Disclaimer - they're not mine! Sad but true…

Note: This is the longest chapter so far, and was definitely the hardest to write. I would really appreciate any comments. Hope it works... I've put in a few revisions, since I posted this - nothing major, just clarifying a couple of points…

Things We Don't Talk About:

In the therapist lottery, Wufei had hit the jackpot. He got the charming Dr. Zelie Blake, who believed in the healing power of hugs, and never sent him home without a small gift - usually a crystal or a CD of ocean music.

I get Dr. Julius Rabinowitz-Levi, who believes his god-given mission in life is to make me cry once a week.

My sessions are supposed to last a full hour, but I can usually manage to arrive a little bit late and then fritter away a few more minutes in taking off my coat and pouring myself a glass of water.

Today, I was actually a few minutes early, and Dr. R.L. was still with another client. The little room where we have these torture sessions doesn't offer much in the way of distractions; a couple of fairly comfortable chairs, a table holding a carafe of water, a glass and an unopened box of tissues. Sitting blandly on the chair he usually uses was the latest folder of my case notes, a somewhat battered cardboard file in bright orange, already starting to bulge slightly. I'd peeked inside on the rare occasions I'd been here first and determined he had horrible, cramped, crabby handwriting. I'd read all the little annotations he'd made on the inside cover; high suicide risk, severe emotional and psychological traumas, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, fear of abandonment, history of extreme violence...blah blah blah..

(Hello! Gundam Pilot. What do you expect?)

Whatever. I think Zechs is right about psychology being a load of codswallop. I mean, you have one little incident and straightaway they're analysing every nuance of your entire life, suspecting every paper cut is a botched attempt to slit your wrists. Oh, come on, give me a little credit here, please. With my particular skills, if I'd intended to kill myself I would have been able to do it properly.

'Good afternoon, Duo.' Oh, joy, here he was; the Chief Inquisitor in person. He looks harmless enough, I'll grant you; getting on in years, running to tubby around the middle, hair starting to thin a bit, dressed in the slightly shabby clothes that academic types like to wear, proving they've got more important things to think about than fashion. But, dear lord, he has the scariest eyebrows I've ever seen. They're gnarly, snarly thickets of grizzled hair and when he raises them, they do this scary little dance as all the hairs twist and twine into new positions around each other. I've had nightmares about them detaching from his face and chasing me all around the room.

This is usually the bit when we sit and stare at each other until I crack. We have an agreement that I have to confide something in every session, or he'll refuse to keep me as a patient. He'd never made any conditions about when exactly I have to do said confiding.

Today was a little different.

'I need to talk to you about something. If that's OK?'

'Really?' He practically bounced off his chair in the excitement of hearing that Duo Maxwell was willing to Open Up, looking like he'd just been given an unexpected Christmas present. Well, maybe not Christmas, since he's Jewish, but you get the picture, right?

'Mm. The thing is, Doc, it's really sensitive. I need to know that this is just between us.'

He actually looked a little hurt for a moment; yeah, right. There are things in my life that I don't tell my closest friends, but I'm supposed to tell this relative stranger just because he's got some degree or other, and then pay him huge amounts of money for the privilege. I'm not quite sure where any of that is supposed to encourage me to trust him. Then he was launching into a spiel on how he met the highest ethical standards of his profession and the safeguards that he used to protect patient confidentiality.

'So…anything I tell you here is totally confidential? Even if it's not just about me?'

You see where I'm going here? The thing is, Trowa hadn't exactly sworn me to secrecy, so, theoretically I could have just talked to Zechs. Except he's sort of involved, because he knows us all and he doesn't like Quatre, and I needed to talk to someone impartial. So I was actually prepared to talk to my therapist.

'Duo, you have my word, nothing that passes between us will ever leave this room.'

'Even if someone, hypothetically, tried to…torture you?'

