suit chassis; the monitors in standard configuration. This was his suit, the same suit it had been the morning of that test flight so long ago, and he knew that there was nothing to fear.

"There's supposed to be a helmet."

Heero rubbed at his forehead with his palm, seemingly frustrated. "We're not taking it into space," he said with restraint, "there's no need for a helmet."

"True, we're not taking it into space," Duo agreed flatly, "but there needs to be a helmet."

"How do you know?" asked Milliardo from the side, and Duo turned to regard him.

Duo floundered for a reason, but his mind came up short. For all the vague familiarity of the situation, from the numbness of the Quell to the configuration of the cockpit, he could not say how he knew a helmet was needed. He just knew. At last he settled with himself and said, "I don't know."

Milliardo looked to Heero, and the two exchanged a shrug.

"There was that odd bundle," Heero pondered. "Could be that it was supposed to be wired into a helmet display like the old…" he paused as the realization hit him, and the look on Heero's face suggested he was feeling slightly embarrassed. "The old mobile doll operating system. The remote system…"

"…Was piloted using an in-visor display," Milliardo finished.

Heero cursed and pulled himself out of the cockpit, more frustrated now than he had been before. "Where the hell are we going to get an in-visor display? They're obsolete."

"It wouldn't be too hard to rig one up," Duo suggested coolly, and all eyes turned toward him. He missed a feeling of self-consciousness. "Get a few little flex monitors and a standard issue pilot's helmet. You'd just have to rip out the interior padding and replace the visor. The wiring is the same as on larger displays, it's just to a smaller circuit board." He paused and admired the flabbergasted look on Heero's face. "I can do it tonight if you get me the parts."

Howard moved immediately, and it seemed to Duo that the old man had straightened his posture in the last minute. He strode with a youthful quickness toward the door, patting Duo firmly on the shoulder as he passed. "I'll have your parts waiting for you in twenty. It's good to have you back."

When Howard left, Duo turned back to Heero and Milliardo. "Have you turned it on yet?"

Heero nodded. "Yeah. All functional except the odd disconnected display."

"Can I look?"

Again, Heero and Milliardo exchanged meaningful glances, but Heero nodded all the same and motioned Duo to enter the machine.

Upon sitting Duo noticed at once that his heartbeat had quickened in a physical response he recognized as anxiety, yet his emotions, predictably, remained absent. He adjusted the cockpit chair to his liking and placed one hand on the keyboard, the other on the throttle. It had been months since the last time he'd been in a suit, longer still since he'd piloted one of his own accord. The controls were comfortable, tailored by him to fit his own hands, and Duo knew somehow that this was where he was supposed to be.

"How does it feel?" Milliardo asked. "We tried to make the whole rig adjustable so that any one of us could test."

"You did a good job of that," Duo replied. He pulled down on the front display, and the two vertically aligned monitors moved into position. "These monitor arms were genius. Fully customizable?"

"They've got one-hundred-eighty degrees of rotation on the horizontal and vertical plane," Heero explained. "Wufei fitted them each with a pretty basic ball joint."

Duo nodded and said, "I'm impressed," even though he did not feel impressed. It just seemed the right thing to say. And then, Heero and Milliardo apparently satisfied, Duo reached for the power.

With a familiar mechanical whir, the systems fired and the screens powered on, though all but one remained without picture. The auxiliary control screen—the bottom right—displayed a list with the heading "Simulation Programs" with no fewer than twenty selections below. Duo keyed through the entries: Sim_1; Sim_2; Sim_3; Introductory_1; Introductory_2; Introductory_3. The names remained unremarkable halfway through the list, so he selected Space_1 and turned his attention to the forward-facing displays.

The effect was subtle at first. The screens faded slowly from their black powered-on state to an equally black image—had he not been paying such close attention Duo was sure he would have missed such a seamless transition—and eventually lighted specks appeared against the black blanket. Duo leaned forward intently, studying the ever shifting stars, the distant colonies with their flickering lights. This was familiar, and again Duo could not be certain if he had truly seen the display before or if his mind was so numb that his memory had gone.

"Hey!"

