In the days immediately after viewing the video of M-204's destruction, Duo Maxwell remembered. Not all of his time in captivity came back, but he knew enough for certain to instruct the others in matters pertinent to the trial. He remembered upon his third injection that the Quell had been in his system for more than a week at full strength before the first time he was neutralized, and he remembered that the neutralizing agent had come in the form of a thick but potent gas, which he had breathed through the cockpit's ventilation system. This small and seemingly disconnected piece of information gave Quatre a foundation for research, and allowed him to find that neutralizing the drug instantaneously had a drastically different and much more potent affect than allowing it to wear off naturally. This note was added to the files.

As he recalled these things, Duo wrote. He often sat in the galley, in his bunk, anywhere that was quiet, staring into outer space and scrawling the memories down in the journal Quatre had given him, with addendums and notes after the fact: Who he should speak to about the details, what impact they might have on the trial, how certain he was of their validity. But he had yet to speak up about the experience he'd had while viewing the footage of the colony's destruction.

He had remembered firing intentionally, making the conscious decision to pull the trigger to release the mobile suit's missiles. He'd deployed the most powerful weapon the suit had had equipped, an option meant as a last resort, on his first attack. He had known the missiles to be powerful, and yet he had still fired with the colony in full view. He remembered that feeling, but he did not remember what he had been seeing.

Duo had been so distressed by the realization that as soon as he stood from his chair he'd fainted, had dropped like a stone, and when he came to, disoriented on the floor, he made Hilde promise not to tell. It had been the first thing out of his mouth: "You can't tell anyone that this happened. Promise me." It wasn't that he'd been embarrassed by the event, but that he knew the others would worry themselves sick if they discovered what had happened.

Hilde never said a word, but the others still knew something was wrong.

Presently Duo sat in the empty galley, curled backward in a chair with his back against the table, staring out the great bay window into the emptiness beyond with Quatre's journal in his hands. He thumbed at the pages absently and without any real intent to look at them. He did not avert his eyes when Howard straddled the chair adjacent.

"Have you packed your things?" Howard asked. "It's getting late."

Duo regarded the journal and nodded. "Everything's ready."

An Earth-bound shuttle would be leaving in the tiny hours of the next morning to deliver Duo and his company to the McCarthy Air and Space Force Base. Everyone had been busy making last minute preparations for the trial, writing reports and filing paperwork, scripting testimony and practicing their arguments. No one could predict how the trial might go, but all were doing the best they could to ensure success.

"Are you ready?"

Duo felt his face curl into an expression of indecision. The emphasis had not gone unnoticed. He was as ready as he would ever be, at least physically speaking, and yet a flutter erupted in his stomach whenever he thought of boarding the shuttle. He'd not been out of the Peacemillion since being placed in stasis. This would be his first public appearance post-detonation, and the notion of being bombarded by journalists and press representatives was unwelcome at best. The way Heero talked, the journalists had been absolutely savage of late.

"You know, it's okay to say no to these things," Howard continued, and when Duo shot a glance his way he noticed the old man's eyes on the window. "You're allowed to be unprepared."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Duo replied. He folded his arms comfortably behind his head and joined Howard in admiring the view.

"It means that I've known you long enough to see through your bullshit and bluster."

Duo let go an automatic though eerily cool laugh, and it was Howard's turn to glance over. The old man seemed distraught, though whether it was by the sound of laughter or the unexpected response, Duo did not know. "I reiterate," Duo said lightly, an attempt at levity, "what's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not going to beat around the bush here, kid," Howard said flatly, seriously, and Duo took note. The smile dropped from his face immediately. "You're not right since you watched that video. I wasn't born yesterday. I want you to tell me what happened…"

"Nothing happened," Duo insisted.

"It's just not right," Howard sighed, defeated, and this drew Duo's full attention. He'd wanted to dodge the discussion without issue. He wanted to avoid causing Howard any further stress—God knew how much he'd already endured—but now it seemed Duo's evasiveness had made things worse.

