He dreamed the same dream.

The snow field blinding white within a distant ring of winter trees. Aching eyes squinting against the brightness. Trudging across it, sweat prickling along his spine even in the cold, feet crunching through the thick crust. The radio was heavy, pressing down on him with each step. He could feel the fear of being out in the open clearing adding to the weight on his shoulders... and then he smelled it.

It was not an odor that could be likened to wood burning, nor to the noxious choke of smoking oil...instead it was a sickening stench that could only be compared to distilled fear. A mix between burning hair and roasted meat. But it was old. Only a whiff of it caught at his senses. It had stopped him, and his conscious self began to beat at him, trying to make him keep going, to make him ignore the smoke. His conscious self already knew what he would see there.

But it was inevitable. His dream feet carried him forward carefully, keeping him low as he entered the copse. The smell was a little thicker here, denser...the smell of death.

It had been a farmhouse, maybe a ranch. There were many out here on the distant outskirts of Helena. There was a weathered old lodgepole pine entryway over the dirt road that bore a brand on it in clumsy woodburn. C Lazy 7. The main house had burned, but only incompletely. Several of the walls still stood, the skeletal, blackened bones of the frame. His spine crawled as he realized that the faint smoky smell was not just from burning wood.

At first he kept to the treeline, afraid of the silence of the farm. Moving carefully, his feet carried him on and the unease that swelled in him was choking, the foreshadowed fear of what he knew he would see overwhelmed him.

He ducked under the oft-repaired pole fence of the corral, his dream feet slogging through dry, grainy snow. The charred skeletons of four people in the main room were easily visible, the trio clustered together in death, the bones blistered and cracked from the heat...all dusted with a light layer of old snow. It looked like an adult and three teens.

Walking through the wreckage of the house, he crouched in front of the murdered family and simply stared at them, his mind coolly picking out details of the scene without even thinking about it. Some things were instinctive, and even now, two years after he'd left the life of a profiler...an investigator...behind, he still found himself observing details with the same eye.

He'd forced himself to stand, knees popping and creaking like an old man's, turning his head from the tragedy. The dream began slowing down, his heartbeat sounding loud in his ears.

A woodshed stood in a protected stand of dead aspen trees, sheltered from the majority of snow. A lavender flash of color caught his eye.

His conscious self began to beat frantically at the glass barrier between waking and seeing what came next.

The crunching of his boots in the old snow.

Old black blood splattered the scene. Everywhere was a grisly Jackson Pollack painting of dark red fluid against the clean white canvas of the snow. Death he knew. Violence he was nearly inured to, but this was different. Her pale limbs were slender and white where they had not decayed, the cold had preserved her slightly. He could see one of her hands lying palm up next to a pile of neatly chopped wood, slim fingers curled almost peacefully.

The dream pulled him forward. Closer. She wore house clothes, clearly having been rousted from the indoors by her attacker, her feet clad only in filthy socks. Her face was obscured by the lavender shirt where it had been ripped up and back; but her bare, tattered torso, blue with death, gaped at him. She had been slit from crotch to sternum by a knife, and it was blatantly, horribly clear that she had been pregnant. There was nothing left of her midsection. The fetus was gone.

This was where his dream slipped its moorings from reality and veered off into darker waters. Three weeks before when he'd *lived* this nightmare he had lost what little he'd managed to eat earlier that day, retching and moaning on his knees in the snow, oblivious to the wet-cold seeping into the knees of his pants.

But now, in his dream, he walked towards the woman's corpse and his hand stretched out to push aside the lavender fleece shirt to expose the face.

Wide, lifeless blue eyes stared up at him from a face framed in coppery silk.

"Scully!"

He surged into the waking world with a raw noise that seemed to have been birthed in a place deeper than his gut.

"Mulder?" Soft, soothing hands were stoking his back, brushing his untrimmed hair out of his face. He couldn't acknowledge her at first, simply taking deep breaths, forcing his jaw to unclench, letting the tight knot of fear and pain uncoil in his belly.

Every goddamned night for three weeks now. Would it never let him sleep again? Always the same. Always.

Her presence quieted him, her scent, her touch, her voice. Her reality.

He let himself bend over, pressing his palms into the hollows of his eyesockets, hard. Forcing bursts of light to blossom behind his lids. The small pain calmed him.

"Mulder?" she asked again. He heard the rustling of the blankets as she leaned across the bed and lit a candle with a small, yellow bic lighter. He let himself fall back onto the mattress, his eyes sliding down the swollen curves of her body with a desperate need to fight off the remnants of the dream.

