I remember a time back, there were rabbits.

Out in the back of the main house sat a fairly sizable hutch that my Granddad built and it was full of bunnies. All different colors and shapes, sizes and breeds. They belonged to my older sister. She'd carry them around stroking and stroking them, their little noses twitching and quivering, their eyes wild and frightened. Always frightened.

Rabbits are scared of everything.

There was that book, that rabbit book. They made us read it in school. Watership Down. I only read the first part of it, it was dumb. As if rabbits had their own society. But the thing of it was, in the first part of that book it talked about how the entire world was the enemy of the rabbit. Every last living thing that walked the earth was the rabbit's enemy.

And it was true...and somehow important. In the mind of that soft, shaking creature, even *I* was dangerous.

I would think about that whenever I looked at my sister's rabbits. It made me feel bigger somehow. Even if they were just dumb animals. I would think of it at night when my dad would creep into my room and I would think of it as I pressed my face into my pillow to keep from crying out.

Rabbits were scared of me.

Mr. Ears was one of those massive, lop-eared rabbits. The kind with the ears that droop to the sides. He was big and gray with white patches. He was my sister's favorite.

It was an accident.

It really was. Somehow Mr. Ears got out of his hutch one night and when we came out of the house in the morning to do our chores, he lay dead in the middle of yard. His neck was broken.

No one could figure out how he had gotten out of the hutch so the blame fell upon my sister for forgetting to put him back at night. She sobbed and wept and stroked his dead fur, but my dad just shrugged and the mystery became a non-issue.

I stood over my sister for a long time, looking at Mr. Ears. His little black eyes were cold and hard, his nose no longer twitched, and he no longer looked at me with fear. His head sat at an odd angle on his body.

It was an accident.

It really was.

He pushed through drifts that reached his knees, new and heavy and wet. It still fell, collecting in his hair, his eyelashes, kissing the sides of his cold-flushed cheeks with spots of icy wetness. The pack was heavy on his back, pressing into his collarbone and rubbing raw spots against his shoulders. Tired muscles ached unrelentingly with each new lift of his snowshoes. It was getting dark, he thought. Hard to tell in the unrelenting gray of the storm, but the uniform lack of color seemed to be dimming.

He stopped for a moment, catching his breath and leaning against the frozen, ice-crusted bark of a large Douglas fir. Thickly gloved hands found the canteen at his waist and he spared himself a long drink of water so cold it made his teeth ache. Old habit sent his gaze back along the tracks he had left behind him, part of him wincing at the obvious spoor of his passing. It couldn't be helped. Hopefully the rising storm would cover all trace of his route. Otherwise he was leaving a neon sign for anyone with eyes and the inclination to follow.

He tugged his woolen cap down tighter over dark hair starting to fleck with gray and pushed himself away from the tree, continuing up the mountain. Over and done with. If only it could be. If only this could all be a nightmare they could simply wake from. He would get up out of bed, head for the FBI and chastise himself for eating spicy Thai food at 3:00am ...and he would laugh off the whole thing.

No.

You can't really laugh off the end of the world. Can you?

He could smell the sharp tang of woodsmoke in the cold air and he picked up his weary legs with a surge of renewed energy, ignoring the extra resistance of the snowshoes as they dragged him through the soft, new drifts. Only a little farther. Definitely darker now. The trees were mere shapes of darker gray in the mist of the thick white snowfall by the time he topped the little rise that overlooked a motley collection of rough cabins. He paused over the tiny vale for a long moment, his breath chuffing steam into the frigid twilight chill as he surveyed the place that had become a refuge of sorts.

A tiny smile cracked the cold skin of his lips. No metropolis this. No take-out Chinese, no 24-hour cable TV, no multi-million dollar sports organizations, nor a cheap basketball to bounce around on the weekends. Not even weekends anymore. Nothing really, that he might have once considered part of his life.

Things changed.

Didn't they? Wasn't that a Universal Constant? But who knew they could change this much?

He let himself start moving again, the slope of the vale falling away under his feet, leaving him to slip and slide his way down through the snow, struggling to keep his balance under the heavy load of the pack he wore. It would not do to fall now, not when he was so close.

It had snowed considerably since he'd last stood outside this cabin, he thought. He found himself paused once more, staring at the rough-hewn door, seeing the warm yellow light stretching welcomingly from the cramped little windows. How long had it been? At least two months and change. He'd left in fall and now it was winter. It was with no surprise that he found himself a bit reluctant, even nervous to enter the tiny makeshift dwelling. He had lived the past month with ever-present gnawing worms of worry, but he'd forced them down deep. And there they festered still. There was no denying now that he stood here at the threshold of the present. So many terrible things could happen in the span of 2 months.

He should know, he'd lived through days that had lasted years.

In the end it was not he who opened the door, but she.