'What? Is that…even a remote possibility?' Oops. Maybe shouldn't have said that. He was leaning forward now as if he wasn't sure whether to run or call for help. I was too scared to look at his face to see what the eyebrows were up to. Maybe I was overreacting a bit; even if Trowa was acting all weird, he probably wouldn't go around torturing elderly doctors.

'No. Of course not. Just a random query.'

'Ah. I see. Duo, what you need to talk about…is it related to something that happened during the war? When you were a prisoner?'

'I'm sorry?' I was clueless for a minute, then the penny dropped. Oh, right, shouldn't have mentioned the torture thing. Red rag, bull, all that. OK, head him away from the whole War Experiences topic.

'No! Nothing to do with that. The thing is, I have this friend….'

'Duo!' He slanted me one of those sorrowful 'why can't you trust me?' looks. 'You've been seeing me for over three years now. Don't you think you can admit to having problems without resorting to subterfuge?'

Oh, God, this was like trying to build a Gundam out of jelly. Deep breath, Duo. You need to talk about this to someone and there aren't a lot of other options.

'No, really, I do have a friend and he's having some serious problems. I thought you might be able to give me some advice on how to help him.'

'Hmm. Duo, it would be hardly ethical for me to offer advice on a person whom I've never met, who is not a client of mine, and about whom I know nothing but what you tell me. If you are truly worried about your friend, my suggestion would be for you to recommend him to seek professional help.'

Oh sure, drum up more business for your blood-sucking colleagues, why don't you?

Another deep breath. That didn't work so I took a long swallow of water as well.

'But - I'm really worried about him, and his partner, and I'm totally confused about what's happening with them, and I need to talk to someone who doesn't know either of them and can just - be objective about the situation. Does that make any sense?'

Well, that came out more.. honest than I'd intended but it apparently worked.

'Very well. But, Duo, you do realise I can hardly give a professional opinion in these circumstances.'

'I know that. I understand. I just need to - get my head around what's happening with them.' He gave me an encouraging nod. (Don't look at the eyebrows, Maxwell - no!)

'I take it your friends are having relationship problems then?'

'That's right. Tr - Triton has been going out with the same person for over seven years now, and they're the most perfect couple, seriously, but they're just going through a bit of a bad patch.'

'I see. His partner is male or female?'

'Um, a girl. She's called Cathy.' Shit, that was really scary, if I let myself think about it too much. It seemed a good idea to cloud their identities a bit, though; Tro and Quat have come up in quite a few of my sessions, so Dr. R.L. knows all about them.

'The thing is, Triton is Cathy's bodyguard as well as her boyfriend and…'I paused for a minute, thinking of the best way to put what came next.

'That must put something of a strain on the relationship, for a start.'

'What? No, I don't think so, actually. Not usually. But.. there was this party at, um, Cathy's house last summer….'

It had been one of the massive gatherings that Quatre is expected to host from time to time, for Winner family and friends and favoured employees. There'd been an orchestra and fireworks and people rampaging all over the grounds. At some point after dinner, the guys had managed to snatch a few minutes alone on the terrace, and when Trowa noticed someone approaching them, he'd been more irritated than alarme. Aarif Mansour was seventeen, the son of old family friends and had been dating Quat's niece Bahiyah for six months.

Trowa had seen the flash of lamplight on metal only just in time. Quat would have been shot at almost point-blank range, if Trowa hadn't shouldered him out of the way. Aarif had turned the gun on himself and somehow the whole disaster had been covered up as a 'tragic accident', a history of mental problems fabricated for the boy. Nobody wanted to publicise the Winner CEO narrowly escaping assassination from one of his own dinner guests.

Trowa, of course, had blamed himself for the whole thing. He'd become totally obsessed with Quat's safety, shooting at shadows and insisting on masterminding his boyfriend's every move. Recipe for disaster. I could imagine Tro in serious protective mode, could imagine all too easily how Quat would react to that, how he would hate the implication that he was unable to look after himself.

