Disclaimer: I don't own

Pairings: 1x2x1 and background 3x4

Warnings: m/m sexual relations, angst, death fic that is not quite a death fic, some swearing

A/N: So that ended up being the world's shortest hiatus due to some wonderful people. This fic is a long time in the making as I started it in October 2012 and then disbanded it due to the intensity of the plot and being unable to do it justice at the time. However, it never quite left me so it nagged at me to complete it.

It is complete but I am not going to a guarantee an update schedule. I need to edit it a lot due to the big time frame between writing parts of it so I will update when I'm happy with a chapter rather than a set day. But I won't take too long, promise.

It is heavily inspired by the films Solaris, Moon and Sunshine and the title is taken from the Audioslave song Shadow on the Sun - as per usual, songs inspired chapters and will be noted.

Finally, I failed science at school and though I have done quite a bit of research about the sun and activity - this is fan fiction and I have only done so much. So this is a lot of fantasy. Okay - that's enough rambling from me...!

Chapter One

Shadow on the Sun

~ And I can tell you why people die alone

I can tell you I'm the shadow on the sun

Shadow on the Sun - Audioslave ~

The low humming sound of the Solar gradually broke into the sleeping Heero Yuy's consciousness. The research station was never quiet. There was a constant sound from the life support systems so it was only in sleep that he could escape the mechanical sounds. Blue eyes gradually flickered open to stare at the cold metallic ceiling above and then turned towards the bright green clock that illuminated the entire prison cell of a room.

There was little need for time in a deep space research facility as there were no defined day light hours nor defined night time hours. It all blended together. However, if a routine that mimicked the earth was kept then at least the time on the Solar didn't become meaningless passages of minutes, hours and days. A routine had to be maintained otherwise time itself became nothing.

The clock showed 6.34am in glowing numerals. He slowly moved his body from lying to sitting on the edge of the bunk and ran fingers through his chocolate brown hair. His feet met the cold harshness of the metal flooring and the jolt to his system banished the rest of the sleepiness and lethargy from his limbs.

He'd slept more than he should. More than he ever did. And he'd been dreaming. He knew that much but the dreams had flittered away as he drifted into reality and waking. He'd been left with an uncomfortable thought that he'd been dreaming about him. About blue eyes. About a braid. A smirk.

His hand drifted to the cross around his neck and felt the solid metal in his fingers and then looked back at the clock. The time perturbed him more than the dreams. It had been rare for him to sleep beyond his required six hours. Doctor J's training and his life as a soldier had led him to only ever sleep six hours. He had tried to recondition his body to require more rest but even after battles, even after living with a lover with an insatiable libido, even after days without sleep – he still slept six hours.

He'd slept 34 minutes longer. An insignificant amount of time but it was starting to equate to something concerning. And he was dreaming. He'd never dreamt up until this last month.

Shaking his head, he rose to the small, connected bathroom, turning on the harsh bright light and allowing his light deprived eyes a moment to adjust. He continued to go through the mechanics of his usual routine. He showered in the tiny cubicle, taking as little time as possible. The water heating system was temperamental at best and since a particularly bad flare had not worked properly. He'd long since accepted that the Solar was not the most comfortable place and he liked it. He was on the frontier of space and it would feel wrong to live in the lap of luxury. There was something about the constant struggle, the repairs and upgrades to the systems, that made him feel useful. The most useful he'd felt since the war.

After the shower he looked at himself briefly in the mirror. He had not shaved for four days and stubble had formed. He brushed his fingers over his jaw and thought about completing the mundane chore but then decided not to bother. There was no one to see him and he had no plans on making any vidcalls. There was no other soul aboard the Solar. No one to impress or bother with.

He would have shaved if he needed to make a vidcall. If he needed to contact Doctor Hoffman. If he wanted to talk to Relena, Quatre, Trowa or Wufei. In his first three months aboard the Solar, he had grown a beard after realising it was an unnecessary waste of time to shave when he was alone aboard a space research facility. Apparently, though, his friends thought that growing a beard alone aboard a space station was a sign of madness.

Needless to say when Quatre had threatened to call Doctor Hoffman and suggest that he was losing his sanity, Heero had decided to shave every time he spoke to any of his friends. He didn't understand why they thought this – it was a logical thing to him – but somehow they thought his lack of "taking care of himself" was aligned with insanity. Heero still didn't understand people. Completing his morning routine, he brushed his teeth and then entered his tiny sleeping quarters to find clothing.