He stared at her, backlit by the soft glow of the fire that both illuminated and heated the room, and told himself she was no wraith of his imagination. She was tired, he could see that right away...soft lines of worry and struggle had etched themselves onto the gentle curves of her face, lines that he knew he carried as well...lines that made them both real. But there was also an almost timid relief there, as if the emotion were afraid of exposing itself. Afraid of expressing itself in any way lest it be noticed and hunted down by its stronger brothers of despair and fear. Her small, lithe frame was rounder than it had been when he had left, her sharp lines and edges blurred and gentled. A copper glow limned her hair, lending her the look of a surreal postcard. A photographer's illusion of exaggerated color and beauty.

But she *was* real, and she was alive still. These small things were enough to make him shiver slightly with the unfamiliar sensation of joy.

She lifted a hand and he took it, letting her pull him into the warmth of the tiny hovel, the door shutting behind him on the falling twilight and the ever-darkening snowfall.

"It's really starting to come down out there." Pike said, his nose pressed to the glass of the small window, his chin resting on folded arms.

"I figured it would hit us tonight." His dad's voice was slow and soft. The boy glanced over his shoulder to peer at the man who lounged in front of the fire, parked in front of a tattered Scrabble board. He met his son's eyes with a smile. "Your turn."

Pike jumped down from his perch on the back of the chair and returned to his spot on the opposite side of the board, peering with 10 year-old annoyance at his small collection of letters. Four Es. What was he supposed to do with four Es?

His eyes drifted back over to the window again, his teeth clamping onto the inside of his cheek. His father caught the direction of his glance and he chuckled softly.

"Leave it be kiddo."

"Do you think he'll come over? What do you think he saw down there? You think he brought anything cool back?" Pike returned his gaze to his father, his eyes alight with excitement that had been present since he'd spotted the shadowed figure trudge by the window.

Chris shook his head and pointed at his son's letters.

"Your turn, Peter." Pike frowned.

"Dad..."

"Just play your turn. He won't be answering anyone's questions tonight. You can wait till tomorrow just like the rest of us. Let him rest. He's just spent a very long time away. He has other things on his mind besides us."

Pike frowned at that.

"I suppose..." he admitted. "But..."

"No buts. Leave them be. Play the game." His dad's voice was firmer now and Pike knew better than to press. He slumped to the floor, settling himself onto his stomach on the worn old rug.

It took all his willpower not to simply leap up, grab his coat and head over there. How was he supposed to wait till morning? Mulder had said that he was going to bring him something cool.

B-E-E-T.

"12 points." he said distractedly, his small fingers pressing the polished wood squares into a rough line.

"That the best you can do?" His dad asked with a smirk. "For 12 measly points you're going to give me the triple word score?"

Pike rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Not like you're not gonna win anyway, Dad. I don't even know why you play this dumb game with me."

"Because one day you'll beat me." Chris said, grinned sagely through his salt-and-pepper beard.

A knock sounded at the door.

The sound had barely registered in Pike's head before he had flung his body up and was racing for the door, a huge grin on his face.

"I told you! I told you he'd come over!" he said, skidding to a stop in front of the door, ignoring his father's instinctive leap for the rifle that hung over the mantle.

"Peter!" He warned sharply, one hand on the gun, just before the boy flung the door open.

Exposing, not Fox Mulder, but an old, sunken stranger. Someone that neither of them had ever seen before.

It was like a bucket of cold water had been dumped over the boy. He shrank back into the room, his eyes on the haggard, bearded face. The snow blew in from behind the man, cold air sucking all the warmth of the small space out of the open portal.

The silence of the room amplified the sound of the safety being flicked off the rifle. Pike scuttled over next to his Father, standing in the shelter of the gun Chris held pointed at the stranger's head.

Tall, gaunt, and haunted looking, the man peered at them through ice-pale eyes sunken into a scarred and pitted face that was half obscured by a filthy gray beard. He was dressed in a dirty gore-tex parka, hands and feet encased in thick gloves and boots. He wore a pack on his back and held a long, tall stick in one hand. An old-fashioned shotgun was strapped to the side of his load. At the sight of the rifle pointed at him, he dropped the staff and slowly raised his hands.

"Mean ya no harm." his voice was raspy and ill-used, it drove shivers up and down Pike's spine that had nothing to do with the chill air spilling into the room. Behind the man, he could see the snow falling thick and silent.

"You alone?" His dad's voice was hard and cool, so unlike the man he normally was.

A slow nod.

"Step inside and close the door, keep your hands up." Chris's eyes flicked down to his son. "Go and get Mulder and the others."

Somehow the words did not inspire the same exhilaration they might have had they been spoken 10 minutes earlier. But he inched past the stranger, grabbed his coat and shot out the door into the night.