My best friend, of course, had rebelled eventually, evading Trowa's supervision one morning to go riding alone; Trowa finding him gone, had panicked and there'd been a blazing row when Quat eventually turned up.

Trowa had recited all of this as if he were reading a news bulletin, staring down at the grass as if he could see the words there but at this point he'd met my eyes for the first time and his voice was unsteady.

'You swore once, Duo, what you'd do to me if I ever hurt Quatre.'

'Oh God.' I wasn't sure that was even me speaking, the words seemed to be swooshing down a very long, wind-filled tunnel. 'You hit him.'

I think it was only the look in his eyes that stopped me from strangling him with my bare hands. That, and the fact that I knew he wouldn't resist. I wasn't quite sure what I planned to do when I launched myself across to him, but somehow we ended up clinging to each other in a fierce hug. Fuck. How had all this happened? Trowa Barton in my arms, looking not so much like death warmed up, as death left in cold storage before being flung into a snowdrift.

'You never said anything.' I whispered finally. 'Neither of you.'

'We were so scared, Duo. I'd never - never imagined I could hurt him. Not ever. Not in my worst nightmares. We couldn't tell anyone.'

'You never thought of ...getting help? Talking to a therapist or a doctor or something?'

God, I couldn't believe I'd just said that.

'That was...never an option. You know how Quatre's family feel about me. They just about tolerate me because I'm useful as Chief of Security for WEI. Can you imagine what would happen if they'd heard I was having some sort of breakdown? That I'd been the one to hurt him?'

I nodded, just a little uncertainly. I'd never entirely understood the complexities of Quat's relations with his family. What do I know about stuff like that?

In the end, they'd tried to diagnose Trowa's problems using the medical websites on the 'Net, and started him on a course of drugs that were supposed to reduce feelings of paranoia and generally calm him down. Bloody DIY idiots. It had worked for a month or so; Tro had chilled a bit and then he started to develop some other problems; headaches, and some slight vision impairment.

'I assume at this point he realised there were problems attached to the medication and sought appropriate help?' Dr. R.L. was making more notes on his pad, well, I assume that's what they were. He could have been doing his grocery list.

'He …didn't think it was the pills at the start.' I snagged a spare hair elastic from my wrist and twisted it around one finger, trying to see how far I could pull it. I wasn't quite sure how to put the next bit, what Trowa had first thought was wrong with him.

It had been one of our recurring nightmares after the war; that we'd all somehow been...changed. We were operating as Gundam Pilots at fifteen and, OK, we were tough and we'd undergone rigorous training and somehow survived it, but we were still kids. Kids only have so much strength and speed and stamina and no-one knew exactly what sort of chemical cocktails the doctors had been pouring into us. Especially me and Tro. The expendable ones.

Trowa, suspecting this particular scenario had come to stalk him, and not wanting to worry Quatre had secretly had some medical tests and realised that the pills he'd been taking to reduce paranoia were something else entirely.

'He'd been taking something called Denroquine.' I saw from the Doc's reaction that he'd heard of it. 'I did a quick online search last night and nothing came up. What is it?'

'A drug developed by OZ.' He didn't need to say any more.

It was one of the things that had all been more or less swept under the carpet, in Relena Peacecraft's new era of peace and forgiveness and brotherly love. That OZ had been experimenting with substances that altered chemicals in the brain, increasing levels of aggresion and adrenalin. Perfect for soldiers in combat, right?

'As an offshoot of the 'combat' drugs trials, they'd found ways to...induce feelings of calmness, lethargy, relaxation, what have you. Obviously, such drugs were of little use during wartime, so the tests were sidelined. After the war, there was some more ... experimentation.'

'Experimentation.' I echoed. 'Where exactly?' I didn't really need to ask; because I was pretty damn sure I already knew the answer.

'Liosgard.'

