Duo watched the sun inch into his window, eyes bloodshot from his determined lack of blinking. The giggling stopped. Rolling over in bed, the braided teen slowly got up, inching to his door and pushing it open. Nothing was out there. He didn't think to look at the door, the scratching noises he'd heard going uninvestigated. He was afraid he'd see nothing there. He would have been stunned to see the deep gouges on the bottom of the metal door.

Moving quickly, Duo tossed open Hilde's bedroom door, heedless of any modesty that the girl might have been trying to hang onto. He ducked forward, giving her a couple good shakes to make sure she was awake. "I'm leaving." Without saying anything more, he headed back to his room.

There was a mad scramble that left Hilde in too big pants and a fluffy t-shirt, trailing Duo back to his room with a look of abject confusion on her face. "I thought you were going to stay a while Duo, why are you leaving?"

"Can't stay here Hil, that's why. I think I'm going nutters and I don't want you to be in the way of anything I may get it into my head to do." Duo quickly got together the few things he'd unpacked the night before. He'd rather looked forward to sticking around a while, but that wasn't about to happen now!

"Duo!" Hilde moved forward, effectively barring the doorway. "What are you talking about? You're just fine! You were fine last night, and you're fine now. Could you tell me what's wrong?"

Duo came to a standstill, nose to nose with the dark haired girl. "I told you, I'm going nutters. There's no other explanation. I don't want to leave, really! I was looking forward to being here, but it's either me, or you have some really creepy gizmos that I want no part of!" Duo remembered the eerie giggling that had persisted until the sun came up with a shudder. It was even worse than hearing Heero's laugher while the boy was fighting, and that's saying something!

Hilde stared at Duo in utter bewilderment, reaching forward to put her hands on his shoulders and ignoring his twitch. "Duo. Look at me. There are no freaky gizmos here that you didn't make. The only things here are normal gizmos. You are not going crazy. You are tired. You think you saw something that wasn't there. Okay? Just calm down."

Duo stared back at Hilde. He couldn't believe she just blatantly told him that he didn't know what he was talking about. Was she trying to make him feel better? If she was, she was failing miserably. "Hilde, let go. I'm leaving. I'll come back to visit you. Just, let me leave now."

Hilde finally released him, noticing that he was becoming more and more tense the longer she persisted in touching him. She'd never understood how someone as touchy as him could react so badly to being touched back. "Okay, if you promise to visit me. And you have to vid me and tell me you're alright."

Duo gave Hilde a small, wan smile. "Of course. Promise." Duo then made for the front door, quickly yanking on his boots before slamming out of the door and leaving Hilde's scrap yard.

Hilde just watched him go with a slightly pained expression. "Damn it. I didn't make you promise when..." She had a sinking feeling that she wouldn't be seeing the braided teen again for a very, very long while.

Zechs groaned in agony as the pain that seared him from head to foot broke through the barrier of being unconscious that he had been hanging onto so tenaciously.

"I think he's waking up!" A few people with a loud range of muttered agreements echoed the feminine outcry. Zechs merely wished they would all shut up and leave him alone so he could be in pain in peace. Didn't they realize he'd just been through a major explosion here? Of course, he didn't really register the thought.

"Go way." It came out thick and pained, and he feebly waved a hand at the gawkers that he cracked an eye open to see. What was he, a showcase now? "Away." He repeated the order a little firmer, though it remained little more than a pained whisper. When he realized that he was being ignored, Zechs forced himself to look around, seeing faces that were part of White Fang at some point, or had been, possibly were, clearly from the Sweeper fleet. Frowning in confusion over why he was on display, he tried a different tact. "What's going on?"

"You're alive!" Apparently one of the people nearby had believed that was self-explanatory, they were wrong.

"And?" It was said in a pained voice, as Zechs forced his mind to work out what the hell they were all making such a big deal of. He nearly blew up the Earth, Libra was destroyed, and thereafter he was partially crushed under his suit on an asteroid... He ground to a halt at that point. "How am I still alive?"

There was a flurry of movement as the crowd parted, and Zechs found himself nose to nose with a gray eyed man who had been a Sweeper on Howard's ship when he had been there a few weeks before. "That's really what we all want to know at the moment."

Zechs moved his hands, ever so slowly, to his face, and was relieved when he didn't need to move them anymore. He felt like he'd been blown up, then stomped on by a Gundam. Oh wait, he had! Now why was he still breathing...? "Did I crash to Earth?" It was the only sensible answer, as it couldn't have been a meteor after all, he would have suffocated.

"No. You were in space. We had to bind your ribs and put balms on your burns... But you weren't breathing." He seemed a little amazed by this as he spoke to Zechs, pulling back from the battered blonde. "And you still aren't."

Zechs' eyes flew wide open and he looked at the crowd around him, trying to understand. "What?" A hand from one of the crowd pressed on his chest, and Zechs was jarred *into* breathing. They were right, he hadn't been breathing... And it hurt to restart the process. "What happened to me?" It was a weak phrase, rife with confusion and said in just a low whisper. He had to be alive for some reason, right?