The letter had come a few days after they parted. It was scribbled on a sheet of normal printer paper -- the type that could be purchased at every other store, and written in smudged blue ink. Duo's handwriting was nearly illegible but Heero had taken the time to decipher it anyways -- and then read it over and over again -- an hour, two hours when he should have been in class for the cover of his new assignment. Heero wouldn't give Duo his contact so Duo had apparently gone to the professors to ask for his current address. The letter itself held no mission-related information or even anything remotely related -- just a lot of mundane things: how was he? Duo was all right, going to get some repairs. How was his new school? Duo was going to be enrolling elsewhere in another few weeks. Good luck. The hamburgers where he was tasted terrific. Duo was sure there was a place with good milkshakes close to Heero's school. Try them.

Duo had no clue that Heero checked his statistics and assignments at least once a day when he wasn't actually working on the mission. He didn't know that Heero knew that he had sprained a wrist on his last mission and had lost 1kg in the last week from the stress of being undercover.

Heero rarely saw Duo, the missions carrying them to different parts of Earth and space. It never stopped Duo from sending him letters. Heero made new identities at each new location. It made Heero wonder how many letters he might have lost because there was no forwarding address, and it surprised him when he briefly considered leaving one. That was when he realized Duo had accidentally become much more important to him -- maybe even more important than the war -- and Heero didn't want to do anything to change that.

In the first week of April, before his self-destruction, Heero received a present from Duo. It was a hairpin, the cheap kind that was painted black and had two knobs on the end. In the accompanying letter, Duo wrote that he had gone to the grocery store and acquired a pack that contained one hundred hairpins. This was the first one in the pack and he suggested Heero keep it, for lock picking purposes if nothing else because no one would ever look for a tiny hairpin in Heero's mess of brown hair. Heero had a set of his own lock picks but he stuck the pin in the hair behind his left ear. At night he would slip it between his fingers and snap the pin against his nails as he wondered who Duo had sent the other ninety-nine to.

The missions went well sometimes and at other times were a failure. Heero took the time between them to exchange reports and work on his cover -- most often a student but sometimes a part-timer or mechanic. He spent hours preparing for the missions. He would check and double check that his guns and throwing knives were clean and working each night before placing one of them on his bedside bureau within reaching distance. He would go over the mechanics in Wing and when Heero upgraded or exchanged parts, he would run tests on it at night. He thought of Duo when he did this, wondered if Duo did the same check and if he had found the bug Heero had loaded to Deathscythe's self-destruct command. He imagined Duo sitting in the tight cockpit with the thick black straps keeping him stable while he piloted and shouted obscenities at the mobile suits he was hacking down.

He wondered what Duo would talk to him about if they went on another mission together. He wondered if he could convince Duo not to pilot anymore and if he could send Duo someplace safe until the war was over. Heero could imagine Duo shouting obscenities at him if he tried.

Heero stuck a picture of Duo on the left corner of Wing's control screen. Duo was caught in mid-motion on a rusted swing set in a park. He was laughing and waving at the camera as his braid flew behind him and his bare feet kicked up in the air. His black boots were knocked over in the sand of the play place and the curly hair of a child was cut off on one side of the picture. It made Heero long to hear that loud guffaw that had undoubtedly burst from Duo like it always did when he was amused or happy. It made Heero ache when he thought about the person with Duo -- the one who had gone to the park with him and taken the picture and who Heero knew was there because he could see that person's shadow on the bumpy terrain of sand.

Sometimes he would get angry as he looked at the picture even though he knew it was an unreasonable jealousy and Duo didn't think of him as any more than a friend. And sometimes that would make his anger grow until he hated Duo's laughing face and wanted to say words that would wipe it away. Sometimes Heero would look at the picture as he piloted Wing and he would know it was a distraction that he should take down but never did. Sometimes he liked to think the picture was like a part of Duo that was with him as he went into battle.

