She rifled through the old cabinet almost numbly, sorting through the meager assortment of medical supplies stowed there. They were dwindling drastically, she thought offhandedly, her mind still spinning dizzily from the relief that coursed through her body. She had seen him off almost 2 months ago, each day passing with the possibility that he would never come back.

Now here he was, large as life and twice as dirty.

When she'd caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure outside her door, she'd thought at first that it was Denny again...the teen who had decided to make her his own personal object of obsession.

But it hadn't been Denny.

Mulder was lying on the low cot mattress, his boots still on and hanging off the end, one arm flung over his eyes. His other arm lay where she'd left it, wrapped loosely in an old shirt, dried black bloodstains showing through the thin cotton.

Carrying peroxide and gauze, she knelt next to the mattress and gently undid the makeshift bandage.

"It's nothing." He muttered as he lifted his arm from his face to crack his eyes open at her. "I told you." His cheeks and nose were still red and chapped from the cold and his eyes swam with exhaustion.

"I'll be the judge of that," she muttered softly, focusing on his wound. Minor indeed, she thought. He must have received it at least two weeks prior...and it was mostly scabbed over at this point. It was likely that it had been serious when he'd cut himself. He was lucky he would only be adding a scar to his collection and not losing a limb. He must have doctored himself well. Little for her to do, but she trained her eyes on it anyway. It was easier than looking into his eyes.

It had been necessary, she knew, for him to go like he had. Alone...without her. Necessary for everyone, for there were few who were able or qualified to do what was needed. And Mulder had always been one to sacrifice himself for others. But it was hard to accept his casual martyrdom, his inability to step out of the eye of everyone's need. After two years of almost unimaginable suffering, of watching everyone and everything she had ever loved or known die terribly...it was hard to let him walk away like he had.

Even worse to know that she couldn't go with him. Almost involuntarily her left hand lifted to touch the telling swell of her stomach. A burden, a chain, a reason. The reason. It was why she could not go with him when he went. Neither of them would risk it. Not for anything. And there was plenty of risk beyond the cold haven of the mountains they hid in.

The virus still savaged what remained of the populace. The aliens' threat was vanquished, but their legacy remained. The monsters, the massive hulks that Pike had dubbed 'Shredders' still roamed the warmer climes. Unrepentant, uncaring and completely hostile.

Warm fingertips covered hers, smoothing over the flesh-wrapped bones of her slender hands and swooping lower to touch her stomach...almost reverently. She clasped his hand and pulled it away, bringing it to her lips to cover up the fact that she hated his reverence. Hated the reason that she was not able to share his risk instead of hiding in the shadows. She finally let her eyes meet his and she saw that his depthless chameleon gaze did not hold awe, but instead a deep fear. He had been afraid she would not be here when he got back. He had once confided in her, late at night many months ago, that he had an irrational fear that the moment she left his sight, she would cease to be.

Megalomania, that's what she had told him at the time, lightening the mood. Though essentially, it was true. He'd always been almost pathologically self-centered. Not a bad thing, not in her thinking. She preferred to stand alone on her own merits...and her control issues were certainly on a par with his egocentrism, but this fear was beyond that. When she had vanished from his life all those years ago, losing 3 months of her life, it had left its mark on him. Even now he was afraid that she would disappear if he were not there to watch her.

She smiled softly at him, pulling his cool palm against her warm cheek and leaning into it before setting it back on his chest and returning to his wound.

Silly man, she told him silently.

She cleaned the scabbed gash gently in the silence of the room, only the fire giving voice in its sibilant hisses and cackles in the corner. She would not ask, though the questions hung in the warmth of the room like the smell of pine smoke. She would wait for him to talk. To speak of what he had seen, what he had found... how he had cut himself seemed secondary. Certainly she had become immune to the savagery of this new world since she'd waded hip deep through the blood of its birthing. A wound like this would have had her on edge not three years earlier, now she counted him lucky that it was all he'd brought back with him.

It was not until the cut was cleaned and wrapped in the soft, white gauze that the honeyed gravel of his voice filled her ears.