All at once Duo snapped to attention and looked left. Heero peered into the cockpit, Milliardo over his shoulder, and both men wore expressions of confusion and alarm. At once, Duo faked the most genuine smile he could muster and as he spoke he attempted to sound genuine.

"It's beautiful isn't it?" He lied. "Outer space, I mean."

Heero reached into the cockpit and ran his fingers over the left keyboard input, and the simulation died. The screens faded back to black, Heero said, "I think you ought to scroll through the rest of those file names."

Duo complied. And then he swore.

The bottom five files had been named differently from the rest, and when he read them Duo felt his stomach constrict. Anxiety again.

"Maxwell_1, Maxwell_2…" Heero dictated, but Duo did not turn toward him. "I hope you don't mind but I took a look at those programs and they don't display anything much on the monitors. Not like the simulation you just had did, at any rate. The ones named for you seem only to have some complicated battle tests programmed in."

Duo selected Maxwell_4 and watched the main displays. Hundreds of small crosshairs appeared on the screen, all in tight formation, and Duo watched as they moved. Clusters of icons darted here and there, executing flawless defensive maneuvers akin to what he recalled from the mobile doll units of the One Year War. The resemblance was uncanny.

"They increase in difficulty up until number four," Heero explained.

"And what about number five?" Duo asked, his eyes still on the screens.

"Number five has nothing at all on these displays. I want to think it's the live operating system, not a simulation."

Duo tore his gaze away from the mesmerizing display and stared Heero down. "But why would a live OS be under the simulation heading?"

Heero shrugged and leaned against the chair. "Shoddy programming, I'd guess. What I was able to see—at least the parts that I didn't code—were really poorly done. Could be that whoever put it together was lazy, or in a rush, or just plain stupid."

Duo cut the display and powered the machine down. He'd need more time with it, and the evening was growing late enough. "I think it looks good," he said. "I'll go see Howard about the supplies for the visor display and let you know about getting it wired in the morning. We can run more tests tomorrow."

"Are you okay?" Heero asked.

Duo nodded as he exited the cockpit and leaned nonchalantly against the chassis. "I'm fine, really. My body is tired; I've got a headache. I think laying down will do some good while the stuff gets into my system."

"You let us know if you need help with the visor," Milliardo added.

Duo nodded and tossed a lazy wave back to the two as he exited the workroom.

ф

Duo brought a late-evening snack to his bunk to share with Hilde, who sat as patiently as ever watching him tinker with the helmet. It took half an hour to rip the insides out of the ancient standard-issue space helm, the only spare Howard could find on the ship, and another hour to fit the flexible displays inside of it. All of this he did between bites, all with Hilde gently reminding him to eat.

"How long do you think you're going to be working on this?" Hilde asked. "It's getting late."

Duo's eyebrows were furrowed with focus on a microscopic connection error. He'd begun the wiring of the displays to a control panel fitted to the back of the helmet. He shrugged in reply and poked at the connection with the soldering iron.

"That's all I get, is a shrug?"

With a great sigh, Duo turned in his chair but did not put his materials down. He examined Hilde carefully and determined that she was more bored than she was angry, if her expression was to judge. "I hope you don't feel like I'm ignoring you."

"Maybe a little bit. I've barely seen you since I got here, and now you're all caught up with this," she gestured toward the helmet vaguely, "this thing."

Duo glanced at the helmet. "It's an important thing."

"I know, and that's why I'm not upset," Hilde replied genuinely. "I was just told that I need to make sure you don't overexert yourself."

Duo could have laughed, if he'd felt any mirth. The notion of overworking himself seemed absurd. "I feel better than I've felt in weeks," he said truthfully. He poked some more at the connection, and judging it secure, moved to the next. "But you've got to remember that I've been pretty much idle since I got out of stasis. Which is to say I've been ten thousand percent crazy since I got out of stasis. It's only in the last few hours that I've really been able to focus."

"Now that you're on that crazy drug," Hilde said, and now Duo heard some heat in her voice.

"You don't approve," Duo said flatly, and he glanced at her briefly between solders. "I understand, and I respect that. But you've got to know, it wasn't just me being selfish. In order for the simulation to work—"

"How can you be sure?" Hilde asked. She reclined on his bed with her hands folded behind her head. "You told me at dinner tonight that you barely remember a thing."