"Just a dream." He said, surprised at how normal his voice sounded. He still felt like he'd been run through a rusty thresher.

She crooked her mouth to one side as if to tell him that he'd have to do better than that. He shook his head and tugged at her arm until she fell back down alongside him. The candle flame flickered in the air currents of the room, sending shivering pools of light and shadow dancing across the smooth lines of her face. In the corner the fire snapped and whispered to itself, burnt down to black and red embers.

"Just a bad dream," he repeated, letting his hand cup her cheek. "I missed you, partner." His voice lowered a notch, breaking a little under the weight of the inadequacy of his words.

"I have a way to fix that." She smiled softly. "Next time don't go without me."

He opened his mouth to answer her, but she placed a single finger over his lips, stopping him. "Just shut up, Mulder. I missed you too."

She lowered her soft mouth onto his, kissing him for the first time since he'd returned. He'd been living on memories of her taste, her texture, the incredible velvet touch of her lips and it was nothing in the face of reality. Slowly, skillfully, she chased away the lingering shades of the nightmare until all that was left was her, filling his senses. Light fingers painted trails of liquid pleasure down his neck, his chest, his ribs...pausing to wriggle under the shirt he still wore.

His bandaged arm came up around her, his palm filling with the curve of her bottom and squeezing until she let a breathless gasp puff past her lips. One thing about living up here in Grizzly Adams country was the fact that they habitually wore layers to bed at night to keep warm. Even with the fire going, the cabin was drafty. A bonus, however, was that by the time they struggled out of their clothes, they were both overheated from the effort. Desire was burning temporary life into his exhausted body, urgency replacing fear.

He captured both her wrists, holding her still and apart from him as they rose onto their knees out of the nest of scratchy, army-issue wool...examining her in the gentle light of the candle. It took his breath away. Her breasts were fuller than before, round and tempting in the warm glow...her cheeks flushed, her curves fleshed out. But it was the fertile swell of her stomach that captivated him. Still holding her wrists, he bent his head and ran a gentle mouth over the firm, warm skin...reveling in the shiver that quaked through her. She was easily twice as large as she had been when he'd left and it sent both a surge of fear and awe through him at the same time. Knowing that she hated the latter and wanting to be rid of the former, he pulled her forward until she straddled his thighs. Her eyes were limpid in the flickering half light, her mouth half-open and slightly swollen from his kisses. He almost came just looking at her.

Holding her arms to her sides, hampering her movement... he lowered his mouth to her breasts, his fingers entwining tightly with hers as he pulled a taut nipple between tongue and teeth. She made a tiny whimpering noise that shot straight to his groin, his erection twitching against her. The sensitive head was just brushing the wiry curls of her pubis and he could feel her tiny, anxious thrusts against him, rubbing at him even while he held her pinioned her with his hands.

The loneliness and worry of the past month vaporized under the onslaught of the thing between them. To say he had missed her was a lie. He'd withered a little more every day without her. It was almost funny, now, to realize how dearly he had depended on the artificial lifeline of their cellphones. She had always been a single speed-dial button away. No more. He had gone day by day wondering if she was going to be there when he returned.

He paused in his ministrations just for a moment, simply burying his face between her breasts, pressing her beautifully swollen body against his. He felt the brush of her lips in his hair and a hard, painful lump formed in his throat.

He fought the urge to give in to the simple need for maudlin tears.

Instead he curled his arms around the slender column of her back and guided her body down onto his. Her head tipped slowly back as he filled her, her slick wet heat surrounding him, a whisper of his name on her lips. His hands played across the smooth skin of her bottom, cupping her hips in his fingers and lifting her up and down on his shaft with aching slowness. Her freed hands trailed up his arms to curl around the back of his neck as he dropped his mouth to her breasts once more.

They moved together gently, reverently, living in each second, savoring each sensation. But it had been a long time, a long stressful time, and it seemed only moments before he felt her tensing deliciously in his arms, her breath coming faster, her fingers tightening in his hair. He had been close before he even entered her and he simply let his control go, feeling the crescendo rising in him, the pleasure surging powerfully through his body...washing away everything but the fact that she was alive, that he was alive...that they were together again.

They stayed like that for a long moment in time, he cradled her body to his almost possessively, wanting to sustain the sensation of being able to forget everything but her. More than his lover, more than his friend... partner was still the best word for what they were.

It was she who broke the silence between them.

"You brought toothpaste, Mulder?"

His face was still pressed into her breasts as he started to chuckle.