"I made it as far as Helena, Scully." he said. His voice was so tired. She looked up at him, then, settling back on her heels at the side of the mattress and curling her hands into her lap. Her silence did not press him, she simply waited, not touching. He would not meet her eyes, his own green gaze fixed on the rough, low, flat ceiling of the cabin. "There was nothing there but the dead. I found a few of...Them...but they were bones. Shredder bones." He pulled his lips into his mouth sucking on them thoughtfully. "Someone shot at me about two weeks back, I ran...fell..." he lifted his injured arm a bit. "That's how I got this. Dropped into a steep ravine and cut myself on a tree branch. I never saw the guy who fired at me."

He finally turned his head and looked at her, shifting his long body on the bed to make room for her. She heaved her bulk onto the mattress next to him, curling her form around his, glorying in the sensation of touching him again. She could feel his arms sliding around her, pulling her closer...the weight and substance of her stomach between them... and unexpected tears bit at the corners of her eyes. Tears of simple relief that she was allowed this again. That he was indeed, still alive. The reality of it had not fully hit her yet, but it waited anxiously at the edges of her sanity...still worried that this was a dream.

"I did find a HAM radio, just like we hoped. And it works too." His voice rumbled in the cavity of his chest, sounding warm and hollow where her ear pressed against him. "Damned fucking heavy though. I'd been hoping to find a horse...something, but all the animals I saw were long dead. I found a few snowmobiles, but couldn't risk the noise."

"Helena is dead." she repeated quietly, sadly. So many in their makeshift camp had held out high hopes for the city. Even her, though she'd known better. Hope that a larger community might have survived, organized. That something of their old lives had managed to make it through. It would be bitter to discover that hope to be false. Another disappointment in a long line of them. He squeezed her shoulder, continuing.

"I didn't see any sign of the Shredders. The cold will keep them sluggish. It's possible that they'll simply die of starvation before the spring comes." Neither of them bothered to wonder how the victims had contracted the virus, it was far more important to worry about the things the virus created. Besides, at the end, the virus had been everywhere. Food, water, even the air...at least in some parts, from what they'd heard. Vaporizing bombs similar to how VX gas was deployed had been detonated 200 feet off the ground over certain cities. The virus took out entire areas unilaterally.

"If they don't?" she whispered. "If they manage to make it up here?"

"I don't ...know." He admitted wearily. "We'll figure something out if they do." His words were matter of fact. He believed them. It was part of why they all looked to him. The confidence that he had had through this. That he wore on him like a mantle. She suspected that part of it came because he'd faced so many horrors in his life and the rest was simply that he did not fear the unknown like so many did. He'd spent most of his life seeking that very unknown, delving under the rocks and into the shadowed corners where no others dared look.

Or believe.

He'd always believed. It was easy for him to say 'we'll figure it out' and have others trust that they would.

"What else?" she asked finally. She knew that he would have saved the worst for last. That he was hoping, even now, to protect her from the horrors she already knew were out there.

"I came across a farm outside of Helena, a big one. Or at least what was left of it. The place had burned to the ground and I found four skeletons in the ashes." He stopped and she waited. She knew that there was more. "God Scully.." he stopped again and she lifted her head to look into his face. His eyes were clenched shut, his jaw tight.

"What, Mulder?"

"There was a woman. She hadn't been burned in the fire. I didn't see her at first, she was a little ways off from the main house. She'd been murdered." His eyes opened and he looked down at her. "She'd been pregnant." His hand moved to touch her belly as if he was reassuring himself. "The killer had cut her open...the fetus was ...gone." His last words were drenched in horror, a horror she felt crawling over her as she saw the truth in his eyes. The fear.

"Whoever did it was the human breed of monster, Scully. I'd lay odds that the same person or persons were responsible for burning that house down as well." His voice took on a lecturing tone, one she recognized from countless slide shows in a long-gone basement office. "The purpose of cutting an infant from a living womb...I think the killer had to have known the victim. Cutting open pregnant women was often used as a method of war, much like rape was. Keep the populace cowed and terrified. But this was different. I think that she knew the killer, there was no sign of struggle.." He sounded deadened, distant, as if part of him was running on autopilot. She caught her breath and laid a hand on his arm.

"Mulder. Stop."

She reached up and pulled his chin down until she met his eyes. She shook her head ever so slightly, conveying her insistence that he not do this to himself...that he not profile every atrocity he came across. It took too much of a toll on him.

"How long ago had it happened?" She finally asked.

"I'd guess at least 8 or 10 months. The cold kept some of the decay at bay, but the woman was pretty far gone."