"What's not right?"

"You're not a man that lies, and no matter how much of that poison you've got running through your system, I know you better than to think that's changed. I know you can fake a smile. I know you can act like everything's okay, and you can do that more naturally than anyone I've ever known, but you can't fool me. I know when it's not real. I know when you're faking it."

Duo said nothing initially, as he knew that any response he might give could be taken as back talk. So he paused to think very carefully before asking, "What tipped you off, then?"

"Hilde."

Beneath his breath, Duo swore. Her silence had been too good to be true, and yet Duo wasn't angry at all. It had been out of line to ask her to stay quiet about what she'd seen. After all, she had been paler than he'd been when he woke up. He'd mortified her. "What'd she tell you?"

"Honestly? Nothing," Howard said. "But I've seen the way she's walking around here all shifty like she's got something to hide. And it's not a good hiding, I mean to say. Not hiding a good thing like getting grandbabies on this ship. She looks skittish. She looks a little sick."

"At least she kept her word," Duo said with a weak shrug. Now Howard had said something on the matter, Duo felt terrible for putting Hilde in such a horrible position. He resolved to apologize to her as soon as he could. He would make up for it.

"I'm going to ask you one more time to tell me what happened after you watched that video."

Duo thought for a while, wondering how best to downplay what had happened. And then with a heavy sigh, he said plainly, "I passed out."

Howard's face screwed up in a mix of concern and disbelief. It took a moment for him to compose himself. "You fainted?"

"Yep. Dropped like a rock."

"Why?"

Duo shrugged and thumbed at the pages of the journal again, staring out the window contemplatively. He had yet to figure out exactly what had caused the episode, and he did not want to tell Howard any lies. He could speculate all he wanted, but such lines of conversation never seemed to deescalate a situation. "I don't know."

"You're lying again."

"I really don't know why," Duo said, an irritated but straightforward edge to his voice. "I can throw a million conjectures out there if you want me to, but I couldn't tell you which would be right. Is that what you want me to do? I stood up too fast. I was in shock. My blood pressure skyrocketed. Hell, it could've tanked, I don't know; I wasn't hooked to a monitor. Fight or flight kicked in and my body decided to do neither. What do you want me to say to appease you here, Howard?"

"I want you to tell me what you felt when you watched that colony explode."

The answer had been so plain, so simply stated. Howard's voice was completely neutral, and the words caught Duo like a slap in the face. The sudden shift in the conversation's tone took him so off guard that he stared dumbly at the old man, shocked and mildly confused. It was the first time in many years that Howard had said something like that.

"I didn't feel anything," Duo said at last, and honestly.

"There's my boy."

"I should have felt something."

"Yeah, you should have."

"It's been weird. Since Quatre doped me up again I've been noticing sensations that I never recognized before. Now that I don't have real emotional reactions to things it's like I've become more aware of what my body is doing. Someone says something that would ordinarily make me angry and I can feel my throat getting tight and my face getting hot. Someone says something that makes me nervous I know my stomach drops out; my hands start shaking, and my heart races. I never noticed these things before. It's like my brain has been disconnected from the rest of me, and my body is acting on its own." Duo gently placed the journal on his lap and folded his hands atop it, contemplating. All the while Howard remained silent, listening. "I don't know what it means."

"I think it means you need to listen to what your body is telling you."

"Then what's the point of the Quell?" Duo pleaded. "If I'm supposed to act on these physical impulses in the absence of real feelings…"

Howard shrugged. "The point of it, as far as I know, is to make you crazy in the cockpit, to work with that simulation Heero got running. No one ever said that you had to be so damn robotic about everything just because you don't feel a reaction. If your body tells you you're mad, speak up about it. If your body tells you that you're scared, back off, even if you don't really feel it. Even if you're faking it, you've got to act like a human being."