"I love your idea of pillow-talk Scully." He grinned against her fragrant skin planting a final kiss in the hollow of her throat before she dismounted his knees. She must have peeked in his pack while he was passed out on the bed. He unfolded his legs out from under him with a groan, finally noting that they'd lost a little circulation during their exertions. "Yeah, I brought you toothpaste," he said as they both burrowed back under the covers again, resettling in each others arms. "I didn't know how else to tell you that your breath's been pretty rank lately."

She snorted, a huff of air against his neck.

"You're one to talk. When was the last time you washed? And what's with the beard? You're not keeping that, are you?"

"You been taking nagging fishwife lessons from Jenn while I was gone?" he asked, grinning down at her.

"I don't need lessons, Mulder, you bring it out in me naturally."

"You didn't need *me* to help you find your inner nag, Scully -ow!" He winced as she pinched one of his nipples sharply in punishment. "There wasn't a lot of opportunity for a quick shower out there. I did find some working plumbing in the outskirts of Helena, but as for the beard...what... you don't like it? I thought it fit right in with the whole Grizzly Adams thing we were cultivating up here."

"Tell you what, as soon as you befriend a giant bear and an old drunk prospector, you can grow it back. But first thing tomorrow, say goodbye to it. It scratches. I think you gave me a rash."

"Whatever you say *dear*." He said in his best browbeaten voice. She pinched him again.

" ...But feel free to wear the red flannel shirt with suspenders" she added. They both chuckled softly at the image.

They lapsed into silence again after he blew the candle out and just when he thought she had fallen asleep, she spoke.

"What are we going to do now, Mulder? We can't stay up here for much longer. If Helena is dead, where do we go?" It was rhetorical. She didn't expect him to answer something that she herself could not.

After two years of living on guesswork and luck, they still didn't know what to do.

No one could guess at the numbers...the cold statistics of who had lived and who had died. He only knew that most had fallen in that first wave of the virus, populating the lands with the hulking, mindlessly brutal Shredders. So many had died as the invaders birthed, more had died after...when they spread across the countryside killing randomly and ravenously. A sweltering summer had been chosen by the Invaders for their incursion, a summer heat that had hastened the development of the ancient species.

What had happened would almost be laughable if not for the tragedy of it. The way that you sniggered in horror at the videoed voyeurism of a skier wiping out, or a small child hitting his dad in the balls with a baseball bat.

When the First Stage was over and the newborn gray aliens had emerged from their molted monster-skins...they began to die.

Not from any organized resistance of the humans that had scampered underground...taking refuge like rats in the dark, nor from any brave, determined effort to create a working vaccine for the virus. No. While the humans hid, the earth itself rose to its defense.

It was an imminently common virus. One that every man, woman and child was born immune to. But the new invader was not.

And they had died.

They tried to fight it, but most of their traitorous human allies had perished at that point, and they were dying too fast to discover a vaccine of their own.

Within a year, they gave up and pulled out.

Humanity had crept back out into the daylight to see what had been done to their world. The invaders had not cleaned up their mess when they'd gone. The virus was still very much an issue, and a vaccine had still not been found. The First Stagers were still born, and they still killed indiscriminately. It was only once they pupated into their final form that the human virus killed them.

But when it was winter, the monsters did not metamorphosize. The cold stunted the development. So they hunted and they roamed, and they killed whatever they found. But they did not die.

The cities were packed with the long rotted, spongy corpses that the aliens had used to gestate in. Everywhere they looked, urban centers squatted like silent graveyards. Roads were clustered with abandoned cars piloted by the dead. Some had died from playing host, some had died at the hands of the newborn monsters and some had simply killed themselves or each other.

Hard to guess how many had survived. Mostly hybrids and a motley mix of humans. It didn't really matter. People formed groups, they tried to find places to reconstruct some semblance of safety and community where they would not be killed by the predators, human and not, that wandered everywhere.

Like the Hybrids, the Shredders could not be shot, not without bringing death upon yourself and everyone around you. It made things harder. It forced them up into the coldest reaches where the monsters did not wander, playing simple games of avoidance.

Which was where they were now. Hoping to wait it out until it was safe to come back down. Was it ever going to be safe? He curled his arms around Scully, pulling her close to him, his hand stroking her satin curves, reacquainting himself with her new body. It didn't seem that it was. The grisly murder scene he'd stumbled upon had reawakened him to the reality of *human* monsters. It was a danger that had no compunction about coming up here to get what it wanted.

The stranger's appearance tonight had driven it home just how vulnerable they really were. It was easy to forget after 10 months of relative peace in their imaginary Xanadu.