He was relaxing slightly, as if what he'd seen was a burden that, once unloaded, allowed him to rest. His voice was slowing in cadence like a wind up toy running down. The weight he'd carried, the faith and hopes and fears of every one of the 14 survivors in the camp, it had been heavy and unforgiving. She knew he had felt every ounce of it with each step he'd taken.

His eyelids were fluttering as he tried to stay awake and she let her hand stroke his hair back from his forehead, trailing it down his thickly stubbled cheek and tracing the generous swell of his mouth.

"Sleep now, just sleep." She ordered gently.

He was just drifting off when the sound of a fist pounding on the door startled both of them upright.

"Mulder! Mulder!" It was Pike's voice, muffled beyond the door. "Come quick! There's a stranger!"

"Name's Hobb. Hobb Strick."

They had allowed him to sit by the fire and strip off his wet clothes, Lloyd had handed him a cup of hot tea...but there was no mistake that not a one of the six adults in the room trusted the newcomer. Under his dirty coat he was skeletally thin, his eyes burned with a strange light as he stared into the fire and rocked every so slightly to a rhythm that only he heard.

He looked up at the surrounding people almost myopically and then back down into the steam of his tea, the heat painting his cold nose red. He had not removed his knit cap and scraggly strands of white hair poked out from around the edges lending him the look of a homeless vagrant. Watery eyes set deep in a scarred face flicked from person to person like an insect...never stopping any one place long enough to invite attention. He had been humming softly to himself while they'd waited for Chris to shut the door behind his son.

He looked up at the five men and one woman with a bleary smile and rheumy eyes. Mulder guessed he was in his 70s.

"I was looking for a way over the Divide. Hmmm? Thought maybe that I could make it to Idaho. You know, I heard that there were a lot of survivalist types out there. Maybe they even managed to get organized if they survived the virus. Who better, right? Hmmm?" He looked up at Mulder almost hopefully, but found nothing but suspicion in the hazel eyes.

"What happened to your face Mr. Strick?" Scully's soft-rough voice came from somewhere over Mulder's shoulder.

His fingers came up and traced the air over the burn-marks on his cheek.

"These?" he asked unnecessarily. "I uhh..hmmm" His shoulders quivered a little and his chin sunk down against his shoulders like a turtle retreating into its shell. "There was a fire, hmmm?" It seemed all he wanted to offer.

Strick's fingers were working unconsciously in his lap, twisting and twining together incessantly.

"What direction did you come from?" Mulder asked, folding his arms just to give his hands something to do. "How did you find us?"

"I came from the east...uh...I-Iowa, hmmm?" he jerked his head in the general direction, his fingers continuing their ceaseless dry-washing. "Like I said, I was looking for a way over the mountains that wasn't on a road. Roads are dangerous." He swallowed and his adam's apple bobbed. "As fer how I found you...hmmm...I followed some fresh tracks. They led right here. I was hoping to find some friendly shelter before the storm hit, hmmmm?." His eyes trailed off towards the rafters of the old warming hut. "It's gonna prove to be a big one." His voice was soft.

His tracks. There was no helping that. Melchor pressed forward a moment later, touching Mulder's arm to meet his eyes.

"What's the point of this interrogation, Fox?" the little Mexican asked, frowning. "He's cold, he's tired...and he needs shelter. I know we all have right to be suspicious after last time, but he seems all right, and I think we all want to get back to bed."

He stared at the man for a long moment and then nodded. Melchor was right, he was just edgy from what he had seen. No, edgy wasn't a strong enough word, he was stretched taut as a guitar string. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the dead woman's mutilated body, her blood black and dried under the woodshed roof. Not that he hadn't seen worse horrors in the VCU, but it was just far too easy to see Scully's face in place of the dead woman's.

"Ok." He turned back to the old stranger. "Ok. You can stay here through the storm. Maybe longer if you want. We don't have a lot of room, but I think there's space in Howie's cabin." He glanced over at the big blonde midwesterner. Howie nodded, not thrilled, but understanding that he was the only one with space. His 'cabin' had once been the mess-hall of the little cluster of buildings. It was the largest. "I'm warning you though," he turned back to Strick, narrowing his eyes. "We're armed here, and we won't tolerate any crap from you."