Then Heero received another mission in May and Duo was assigned to be his partner. It was a short mission and Duo was finishing another so it was only the day before the mission that Duo arrived. It was an OZ meeting at the New Edwards Base in California that several high OZ officials would be attending. If they could take it by ambush, a good part of the OZ command would be destroyed and the organization would be weakened considerably.

Duo greeted him with a wide grin and touched his shoulder when Heero let him into their temporary base. He asked about Heero's health and previous missions and when Heero didn't answer, went on to describe his own. He asked if Heero had gotten his letters and his face relaxed when Heero answered affirmatively. He said he hoped that Heero had read them even though Heero probably hadn't wanted to receive them at all. Heero told Duo to review the mission and pretended to clean one of his guns though Heero watched as Duo hunched over his laptop and absently twisted the end of his braid around his index finger as he read.

Heero found it hard to sleep that night with Duo sprawled across the bed on the other side of the room. The curtains were drawn but the wavy slit of moonlight that came from under the curtain reflected off the floorboards and Heero could still see the shadowed outlines of Duo's face as he slept. He wondered if he would dare cross the meter and half between their beds and brush back the strands of loose hair that had drifted across Duo's face and fluttered when he exhaled.

Duo's picture was still taped on the display in Wing but Heero could look at Duo's real face when they linked up the communicators and the small screen opened. Duo was grinning as they took off, and telling a story about one of the girls he had met on another undercover mission. She liked war movies even though she was scared of the violence and Duo thought it was ironic how she had invited him to watch one. Heero imagined the girl sitting close to Duo as they watched the movie and how they might have kissed and touched, and he felt jealous. He couldn't help it.

Heero was thinking about Duo when they arrived at the base. He hoped that this mission would weaken OZ enough to catalyze its defeat, and Heero wondered if Duo would watch a movie with him after the war ended.

Two unfamiliar gundams appeared on his screen and Heero heard Duo shout as the strangers attacked. Heero was fighting but he listened for Duo's voice and heavy breathing. Heero's eyes flashed to the little display of Duo on his screen and the bead of sweat sliding down his cheek, and Heero redoubled his efforts, determined to end the fight before Duo could really get hurt.

A shuttle with the distinct markings of OZ appeared on Wing's display and took off from the New Edwards base. Heero followed it, resolute to finish it quickly so he could return to the fight. The shuttle disappeared in clouds of orange and red and Heero could see the waves of heat that radiated from the explosion, though he felt cool, sitting in the protected cockpit of Wing. Dark smoke billowed from the wreckage and mangled metal and debris began falling to earth.

When Heero looked back, he saw the strange gundams had stopped attacking and all three were looking up at the destruction.

Heero ripped Duo's picture from the display when he found out he had destroyed the greatest hope for peace, Field Marshall Noventa, who had been on the shuttle. It had been a trap by OZ for precisely that purpose. General Septum of the Alliance declared war on the colonies because of the tragedy.

Heero shredded Duo's picture between his thumbs and let the little pieces litter onto the floor of his cockpit. He would have realized OZ officials wouldn't try to escape so brazenly if he hadn't been thinking about Duo and trying to rush the end of the war. He would have seen through OZ's trap if he hadn't been worried and pressed to get back to the battle so Duo wouldn't get hurt fighting the other gundams.

Heero pulled the hairpin from behind his ear and pried the two halves of it apart until the pin snapped and he dropped it to the floor as well. He couldn't remember why he had let himself get distracted from his goal. He had only one purpose to accomplish in life. And now he had killed innocents and the peace everyone was longing for.

It was a relief when Doctor J ordered him to destroy Wing to keep it out of OZ control. Heero didn't look at the little display of Duo that flashed onto his screen when he picked up the detonator and opened his hatch. Duo's shouting faded to a static buzz as he left the cockpit.

Heero pressed the button with his thumb and looked out at space as he felt the white heat of the blast overtake him too quickly for sweat to form on his skin.

He saw Duo's smiling face as his body was hit by the massive explosion and tossed in the air.

Then for a moment, Heero was free.