Duo sat for a stretch, staring at his hands and fidgeting. It was a nervous reaction he'd never remembered developing. "I was terrified."

"Of what?" Howard prompted. "The truth of it? The scale?"

Duo shook his head hard to clear his mind, pressed his palms flat against his eyes. He had to say the words. He had to admit to someone what he'd thought he'd saw.

"Are you all right?"

"I aimed for the colony," Duo said at last. "I was terrified of myself."

Duo let his hands drop back into his lap, and both men stared out of the window in lingering silence. Duo wondered in his mind exactly what Howard was thinking, about exactly what he had just admitted to. Certainly there would be repercussions, and yet the old man had not so much as flinched when Duo said his true thoughts on the matter. The pensive look on Howard's face meant that he was thinking hard.

"You're a good man," Howard said after a stretch. "You're an excellent pilot, a genius engineer and mechanic. You're dedicated and loyal and hard-working… But you're a good man most of all, and there's not a person aboard this ship that wants to see you in trouble. God knows you've managed to pull each of us out of a bind in our time." Howard paused and looked at Duo in earnest. "What I'm saying here is that you're not a person to be terrified of."

"Not in the past, maybe," Duo argued in a small voice. He couldn't bring himself to make eye contact. "But now, things have changed."

"Nothing's changed, Duo."

"Everything's changed!"

"No." Howard's voice was soft, smaller than Duo's own had been moments before. But it caused Duo to pause and listen. "The only thing that's different between now and six months ago is that we're all a little older and a little wiser. You? Do you want to know the difference in you?" Howard paused here, but Duo made no response. "You're in the spotlight now. The only thing that's changed with you is that you're center stage, and you don't know how to deal with the attention. You spent your whole life learning to be the gray man, you perfected being gray, and now you've been cast in bright neon light and you don't know what to do. You've lost all your self-confidence."

"I destroyed a colony," Duo protested meekly. "I murdered millions of people. It was cold blooded."

"No, it wasn't," Howard said. "You keep talking about it like you made the decision consciously, like you were sitting in the commander's chair giving orders to lock on and fire. True, you may have aimed in the area of the colony, but I'm confident that you weren't aiming at the colony. Do you understand the difference?"

"No."

"If what Quatre said about that drug is true, you were out of your goddamned mind. You were probably hallucinating, but we don't know for sure and won't know for another couple of days, not until you get back in there and show us all. I don't know what you were seeing, but it sure as Hell wasn't that colony, because the Duo Maxwell I know would never have pulled the trigger knowing even a single innocent person was in the way."

"Maybe I'm not the guy you thought you knew."

Howard shrugged. "Maybe not, but it's a nice fantasy to believe that after spending fifteen or more years around one another we'd have it figured out."

Again the two fell into silence. Duo contemplated what Howard had said and wondered if he was indeed being too hasty to jump to conclusions. The video had been so clear, though, had shown as plain as day the trajectory of the missiles. Yet Duo could not remember what he had seen. The pictures would not come back. He wasn't sure he wanted them to.

"It's about time we got to bed," Howard said. "But I'm going to ask you a personal question before I go."

Duo grunted his affirmation.

"Do you think that a life of doing real evil can be fixed through one good deed, no matter how good?"

Automatically, Duo said, "No."

"Then why is it that you believe a life of doing real good can be ruined by one bad deed, no matter how bad?"

Again, Howard had rendered Duo speechless. He wanted to argue, but as Howard stood and gave him a firm pat on the back and a squeeze of the shoulder, Duo could say absolutely nothing. How could he refute the logic?

"Get some rest, son. You've got a long day ahead of you."

The door to the galley hissed closed, and Duo was alone in the dark.

ф

Duo returned to his bunk at one thirty in the morning to find Hilde sleeping in his bed, sprawled out and unmoving. Though she had been on ship for less than a week, the idea of her there had become normal and comforting, and it seemed as if the years they had spent apart had passed in only hours. He had missed her more than he'd realized, and perhaps it was the conversation he'd just had with Howard, but it seemed that in this very moment he appreciated her more than he ever had before.