Duo shook his head. "I wasn't lying; I don't remember anything. Not clearly anyway." He paused and stared hard at the visor. "Except for the things I do."

"Now you do sound crazy."

Duo put the visor and iron on his desk and turned back round to face Hilde again. Thoughts were finding their way into his head that he'd not had in a while, and now he had comfortable company he thought to explain them. But Hilde looked very slightly concerned already.

"What is it? Do you remember something?"

"I can't tell you how I remember anything," he said after much thought, "but I know that I need this helmet to be wired into the machine. I know that the Quell is necessary for the cockpit system to work effectively, because…" He looked at the floor, drawing a temporary blank. His chest tightened slightly, and the sensation caused him to recall. "They used some kind of neutralizing gas. They kept me dead…" Duo's mind was working overtime now, thinking and deducing what must have happened. He knew the pieces had to fit somewhere, there had to be a link holding them all together. "They kept me numb," he continued, "and Quatre told me that when this stuff is cut off suddenly it causes people to…" he couldn't find the word.

"To…?" Hilde prompted.

"To fly off the handle," Duo offered lamely. "To overreact. To give in to negative emotions that they could normally resist… So they must've triggered something in my brain at the same time they neutralized the drug. It's got to be in those files…"

"What files?"

Duo shook his head, ran his hand through his hair and leaned back. "There were files in the cockpit operating system with the heading Maxwell. I brought one up but it looked like a standard mobile doll simulation, albeit an advanced one."

"Well, you're an advanced pilot."

Duo shrugged away the compliment and continued. "So there must be some other video output, right? Way back when, you needed a helmet display to properly run a mobile doll remote piloting system. I never did it myself, but my understanding is that inside of the visor was an overlay of the…"

Gently, Hilde prompted him to get to the point.

"My point is that there has to be something that displays in this visor when the simulation is running."

"Any idea what?"

Unbidden, thoughts of the dream about Helen popped back into Duo's mind. The memories he tried so hard and so often to suppress bubbled back to the surface. Horrible images of death and gore and decay, the mangled flesh of the ones he loved, burst into the forefront of his thoughts.

"Duo?"

"Yeah," he said lamely, "I've got an idea. If it's all the same I don't want to talk about it."

If possible, Hilde appeared more concerned now than she had ten minutes prior, but she nodded respectfully and lay back on the pillow. "I'm here if you need."

Duo turned back to his work and continued plugging away in silence until the small hours of the morning. Satisfied that the wiring was correct and the helmet was ready for attachment to the greater system, he crawled onto the top of the bed and fell into a fitful sleep.

Helen stood before him again, this time a silhouette against a backdrop of fire and smoke yellowed by the gleaming mobile suit's light. This was the image he always remembered, except in his youth instead of the sister standing there it had been the church's cross leaning against the pulpit. As he stood there staring at her he recalled vividly the last dream he'd had of her, the dream in which she'd been his escort, his angel, if he dared to use such a loaded term.

But now the sister said nothing. She simply stared at him, her featureless face without judgment or emotion, a direct mirror of himself. He called out to her, asked her what she wanted, told her how sorry he was for all that had happened. It was the same dream he'd had hundreds of times before; the dialog was the same. The images were the same. He felt ten years old again.

And then he woke, clammy and sweaty atop the blankets of his bunk, Hilde's arm draped lovingly over his heaving chest. He could feel his hands trembling, his heart racing. He felt panicked.

A look at the clock told him it was seven thirty in the morning: He'd been sleeping for just over five hours.

"Go back to sleep," Hilde uttered groggily, and Duo felt thankful for her company.

He felt thankful.

He felt panic.

With an angry curse, Duo gently removed Hilde's arm and rose from the bunk. The Quell had worn off too soon, had caused him nightmares and anxiety. Certainly Quatre would be awake by now, Heero, too, if Duo knew any better. Perhaps Quatre could adjust the dosages. Perhaps Heero would help him get started on the system early. Plus, there was still the matter of viewing the video footage. At any rate, there was too much work to do to waste on sleep.