He dressed in shorts and a black t-shirt patterned with a grey faded anchor and two nautical stars to either side. It was a size small and tight fitting but it had not originally belonged to him. Many of the t-shirts in his meagre supply of clothing did not belong to him. He normally took a medium due to his broad shoulders and toned chest but the smalls fit. A little tight but they fit. No one saw him on the Solar so no one could comment. He liked that.

Heero exited his sleeping quarters and as soon as he stepped out into the corridor the lights flickered on and a disembodied female voice spoke.

"Good morning He-ro."

The control system and artificial intelligence was his only company aboard the Solar and it struggled to say his name. He had reprogrammed the system and done some major modifications to it so that it was to his own specifications. It no longer monitored movement in the sleeping quarters or in the connecting small bathroom. Heero had found it odd and creepy that the artificial intelligence system could spy at him at all times so had disabled some of those features.

However, while he had tried to stop the female voice from saying his name as "hero" rather than "Heero" he had been unsuccessful. Instead, it said "he" pause "ro" which was not any improvement. He guessed that whoever recorded the original dialogue for the system had simply not recorded something near his name and no matter how hard he tried, the system was not going to say his name correctly. He'd now accepted that.

"Good morning," he replied as he walked down the corridor, lights turning on around him as he did.

Previous scientists aboard the Solar spoke frequently to the system and it had been nicknamed DORIS after the acronym – Data Organisation for Research Information System. Heero had originally refused to speak to the machine finding it odd that he was talking to a series of code as though it was a human being. He'd always thought that Duo had been crazy for talking to Deathscythe, his buddy, and how he'd humanised a machine. At least the Gundams had been humanoid in appearance, he supposed, rather than the artificial intelligence system he spoke to now. Heero figured that after nearly a year and half aboard the Solar, if he hadn't spoken to DORIS he would've lost all concept of conversation and would've withdrawn further into a world of silence. That was probably why the Solar had DORIS. So that the scientist aboard the research station didn't lose all pattern of normal interaction.

The Solar itself was a small space facility due to its location as close to the sun as was possible. It was small as the reinforced exterior had to be heat proof to an extreme degree and was only meant for one permanent scientist. There were the sleeping quarters, an area that could be generously called a kitchen, a recreation room with limited gym equipment and then the observation/control room. The kitchen was not designed for cooking and acted as a storage area for the vast array of rehydrated and microwavable meals, gels, power bars, water bottles and a method to nuke the food into some kind of edible thing. Heero realised he'd long ago lost any appetite for actual food and ate the supply of never ending "nutritional" and "balanced" meals without really noticing what he was doing. Chewing was mechanical. Swallowing was hard with some of the powdery and cardboard flavoured items.

Recently one large flare had knocked out the systems aboard the Solar and the power had been rerouted to the emergency systems and he'd lived off power bars and gels as the microwave had been unavailable. That week had been particularly hard and then he'd learnt to appreciate the meals that he could nuke that contained lumps that looked like meat and the weird grainy mashed potatoes.

He entered the tiny kitchen area and opened a bottle of water to boil up for coffee. He ripped open a coffee sachet and poured it into a black mug along with the powdered milk that contained calcium but very little flavour and didn't dissolve quite fully. On earth, he'd taken his coffee black , habits he'd picked up from Duo, but the coffee itself tasted so bad that it needed something else in it to make it palatable. He selected a power bar from the box – which was meant to be chocolate and hazelnut but tasted like gravel – and made his coffee before leaving the kitchen to walk toward the front of the Solar and the observation and control room.

"Are you enjoying your coffee?"

"It's the same water soluble crap I have every day," he replied, grumpily.

Heero wasn't sure if it was a glitch in DORIS' system but each morning he got asked the same question and he answered in the same way. He wondered if the previous scientists had enjoyed the conversations with the system but then he was more wary with artificial intelligence. Those scientists had never experienced the ZERO system.

He supposed the female voice was meant to be reassuring, motherly, maternal, but the tone of DORIS sometimes made him want to disable the entire thing. He didn't knowing that he needed the sound of a human voice and that he should not get annoyed at a disembodied voice in a floating piece of metal. Maybe he just found the female voice unsettling as he'd never had any female presence in his life – no motherly figure, no female romantic partner and so the voice sounded shrill and annoying. Yes, there was Relena but she had never been a permanent figure in his life – she was there but he'd not had to live with her.

