Hi again everyone!

I'm back with another update (please don't kill me that it's not for "Job Interview" as I am working on the next chapter of that as well. I will be writing a fair bit this weekend but I can't guarantee that there will be an update before next weekend as I have exams coming up and they're going to be tough!

Anyway, I just want to say thank you to anyone that has made it this far – thank you for reading and I would really appreciate any feedback that you can give me. Despite Job Interview being the most popular of my stories, this is my vision of what could have happened after the series ended and as such i feel that it is closer to the true characters (or at least i hope so!)

On to the story – enjoy!

Aftermath – events so far

The Eve Wars are over and the Gundam pilots are struggling to live in the tenuous peace that has resulted. A civilian life seeming impossible, they end up working with the Preventors and Relena in trying to hold the peace together, despite the numerous political groups and former military factions trying to reshape the new world in their own image.

All of the pilots suffer from nightmares of the things they saw and did during wartime and they each react in different ways in trying to deal with the aftermath of their experiences.

Heero and Relena are both pouring everything into holding the peace together with Relena acting as the world's symbol of peace while Heero works behind the scenes within Preventors alongside Trowa and Wufei. Wufei is now in charge of the Preventors internal security and seems to be dealing the best with a new life. Trowa had returned to engineering, satisfied to be a small part of the Preventors machine unless called upon to do otherwise.

Duo lives with Hilde who has cut herself off from the military world completely, instead running a small scrap business which Duo helps her out with whenever he isn't required by the Preventors. As a method of stress-relief Duo begins tinkering with some of the scrap in their yard, missing his Gundam so much that he begins to construct a mobile suit. The possible consequences of his actions don't occur to him until Hilde finds out what he has been doing. At the beginning of the story he admits what has happened to Heero, triggering a sequence of events which results in Heero reaching the conclusion that something more has to be done to preserve the peace, namely resurrecting the Zero system and using it as a way to predict and prepare for possible revolutions.

Despite the reservations of the people surrounding him Heero succeeds in reviving the system, but he's having a hard time mastering a system that takes advantage of every chink in his emotional armour.

This chapter focuses on Duo and Hilde and the issues surrounding Duo's reconstruction of a mobile suit.

"Hil? You in?"

Duo chucked his keys on the counter carelessly and pulled his cap off to hang it on a peg by the door. He frowned. The house was dark and he fought off the unease that besieged him when he heard no reply from his housemate.

"Hilde?" He raised his voice a little more, already looking for signs that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Old habits died hard and they had not yet been living in peace for enough years for him to have forgotten his training.

His hand went to the holster at his hip, but he restrained the urge the draw the gun. Hilde had once been a soldier too, but it didn't mean that she was happy to come up against a gun in her own house. She had given up asking him to take it off when he came in, knowing that he would fidget nervously, every sound driving his hand to his hip with the force of habit. A split second could make the difference between living and dying in a fight and Duo's training was so ingrained into his psyche that he was unable to relax unless he had a weapon within reach. It was unhealthy and Duo knew it, but he could never forget how quickly he had lost everything that was important to him and how different it might have been if he had been able to fight.

Hilde understood; she too had been helpless to do anything when her family was killed. Joining Oz had been her way of ensuring that she would never be helpless again, but after what she had seen in the war she believed that Relena's ideal of a weapon-free world was their only option.

Duo didn't press her on that point; she knew as well as he did that peace without weapons was an impossibility but she wanted to believe that it could happen. She was just like himself, the other Gundam pilots and any other soldier who had seen enough of the conflict to realise how pointless it was; they didn't want to fight anymore. The world had seen enough pain so even if a perfect peace was an unattainable dream it wasn't fair to take that dream away from them.

Relena knew the hopeless battle she was fighting but she had never considered giving it up. She fought so hard that Duo sometimes found himself believing that she could do it, despite all he knew to the contrary.

His fingers caressed the hilt of his gun as he rounded the corner into the kitchen. Still no sign of Hilde, but there was an abandoned mug of hot chocolate on the kitchen table, the steam rising from it still visible in the faint light from the window.

