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"Oi, Heero!" yelled Duo, body draped carelessly over an overstuffed armchair. "Where ya going?" Heero turned and gave the American boy a glare half as vicious as the ones he used to, which was still pretty cold. "Out." With that terse reply, he grabbed his thin blue jacket and stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

"Heero-kun!" said Quatre, just before Heero left. Quatre sank back into his chair. "It's storming out," he commented. "He should have taken an umbrella."

"Ah, he'll be okay," said Duo absently, returning to his comic book. "This is Suicide-boy we're talking about. If being blown up won't kill him, a little rain won't even touch him."

"I wonder where he's going," said Trowa from the kitchen. The tall pilot exited the kitchen, a glass of milk held tightly. "Probably to Wing, to repair it," he answered his own question. "Took a beating during his last mission."

Duo muttered, "I hope he won't pirate Shinigami this time," and promptly put the sullen boy out of his mind. Time enough to interrogate Heero later, after he learned what happened to the X-Force.

****

A figure roamed the streets of the city, barely discernible through the grayish haze of rain. No one else was out in the storm, and those whose windows he passed thought him foolhardy or extremely unlucky. The only illumination came from flashes of lightning, and the wan yellow radiance of streetlamps. Still, the young boy made his way unerringly through the suburbs, the route memorized long ago.

Finally, he reached his destination. It was a worn-down old building, which looked like it should be scheduled for demolition but was too old to be bothered with. No one else went there, storm or no storm, but Heero knew what to look for.

Circling the brick structure, he finally found a window, seemingly boarded up like the others. But Heero gave a gentle push, and both the glass and the boards lifted up and out of the window frame. He set the plastic layer aside as he clambered up. Crouching on the window pane, he put the trick window back in place again. As soon as it was back where it belonged, he leaped agilely down to the floor.

He now stood in what had been the basement of the old building. It was dark and cold, but he was used to that. Walking over to the wall, he flicked a switch. Bank after bank of fluorescent lights came alive, illuminating the room. Revealed in the sterile white light was a comfortably furnished room, in much better shape than the building's exterior. Beanbags and blankets littered the floor; a small white refrigerator stood in one corner. An old computer occupied the top of a study desk, along with several picture frames. A small tape deck was plugged into the wall.

Heero strode over to the fridge. Wrenching the door open, he removed a can of orange soda, only a month from being expired, and flipped the tab. As he gulped the cold liquid down, he slowly sank down onto a beanbag.

No one knew it, but this was his hometown. He'd been born here. Traveling a lot with his father, sooner or later they'd return here, and this place was the closest he could call home. The house he'd been born in, still held in his family's name, was only seven blocks from where he stayed now.

But he hadn't spent all his time there; when he was only eight, he'd broken into this place and gradually transferred furniture and supplies, turning it into a refuge. It was as sturdy and well-stocked as a bomb shelter, but it was more than that. It was the one place where Heero could completely relax. An hour spent here was more to him than a solid night's sleep.

It was where he could lower his defenses, his inner walls. It was where he could take off the mask he wore, the mask of the perfect soldier that hid him as effectively as Trowa's clown mask hid his quiet contemplation, or as Zechs' silver mask cloaked the pain of Milliardo Peacecraft and presented Baron Flash to the rest of the world. Where he allowed himself to remember, and to feel.

Heero slowly stood up, and walked to where the computer was. He didn't spare the sleek PC, so different from the blocky, unattractive military machines he customarily used, a glance. Instead, he picked up a silver photograph frame.

Inside the square frame was a photograph of three people. The man was dark-haired and handsome, and had his arms draped around the slender waist of his pretty, red-haired wife. She, in turn, rested her head on his shoulder in a gesture of affection. Sitting confidently on the man's shoulders was the couple's four-year-old son, AJ.

AJ looked an awful lot like his father, after whom he was named, but he inherited his mother's dark blue eyes and hints of her red hair showed up in his unruly crop of dark brown hair. The whole family was grinning happily at the camera.

Heero put the photo down. Reaching up, he brushed away the tears from his blue eyes angrily. Every single time he came here...

Shaking his head remorsefully, he went back to where the tape deck sat. The one time his teammates had heard him sing, they'd immediately assumed that he hadn't had any experience with music at all, nor was he interested in gaining any. That wasn't true.

It was just that...the only person who'd ever encouraged him to love music was his mother, his beautiful young mother. It had been sort of like their own little secret game, and for some strange reason he couldn't quite rationalize, Heero wanted to keep it secret.

He flicked on the tape deck. As the beginning melody of an old song filtered out, Heero leaned back and closed his eyes. Memories played across his mind, almost as an accompaniment to the song playing from the radio.

Heero jolted awake suddenly. He had slipped into a dreamy half-sleep as the song lulled his uneasy spirits. But the tape ran out and the sudden silence woke him as effectively as any alarm clock. Shaking his head, spiky brown hair flying, as if to physically remove the last remnants of sleepiness, he stood up and walked over to the desk.

For the next hour or so, he played computer games, or surfed one of the numerous computer nets, only ocassionally glancing at the photos beside his iMac 2000.

Finally, he stood up, and put on his now-dry jacket. He picked up one particular photo, glanced at it wistfully, the expression rare on his usually-scowling face. Sighing, he placed it back on the table. He reached into a pocket in his jacket, and withdrew another photo, its frame identical to the photo he'd just set down. He placed it beside its counterpart, and walked back to the secret entrance.

He gave one last, lingering glance around the comfortably familiar room before flicking the light switch off and clambering through the window. He pulled the window closed, and walked away through the still-pouring rain. Light from one of the streetlamps outside shone in weakly from a crack in one of the boards, casting a faint radiance across the silvery frames of two pictures; one the photo of a family long ago destroyed, and the other one a picture of a fifteen-year-old girl, light brown hair brushed neatly over her sky-blue eyes, face set in a pretty smile.

****

SLAM! Everyone in the apartment jumped as the front door banged shut violently. They relaxed when they saw it was just Heero. His jacket, shirt and jeans were soaked completely through and through, water dripping from his rain-darkened hair and his scowling face.

"Geez, Heero!" called Duo. "I always thought you'd have enough sense to get out of the rain!"

Heero spared his teammate an icy look as he trudged sullenly to his room. As he disappeared into the room and the sounds of a hot shower could be heard running, Duo commented, "Doesn't Heero ever know when to loosen up? I mean, the guy doesn't have a fun, or romantic, or sensitive, or emotional OR friendly bone in his body!" he rambled.

Trowa disagreed slightly. He didn't tell anyone, but he once heard Heero singing softly to himself, eyes half-closed as he drifted off to sleep in the bouncing cab of a truck. Trowa didn't think Heero even knew Trowa was there. He wondered what, or who, Heero had been thinking about. What had been the song again?