On his way from the room, Duo scooped the makeshift helmet into his arms.

Expectedly, he found Quatre awake and bustling around the office of his medical docker, oblivious to the fact that he even had a visitor. Duo watched as Quatre moved to and fro, shuffling papers and jotting down notes. It seemed that he had some urgent business. But then Quatre turned toward the door and gave the slightest jump, and his upbeat expression dropped like a stone.

"You look terrible," Quatre said, and at once he dropped the papers and ushered Duo inside to a seat. "Did something happen?"

"No," Duo replied, setting the helm down between his feet. "Nothing happened, had a nightmare, anxiety. I think it wore off too soon."

Quatre's face screwed up with confusion, and he walked across the room to produce a small stenographer's pad. "I recorded standard dosages for your height and weight," he argued. "It should've been good for at least twenty-four hours. You made it…" he checked his watch, "Twelve?"

Duo shrugged. "Bump it up."

Quatre plopped down in the chair opposite and rested his chin on his palm. "I can't just bump it up."

"Yes you can."

"Not without knowing how it'll affect you. Not without knowing the dangers."

Duo waved Quatre's concern away and leaned back comfortably in the chair. "Two doses a day, once in the morning and once in the evening alongside pain medication," he recalled. "That's what we decided they did to me. That's what, double the standard?"

"Provided they were using the standard," Quatre affirmed. He sounded hesitant.

"They had to have been using the standard at least. You told me all about how this stuff works, remember? And in the clinical trials you cited you said that people only got crazy when they were given double the standard dosage or higher."

"I'm not trying to make you crazy," Quatre said, and now he sounded offended.

Duo halted at this and eyed Quatre carefully. If he was truthful with himself, he didn't want to fall into any category that could be labeled "crazy" either. All he valued was the numbness that the Quell provided. The fact that its effects played directly into what the military wanted for his trial was mere happy coincidence.

"Bump up to 200%," Duo said after a while. "If we say the standard dose lasted twelve hours, then two times the standard should last twenty-four. That's simple math."

Quatre looked like he was weighing the logic carefully. "You know I don't like this," he said, and it seemed that it was as much a question as it was a statement.

Duo nodded all the same and said, "I know."

With that, Quatre rose to fetch the supplies.

Half an hour later, with renewed and altogether synthetic confidence, Duo boarded the Peacemillion via the docking tunnel to search for Heero.

The search was less investigation and more prediction, as Duo found Heero immediately in the workroom, where he presently appeared to be oiling the monitor hinges in a way that could only be described as loving. This was the way Duo recalled Heero being with his machines: Neurotically attentive to detail.

"Good morning," Duo said in a bright tone that sounded to him entirely false. Heero looked up and grunted his hello, and Duo took that as permission to approach. As he neared, Heero stopped his work and watched inquisitively, and Duo waved the visor. "I got it done about two thirty this morning," Duo explained, and he relinquished the helm to Heero, who examined it thoroughly. "The cable hookup is in the top of the helmet, here, so the cords should just stick out. I figured it would be preferable to having the cords come out the back, as I'll be able to lay my head against the…"

Never a morning person, Heero turned away mid-sentence. This, Duo knew from too many early mornings, was Heero's cue to shut up and get on with business.

"Did you have a late night?"

Another grunt signaled the affirmative.

Duo watched as Heero retrieved the remaining bundle of monitor cables and began expertly feeding them into the helmet's wiring compartment.

"This will take a while," Heero said at last. "You might just go grab some breakfast while you wait."

Duo nodded and moved toward the door, but stopped short with his hand on the opening mechanism. "Hey, did Quatre talk to you about—"

"The video is ready to go whenever you want it," Heero replied curtly. "I uploaded it to our server so you can access it freely." Then, uncharacteristically, Heero looked up with an expression of great concern. "Just be careful."

Duo nodded. Then he left.

ф

It was well into the afternoon before Duo felt prepared to watch the video recording of M-204's destruction. He'd long since located the file, had opened it in a viewing program but paused on a scene of space just before the action began, a scene in which he could see all the players in still frame.

He didn't want to watch it. He knew he had to.