Hobb seemed unaffected by the threat, and his face remained expressionless. Mulder couldn't help but feel cold fingers crawling up and down his spine every time he looked the man in his pale dead eyes. He glanced back over his shoulder for the first time and he saw the same vague unease echoed faintly in Scully's face.

Probably remembering the two men they had given shelter three months earlier, he told himself. They'd run off with half their stored food, all their vitamins and some ammo. Howie had earned himself a fairly serious concussion when he'd tried to stop them. Everyone was lucky it hadn't been worse. One of the two men had had a gun.

Howie was leading Strick out of the cabin and as soon as the stranger exited, he felt a sudden flush of weariness wash over him. He'd not gotten a lot of sleep in the weeks since he'd come across the murdered people. Not because he was afraid that the killer(s) might still be around, but because his dreams wouldn't let up. Lack of rest combined with the fairly heavy workout of hauling a pack on his back in thigh-deep snow had left him feeling like a pulped banana.

"Come on Mulder." The hand was pulling him effectively out of the cabin. He thought maybe he could hear people murmuring greetings and vague questions at him. A blast of cold air did little to clear his mind as they exited the heat and light of Chris's cabin and plowed through the falling snow. A series of gray shapes to his right were identifiable as Howie and the stranger making their way towards the ex-mess hall.

No stranger to sleep deprivation, he recognized the signs of a hard crash inching inwards on the perimeter of his vision. Scully's soft voice was echoing slightly as if she was speaking into a tin can.

Snow. Steps. Door. Bed.

Darkness.

He was gone almost before she got him onto the bed.

She brushed her lips against his forehead let her fingers stroke the side of his face. After she pulled his boots and socks off unresisting, reddened, blistered feet...she spread a wool army blanket over him and considered climbing onto the lumpy mattress with him.

It was only a momentary debate before she decided against it. Straightening, she rubbed the swell of her belly, reassuring herself again. It was something she had done almost constantly ever since she had learned of her condition. It was more than a miracle, but it was also a terrible burden. It kept her from doing much more than staying behind while her partner went out and risked his life.

She'd been down that road before and she pushed aside the bitterness, the uselessness she felt. She bent to the task of Mulder's pack, quickly and efficiently unloading it. Much like Christmas had been as a child or the thrill of seeing her father come home from a strange port bearing trinkets and gifts, there was the joy of discovering what Mulder had brought from that far-away land of their extinct civilization. These things were not brightly colored packages, but somehow they were even more dear.

Two large bags of rice, another of flour, one of oats, some white beans, a big bag of assorted Vitamin E, B, B-12, C and D, and a whole paper bag full of different kinds of seeds. Several different household chemicals that could be used for a myriad of things, a tightly rolled poly-fleece blanket, a crumpled pair of fluffy women's socks meant to double as slippers, thread and needles and other bits of useful things. The radio itself was carefully dismantled and packed securely within the folds of another blanket and several items of clothing that would fit an infant. She smiled at these, smoothing the fabric under her hands and gently setting them aside before returning to the pack.

A host of batteries spilled out of a side pocket, another yielded a large unopened bag of salted sunflower seeds, two small flashlights and a lighter. Mulder's knife and gun were produced from another along with bullets for both his weapon, hers and birdshot for the shotgun.

She smiled to see several dusty bottles of pre-natal vitamins, two bars of scented soap, shampoo and toothpaste. Luxuries these, and only for her, she knew. Somehow the sight of the red, white and aqua of the toothpaste tube brought tears to her eyes. With his limited space, he should have brought more food, medical supplies or some other necessity...but he had hauled her toothpaste and girlie-soap up the mountain. Harlequin eat your heart out, she thought with a wry smile. She would berate him later for wasting the space in his pack for her, but she knew that he knew that she was inordinately pleased.

There were other things in the pack. He'd managed to find insulin for Melchor and Jenn, there were clean syringes for her own small hoard of supplies and a few more miscellaneous medical items she'd asked for with no real hope of him being able to find them. She should have known he would.

In the last pocket she found the Penicillin she'd been looking for amongst a few other assorted luxuries he'd brought up for some of the others.

She put away the other things in silence, enjoying the simple peace of having him in the same room with her, enjoying the sound of his breathing. She would not think of the stranger, or of what Mulder had seen. She would not think of the dead city of Helena and everything that had been lost. And she would not think of the virus and the all-too-real monsters that now walked the earth.

For now, she could just be happy that he was back.