Duo moved through the room soundlessly and exited into the hall on the other side. He could hear nobody but himself in the house. He had been living with Hilde for so long now that he could pick out the patterns in her movement and her breathing; follow the flickering of emotions across her face and know how much she left unsaid. A sound outside drew his attention and he pulled the hem of his jacket over the hilt of the gun before grabbing the hot chocolate off the table and stepping outside.

Since Hilde's discovery of his "stress-relieving" project he felt as if they were on shaky ground with each other. She had placed trust in him beyond what he deserved, almost from their very first meeting and she had accepted his odd paranoid habits even when she didn't like them. Duo didn't even know what had possessed him; he hadn't set out to build a mobile suit, much as he missed his Gundam. It had almost been unconscious, something to distract him from the inevitability of another war.

Hilde stood with her back to the house, her face expressionless as she watched an unmarked truck reverse up the drive. Duo handed her the mug and she curled her fingers around it to combat the sharp drop in temperature that came with the sun setting.

"They're here to pick it up"

Duo had moved up to stand beside her and he looked across sharply.

Hilde met his eyes and clarified, "Your little project"

Duo held her gaze for a second longer searching for anything that would give away how she was feeling. It unnerved him to see her so blank, to see the mask she had created to hide her emotions behind when she killed during the war. It made him want to shake her and make her bring back the woman he knew. Even anger would be better than the carefully constructed neutrality she was presenting him with now.

Duo took a cautious step towards her, "Hilde..."

There was a flash of...something and she stepped back away from him before spinning on her heel to go inside.

"I don't feel like cooking tonight so I'm going to order a takeaway. Ask those two if they want anything"

Duo was still watching as the door slammed shut slightly harder than was necessary then he let out a frustrated sigh and pushed his hair back from his face. Somehow he would make things right...and the first step was waiting for him.

Trowa and Wufei were both already examining what he had built when he arrived. He had known it would be them – who else could be trusted with the secret? Still he felt a flare of protectiveness as Wufei stepped closer to look at the work on one hand.

Trowa spoke without looking at him, Very impressive"

Wufei shook his head as he turned towards them, "If this is what you could do with a bunch of scrap we've got to worry about what's being done elsewhere"

He looked at Duo closely, "No other projects we should know about while we're here?"

Duo shook his head with an effort. He knew that Gundams could not be allowed to exist if they wished for peace, but the thought of his project being turned into scrap once again was harder to swallow than he had anticipated.

"Does it work?" Trowa had approached the suit again, his curiosity getting the best of him.

Duo nodded, "As much as it could be expected to at this stage"

"Live ammo?"

Wufei's question was quiet and Duo dropped his eyes before nodding tightly. He could feel the eyes of his fellow Gundam pilots on him and he shifted under the uncomfortable scrutiny.

"It's not loaded, but it could handle it"

Perversely he felt a frisson of pride that was answered when Trowa and Wufei began to fire off different questions about the suit's capabilities. The conversation became animated and for a few minutes it was as if they were fifteen again and preparing to battle for the colonies. Trowa was the first to catch himself and the conversation trailed off into an awkward silence.

Surprisingly, Trowa was the first to break it.

"You're not the only one who misses your Gundam"

Wufei closed his eyes and hissed through his teeth as if he were in pain, and Duo couldn't bring himself to make any reply to Trowa's bald statement. He thought of Hilde and the pain thousands of people were still bearing because of war. He thought of the endless cycle of death and destruction and how easy it would be to tumble back into it. Slowly he dragged himself back to reality.

Wufei's hand fell heavily on his shoulder in an uncharacteristic show of sympathy.

"It's a shame but we'll do what needs to be done"

Duo forced a smile, "At least this time we're all on the same side"

Without further ado, they began to load the parts onto the back of the truck, their respectful silence saying more than any words could.

By the time Duo stepped back inside it was already late.

The house was dark, his Chinese takeaway neatly stacked on the kitchen table and long since cold. Hilde had obviously already eaten, the spicy smell still hanging in the air despite her plate and chopsticks already having been washed up. Duo sighed and debated heating up the food but he couldn't muster an appetite. Not so long ago Hilde would have come outside and dragged him in to eat, or, even better, brought all of it outside and eaten next to him, her body a long line of warmth down one side of his own. All that had changed when she had found what he had been working on and now she seemed like a ghost simply floating through her daily routine.