He sat in his comfortable computer chair with his left elbow propped on the desk, right hand resting on the mouse, maneuvering the pointer back and forth over the play button, considering again the option of not watching. But the court would require him to have seen the video and would require him to make a statement about the events it recorded. Refusal to watch was refusal to admit what had happened, and Duo and everyone else in the world knew as fact what had happened. The damage was done. Failure to acknowledge such a truth would never help.

Hilde sat behind him patiently, watching over his shoulder as he inwardly debated, but she did so without words or judgment. In fact, she had accepted his request to be there openly, almost happily, and had told him that she would gladly be present but quiet while he watched. He took slight comfort in knowing she was there if he needed her. He hoped he wouldn't need the support, but he knew eventually he would.

At last, Duo clicked the button, and the video sprang into motion.

Distantly he could see clusters of instantaneous explosions, flames licking away oxygen and fuel before being extinguished by the vacuum of space. He watched tiny specks of light, the mobile dolls and ESUN military vessels, darting about, engaged in heated combat. Deep inside, Duo knew that he had been remotely piloting those mobile dolls. The way they moved was too similar to the way he would have moved a mobile suit. He could predict where they would go with eerie accuracy, could almost remember the readouts displaying the positions of the military fighters, could see the icons representing the mobile dolls on the monitors in the cockpit.

Duo could hear screaming. Heero had told him the video was soundless—for better or for worse—and so Duo knew these noises to be coming from somewhere in his subconscious. Yet he heard them all the same, shrill and terrified and altogether familiar. He'd heard them before, so many times. He saw Helen again, and shook the thought out of his mind.

When the enormous gray-white vessel loomed into the picture, Duo's stomach dropped out. He felt his hands begin to shake. The time was growing near. The camera focused on the ship for a moment too long, watched it move in front of the distant colony before panning away, and for a brief moment Duo caught a glimpse of the mobile suit he knew as his own in the frame.

"That's me…" he heard himself whisper, and caught himself leaning closer to the monitor. He heard Hilde shift on the bunk behind him, ready to move.

And then the camera shook, the frame jumped from the mobile suit back to the ship, and Duo saw the flash of explosive propellant, watched the missiles flying through the hull of Elliot DeSchepper's suddenly lightless warship, watched some of the intact missiles pierce and fly on by. The fireball created by the ship was larger than he imagined the laws of physics would allow, no doubt fed by an enormous oxygen reserve, and then the ship was gone. But Duo was watching the missiles, following their trajectory toward the colony's core. He squinted at the picture, barely able to keep his eyes on it.

And then the missiles collided.

The colony's explosion, objectively speaking, was a marvel. Starting from the core, a long line of synchronized and perfectly symmetrical explosions rippled outward down the long arm of the colony toward its great circular head, where Duo knew the colonists lived. For a brief moment the circle stopped spinning, stopped production of its perfectly balanced and entirely false gravitational pull, and then it, too, exploded. Debris flew everywhere along a predictable path outward and with unbelievable speed. And perhaps it was Duo's imagination running loose, but he could swear he saw bodies among the wreckage.

He wondered if they knew the explosion was coming. He wondered if they had felt the colony rock off kilter with the power of the blasts. His mind ran wild with empathetic though entirely emotionless thoughts.

The video lingered on the explosion until it was spent, watched the debris floating into space, and then cut to blackness.

It was only then that Duo realized that both his hands were cupped over his nose and mouth, that he was holding his breath. He stared at the black screen for a long time knowing in his heart that he should have been devastated, but he felt nothing but heat in his eyes and a trace of moisture on his cheeks. Only the physical reactions had come through, leaving him nauseous and breathless, disbelieving what he'd seen. It all made sense now: The investigation, the accusations, the court martial. The shot had been too perfect, too spot on to be pure accident. Those missiles had pierced the colony's very core, absolutely centered to cause maximum damage. And who else but an expertly trained former gundam pilot could place such a shot?

He felt Hilde's hands on his shoulders, but she remained silently supportive. She gave a comforting squeeze, and Duo buried his face in his hands and shook his head against the unfathomable truth.

The shot had been perfect.

He had been aiming.