Coffee and power bar in hand, he arrived at the control room and the door automatically swished open. He walked through and he saw the bubbling activity of the sun through the observation window and the lights of the control panels. The Solar was constructed so that the control/observation room was dominated by a large viewing panel made of the sturdiest glass and shielding technology. It allowed the scientist to observe the massive, gaseous ball that was the solar system's life force without being blinded or burning to a crisp. The Solar's relative closeness to the sun meant that all Heero could see was the activity on the surface and he walked over to the main computer terminal and began scanning the data from the past six – no six and half hours – while he'd slept.

There had been some unusual activity in this month and there had been times when his communication had been cut off and so he scratched his chin, feeling the stubble, and scanned through the data quickly.

"You would be able to communicate with the earth or colonies today," DORIS informed him.

"I don't want to."

"You asked me to remind you to call Miss Darlian to thank her."

Heero looked up and glared at the ceiling panels. He couldn't actually glare at DORIS being that it was purely a computer programme made of lines of code, but he could still try. On the last restocking shuttle, when the kid called Tech had delivered food, supplies and other equipment, Relena had sent a care package containing gum, cookies, sweets and chocolate. He'd never been one for sweet things until he'd lived with Duo and now aboard the Solar he appreciated the different candies and sweets as it provided a change from the blandness of his usual food. In the three monthly restocking visits, his friends had always sent things – books, food, discs, photographs – tangible things that reminded him of the people he had not seen for a year and half.

He tapped his fingers on the control panel and briefly thought about making the call but instead he leaned back in the chair and took a sip of coffee. He should call Relena. It was over a month and half since he'd spoken to her and he could also request some other items for the next restocking which was due soon. She always appreciated his calls. Always seemed delighted even though he had very little to say. She'd babble about this and that. Politics, family, people they knew… and she'd tell him how the grave looked. How she went and put flowers there. That part always hurt and his fingers automatically made their way to the silver cross around his neck. No, he didn't want to speak to Relena.

There was Quatre and Trowa. Always together. He resented that he always had to speak to both of them. Quatre always looked at him in a way that suggested he was close to tears and Heero was long since fed up with that expression. Trowa was easier to talk to but he had to get through Quatre first so he often gave up. Wufei was probably easiest. He would ask about the research and nothing personal. Wufei still didn't know how to bring up that topic of conversation and Heero was glad of it. He was by far the best of them to speak to.

But calling any of them would bring unfortunate reality to his situation. On the Solar, he was in his own bubble. His own world.

In the pre-colony days they would have called it cabin fever, the slow descent into madness due to isolation, but he didn't believe in that primitive concept. It was stupid superstition and he'd never been superstitious. And even though he knew the previous scientist of the Solar, Rodriguez, had been relieved of duties when he started reporting that he had seen his Aunt Frida knitting aboard the Solar. Heero still thought his mental capabilities were in no way compromised by his isolation.

On assessing that there were no dramatic changes in data, Heero picked up his own laptop. It was the same laptop from the war but had been upgraded and retooled while remaining in the same shell. He opened it on his lap, sitting back a little from the control panel, and opened up the same programme like he did every morning. This was part of his routine. Wake up. Ablutions. Coffee and eat. Check data. Open programme. Exercise. Check more data. Eat. Read and research. Check data. Exercise. Shower. Eat. Check data and log the day's activity. Sleep. Repeat.

The programme opened quickly and he saw the small thumbnails of all his previous recordings – small pictures of himself. He selected record and took a deep breath.

"Duo, it has been 615 days and approximately 14 hours since you died. My timings are approximate as the initial crime scene work was done by amateurs and therefore is inaccurate."

He paused. He had started all the recordings in a similar vein – he was sure if anyone played them back that his sanity would be called into question. However, it was his own personal laptop and he would congratulate anyone who could get past the elaborate encryption that he had on it. Only Duo himself might have been able to do it.

"You died on the streets of Boston. You had been stabbed thirteen times in the chest and you drowned in your own blood."

He stopped again. This had been his own way of healing, of grieving, talking through the events. People had suggested that he seek counselling after knowing that he had closed down, grief making the emotionless mask reappear. But he couldn't talk to someone about Duo. He had his own ways. Not necessarily healthy but they worked for him.

"You were nineteen. I saw your body – you were cold and I could see where they opened you for autopsy. I buried you in a cemetery for war heroes in the Sanc Kingdom. I learnt to accept your early death."

He believed he had – accepted that Duo's life had been cut short and avenged that death with his own hands. He'd been fired from Preventer for his vigilante mission and had then thrown himself into studies and a career without blood and guns.

"It has been 615 days and approximately 14 hours since you died and last night I saw you aboard the Solar for the sixth time."