With a glance at the clock, Duo changed and gently folded Hilde over, crawled beneath the sheets beside her, and wrapped her in his arms. She was warm and alive, and she stirred just slightly at his touch. She mumbled something incoherent, something sweet sounding and sleepy, and pressed her face into his chest.

Though he lay with his eyes closed for what felt like ages, Duo never fell asleep. His mind raced with thoughts that were too big for his mind, with implications and fears and desires that he could not reconcile. The trial would begin the next evening. He'd forgotten to shine his dress shoes. Hilde's body was pressing against his in a way he'd not felt in far too long. He could not get comfortable, mentally or physically, so he simply lay there thinking, and when the bedside alarm sounded at four o'clock he turned it off without a flinch.

Hilde stirred beneath him at the sound. Next Duo knew her great gray eyes had met his, and she wore a lopsided grin that gave no indication of the impending doom that Duo felt.

"Hey," she said. Her face was entirely too close to his.

With his index finger beneath her chin, Duo brought her face to his and kissed Hilde deeply. A night of pent-up frustration would stand for no less. She did not resist, not even slightly, and for a time the two lost each other in a blissful moment filled with familiar scents and touches. For a time, the trial was lost, the colony forgotten, and she gave way beneath his hands.

And then the door opened.

"Well, it's good to see you're feeling productive."

The kiss ended with Heero's dripping sarcasm. Duo could not remember at what point he and Hilde had moved into such a compromising position, he half atop her, one hand at the small of her back, the other arm around the back of her neck, but there was no hope in refuting the conclusions Heero had drawn.

"I was sent to make sure you were awake and getting ready," Heero said from the door, and Duo could hear the smirk in his voice. "I'll leave you to it, but you'd better be quick. We've got a shuttle to catch at 0500."

And then the door opened and closed, and Heero was gone, an awkward silence left in his wake.

Hilde was out of bed and dressed by the time Duo felt decent enough to follow. He watched her move with purpose around the room, gathering items and stuffing them into bags. When at last he rose from the bunk he did so sluggishly, detached from himself, and auto-piloted to the closet.

"Are you all right?" He heard Hilde call.

"I'd be more all right if people would stop asking me that question."

If Hilde took offense, Duo did not notice. Now it was her turn to watch him as he produced his formal dress uniform. He realized at once that she had never seen it before, she had never seen him in a military capacity at all, and she scrutinized every inch of the clothing as he put it on.

"I never thought that look would suit you," she said as he knotted a navy tie around his neck. "I think I was wrong, though."

There was something in the way Hilde spoke that caused Duo to pause, and when he looked to her he saw that there was something in the way she was eyeing him that indicated she had not been completely deterred by Heero's entrance. In one motion he'd grabbed his woolen jacket, put it on, and began buttoning the brass fasteners as he approached the bed. Then he sat beside her, his hands folded on the creases of his pants, and he stared at the floor.

"Did I make you uncomfortable?" she asked at once.

"No," Duo replied, and he shifted slightly. "I just need to tell you that I'm sorry. It seems like I'm saying that to you a lot lately, but I really am. I should never have asked you to keep that secret…"

"That you fainted?" Hilde asked, her voice thick with concern. "Did something happen?"

Duo nodded. "I spoke with Howard last night. He knew something was up, and I'd be dumb to assume that nobody else has realized it, too. I told him outright what happened. It was wrong for me to try to keep that from everyone."

Hilde shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I'm just happy to be here helping in any way I can. It makes me feel useful again."

Duo stood, slightly refreshed by Hilde's forgiveness, and stared down at her. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or perhaps it had been the night he'd spent pressed against her followed by those few moments of unrestrained lust, but before he could stop himself he'd said, "I love you," and he had meant it.