There's a fairly comprehensive list of things we tend not to discuss at home - Heero; the first anniversary of the War's ending; Treize Khushrendada, Wufei's and my respective stints as Preventers - but the ultimate taboo subject is the Liosgard facility in Alaska. Which I suppose is saying quite a lot, when you think about it.

Liosgard was set up after the War for high ranking and 'politcally sensitive' prisoners, for those who'd been charged with serious crimes against humanity. Most of those incarcerated there were either awaiting execution, or awaiting a trial that would undoubtedly lead to the death penalty.

I didn't quite realise at the time just how close the five of us had come to that. I think if it hadn't been for Relena Peacecraft's efforts on our behalf, and the fact that Heero had just saved Earth, we would have been first on the guest list.

As it was, Zechs was in Liosgard for almost two years. For the first six months, he was largely in solitary confinement, not knowing whether or not he would be executed.

Given that those imprisoned there were pretty much on death row anyway; given that most of the people in charge had been insufficiently screened and were insufficiently monitored, and for the most part had serious grudges against the prisoners, there had been serious abuses of power. Like illegal testing of all sorts of substances. Like the perfecting of interrogation techniques.

'So..denroquine is one of these drugs for relaxation?' Put like that, it didn't sound too bad.

'Correct. For what it was, it worked perfectly. It was ideal for potentially violent, unstable subjects in a prison situation. Until the subjects started to die. Duo, are you quite sure this is what your friend was taking?'

I nodded. Quat had admitted it. Had said he'd been scared.

'Do you know for how long? What dosage?'

'I - I think - not more than six weeks. Maybe two months.' Actually, I doubted he'd taken all that much. Tro, like me, has a somewhat...cavalier attitude to medication and he'd probably only taken it if Quat reminded him. My hair elastic snapped and flew across the room, landing at Dr. R.L.'s feet. 'What's going to happen to him?'

'From what I remember, and I'll have to check this for you, there were no serious problems until the drug had been in a person's system for more that a year. Some side effects, like the headaches your friend mentioned. I will send you all the relevant research I can find. As you've found, most of it was destroyed when the drug was declared illegal. I would recommend Mr. Barton take a full medical. With regular check ups after that.'

'Right. Oh.' I blushed slowly, realising that my little subterfuge hadn't been all that effective. 'OK, I'll do that. What else can I do?'

'Duo...' He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers together and peering over them, trying to decide where to go next. 'Your loyalty to your friends is wholly admirable, as is your desire to be a support, but my advice to you is that the problem is theirs and theirs to fix.'

'I know, I know all that, and I won't interfere but Doc, these are my friends, OK? I can't just let them throw away everything they have together!'

'Why?'

I stared at him. 'They belong together. They're perfect together. I just want them to be happy.'

'Perfect. Interesting. Duo, one of the partners in this relationship has been physically abusive, on at least one occasion that you've been told about, and the other felt it needful to source illegal drugs from who-knows-where to ensure his own protection.'

'It sounds...terrible when you put it like that.' I muttered.

'And how would you prefer me to put it?'

I didn't know what to say. What I really, really wanted was to find out that Quatre and Trowa had been possessed by aliens.

'Duo. I know you care for your friends. I know how much you value being part of their group, but it is wrong to stay in an abusive relationship. You must see that, from your own history.'

'I have not been in an abusive relationship.' I was on my feet suddenly, yelling at him. 'Ever! I've only been in one freaking 'relationship', as you put it, and he never physically hurt me. None of this is even about me.'

'You said, at the start of this session,' he glanced down at his bloody notes, ignoring my little temper tantrum as usual, 'that your object in talking to me today was that you wished to 'get your head around all of this.' Correct? Well, then perhaps you might concentrate on examining your feelings around this, and where they're coming from for next week. Specifically, as to why you personally seem to feel responsible. Agreed?'

'Fine!' I stamped down the stairs, hoping to God that Zechs was waiting for me, or I'd end up stealing the first car I saw.