They hadn't properly spoken since their argument and Duo wasn't sure how much more he could handle of having Hilde avoid him.

Her bedroom door was closed tightly, a sure sign that she didn't want to be disturbed. Usually it lay ajar even when she was changing as she trusted Duo to knock. Duo paused and laid his forehead against the smooth grain of the wood, listening to Hilde breathing just a few feet away. He wasn't going to let it go on for any longer.

Duo pushed down gently on the door handle and slid the door open quietly, before padding across the carpet and perching on the edge of Hilde's bed, the mattress sinking slightly below his weight.

She knew he was there, he could tell from her breathing that she wasn't asleep but she didn't speak. Duo let out a deep breath; it was okay. He didn't need her to speak to him just yet as long as she would listen to him. In a way it might be easier to drop his mask and tell her the truth if he could do it in the dark, without having to watch the inevitable questions in her eyes.

It was hard to begin, but he swallowed and forced the words out.

"Hilde. I know you've heard all you want to hear from me about this already but I want to apologize again. I'm sorry. I was too much of an idiot to see what I was doing." A faint edge of venom crept into his voice, aimed at himself.

"I'm pathetic, a soldier who can't accept that his war is over. If nothing else this whole fiasco has made me see that."

He paused, "I want a future Hil. I want to be able to live in the peace I helped to create. I want to be able to stop carrying a gun, knowing that the people important to me will be safe without it."

His voice became even quieter, "Maybe I can't right now...but someday...I will. On that someday I want you to be with me...so I'll do anything to show you I can be trusted again"

For a second it seemed as if they had both stopped breathing and the room was silent. Hilde turned in the bed and Duo imagined her reaching her hand towards him but she stopped before they touched. He stood, refusing to glance back because he knew that he wouldn't be able to leave if he saw her tears.

"Goodnight Hilde"

He felt her nod rather than saw it, could hear the tears in her voice when she spoke but she didn't call him back, "Night Duo"

He stood outside her door, fists clenched as he listened to her crying. She was only a few feet away but it may as well have been miles for all of the difference it made. Eventually she became quieter, her breathing slowing as she slipped into sleep and Duo relaxed his stance before moving down the hall and shutting himself in his own room. His mask was in tatters and he knew that he wouldn't sleep. Instead he would do something...anything to make right what he had done wrong.

Hilde woke with a strange feeling of displacement as if something were wrong but she couldn't put her finger on what exactly it was. She lay still for a moment, going over the events of the past week in her head.

At first she hadn't been able to believe her eyes when she had found Duo's project...it was unmistakeably a mobile suit but what she thought she knew kept on interfering with what she was seeing. She couldn't believe that it could be a mobile suit, let alone a Gundam. With the peace in such a delicate condition, something like that suit would be enough to push it over the edge and throw them all back into the hellish turmoil of war.

She hadn't thought...she was just furious. How could Duo risk peace when he had spent most of his life fighting for it? She knew that he wasn't adjusting well to living in peace, she had known that he hadn't intended any harm with his tinkering...she had known it all even before she saw the shocked widening of his eyes as she yelled at him. She should have been more observant, she should have tried harder to make sure that he was kept busy and away from his brooding thoughts about war.

Hilde sighed, an angry exhalation of breath, and threw the covers back, baring her skin to the cold morning air. Once in the bathroom she scrubbed all traces of the last nights tears from her cheeks and stared at her reflection in the mirror, looking for the strength that had made her fight for survival after her family was killed. She needed that strength and so did Duo, if his words from the previous night were anything to go by. He didn't let his façade drop very often and it made Hilde's heart ache every time he did so she had to become the support he had been for her in the last days of the war.

She dressed quickly and knocked on his door before opening it to find the bed empty and unslept in. Hilde found him in the yard, already soaked in sweat as he moved various parts into an order that only made sense to him.

"Duo. What's wrong?"

He turned to face her as she approached and Hilde was taken aback by the desperation burning in his eyes.

"I have to get rid of all of it"

He turned and went back to his work, only pausing again when Hilde touched him on the shoulder, "What do you mean?"

"I have to get rid of all of it", he repeated, "Anything and everything that could tempt me again"

Hilde looked around and the piles began to make sense. He was gathering up anything that had come from a mobile suit or that could be used in their manufacture, but he was being more thorough than she thought he needed to be. She frowned, "But Duo, some of this stuff can be used for other things too."

He shook his head without even bothering to look in her direction, "It doesn't matter. Its safer melted down"

Hilde nodded behind his back and pulled her work gloves on. Without another word she set to work, shoulder to shoulder with her most important person. If it was for Duo she would do anything she could to help.

"And why should we listen to someone who has no knowledge of politics? Why should we take the advice of someone who has gained her position because of who her parents were?"

Relena resisted the urge to knead her temples to chase away the headache that had been her constant companion since the night before. Taking a deep breath she prepared to argue an issue that she had already dealt with on numerous occasions.

"Honourable Speaker, I must interrupt."

She stood to gain the attention of the other politicians, " I may not have a university degree qualifying me in all matters political but I do have one very important thing. It is the same thing that everyone else in this world has – experience. The experience of seeing what war can do and the desire to never see it again.

But, unlike many, I am in a position where I can do something to prevent such a war ever breaking out again. Do you blame me for using my influence, however it may have been obtained?

I am well aware that there are many who would rather I stepped down from my position as Foreign Minister. But I am also aware of the public who wish me to remain in power. Even if that wish has nothing to do with my own qualities but rather what the Peacecraft family symbolised, I will not stand down. The people need a symbol of peace and I will be what they need. However, I refuse to be a dumb figurehead who will idly stand by while preparations for war are made by the very people who should be upholding peace!"

The chamber descended into uproar as Relena took her seat once again, her cheeks flushed with righteous indignation. She had been working on holding her tongue more during official meetings but it made her blood boil to sit in the same chamber as a number of men who she knew were planning to overthrow the peace.

Some within the Preventors saw it as stupidity to make them aware of the fact that she knew something, but she simply saw it as a warning which might make them reconsider their actions. She knew Heero would disagree, use it as yet another example of how she placed too much trust in the good nature of human beings. She could already imagine Une's complaint that she had once again made the job of protecting her a more difficult one but it all seemed unimportant when pleace next to the bigger picture.

Relena stopped her train of thought and tuned back into what the speaker was saying. She would worry about her job first, then her life.

Heero slipped his headphones off and sighed. He could see anger reflected in many faces in the chamber, but their voices were now blessedly muted.

Relena had always spoken her mind and time in politics hadn't changed that. It was an admirable quality, one that gained her public support. The people saw a politician with real heart, not someone who was in it for the money or to increase their own power. But it wasn't Relena's supporters that Heero worried about...it was her enemies. And as the political situation grew ever more delicate it seemed that there were more enemies appearing everyday.

He frowned as he looked around the chamber; according to their intelligence operations more than half of the people there were involved in their own bids for power or at least activities that appeared suspicious. What remained to be seen, however, was if and when any of their plans would be initiated. Not only Relena's life, but the peace they had fought so hard for could be at stake.

Heero consciously forced his hands to relax, as they had curled into fists as he listened to Relena making more enemies. He couldn't be with her every minute of everyday to make sure that she would be safe and he knew that advising caution in her speeches would make no difference. Relena was already too big a target; both the symbol of the fragile peace and the glue that held it together. Her disappearance had led to the Eve Wars and her death would be the obvious distraction for anyone hoping to throw the world back into chaos and reshape it as they saw fit. He knew that she saw the threat too, but she wouldn't let even the threats on her own life stand between her and peace.

Heero watched Relena on the screen for another long minute before shutting the computer down and sealing her image away in a corner of his brain for safekeeping.

He wouldn't let the Zero system continue using her against him; instead he would master the system once more and make it show him what he needed to keep her safe. Without her neither he nor the world could be at peace.

Hi again everyone and thanks for reading Please leave me a review and let me know what you think of the story as I would love to get some feedback– a massive thank you has to go to Ichikokitsunekoumori and Player Zero for reviewing my last chapter! Thank you – i really appreciate it!

The next chapter of this fic has already been drafted so I will be editing and polishing this weekend. I am also working on the second draft of the next chapter of Job Interview so keep an eye out for that too!

Thanks again for reading and hope to see you again soon!