Neither of them spoke again. They simply huddled in the dark of the old warming hut while the snow fell outside, thick and inexorable while the fire talked quietly to itself in the corner.

One more month, he thought, curling his hand around her belly while she slipped into sleep. Three more weeks and they would both be able to protect their child on a more level playing field.

But it would be Spring by then. The cold wouldn't keep the monsters at bay.

And he did something he hadn't done throughout the entirety of their ordeal. Something he hadn't done since his sister was taken all those eons ago.

He prayed.

My father was an asshole. Can I say that word? I guess I can now that he's dead. If I ever cursed in front of him I'd usually end up regretting it pretty bad. Usually. It got to the point that I'd egg him on on purpose...just to watch him lose control.

He'd turn this queer shade of purple, his eyes sort of sinking into his skull. He never could take it when any of us would stand up to him. Sometimes even something as simple as asking a question would be akin to doubting his authority. I gained personal knowledge of the working end of his belt. And by that I mean the buckle.

My Granddad would try to stop him sometimes, but usually nothing could halt him once he got going. He was like that, my dad. I hated him after those beatings, but I hated my Granddad more for not trying harder to stop him.

I was the second youngest of five, and for some reason that meant I received most of his attention. No idea why. I was maybe around 8 when he first started looking at me like that. 9 by the time he started to come to my room at night. He'd threaten me, my sisters, my mom...everyone he could think of but Jesus himself if I dared to make a noise. I was quiet. Quiet like the rabbits.

Mr. Ears was quiet too when I'd broken his neck. Only the eyes gave anything away...all that fear. Fear of the power I held over him. The fear had gone away after I'd moved my hands just-so. It really had been an accident.

It was on purpose when I killed Lila.

But don't tell.

The tap on the window was expected and he hurried to the small square of glass before the sleeper up in the loft woke. Dim white light was peeking through the curtains, hitting him in the face as he pulled the fabric back to peer outside. Denny's pale freckled face filled the frosted pane, his hand gesturing impatiently. Pike could see 8 year-old Shanida behind him, her dark brown skin bold against the white of the snowfall that still gripped the camp.

He nodded at the older boy and let the curtain fall shut, tiptoeing across the room to gather up the clothes he'd piled in the corner the night before. He could hear the faint buzz of his Dad snoring up in the loft. As carefully and quietly as he could, he pulled his clothes, boots and jacket on and slipped out the front door.

Denny and Shan were waiting in the snow a few yards away under a tree. The flakes still fell thick and heavy in the oddly still air, low clouds clung to the mountaintops...obscuring all sign of the forest around them. It was eerily quiet.

He plowed his way through the drifts that had gathered, amazed by the fact that so much snow had fallen overnight. It was nearly up to his hips. He had grown up in Philly, he was no stranger to snow...but this, this was different than anything he'd ever seen. A childishly gleeful smile pasted his face as he joined his friends under the tree.

"So much snow" he whispered quietly to them, scooping up a thick handful. Shan just nodded, looking around at the socked-in vale with wide eyes.

"Will there be an avalanche?" she asked. Of them all, Shanida and her mom were the most affected by the mountains they'd all sought refuge in. Neither of them had ever been out of their burrough in New York, much less out in the middle of the wilderness, before the end had come.

Denny shook his head knowingly. The taller boy was from Montana. This was old hat to him.

"Nah. I seen worse storms than this. It'll blow itself out soon enough. Snow like this'll mean good water for the lowlands come springtime." He had the sound of a boy parroting words he'd heard spoken many times by adults, but Pike didn't mention that. Denny considered himself the 'leader' of their little group. He was bigger and older, so Shan and Pike just went along with it.

He did seem to know a lot about the world they now found themselves in. He knew how to catch squirrels and what the names of the wild animals were. He knew what their tracks looked like and he knew how to whittle a spear with his Swiss army knife. Once he had caught a fish with his hands. And he knew how to fire a rifle. That alone was enough to make them follow his lead. Even though he was a know-it-all and he always thought he was better than him and Shan.

"Come on. They'll be waking up soon. Everyone will want to know what Mulder saw while he was gone." Pike urged.

"He's back?" Shan blew a stream of smoky condensation out of her mouth experimentally, reaching up to tug her hat closer down around her ears as they trudged away from the camp and into the thick treeline.

"Didn't you hear the commotion last night? A stranger showed up too. He's staying with Howie." Pike said. Their voices seemed to echo a little queerly in the hollow white of the silent fall.

"A stranger?" Shan asked, her voice a little nervous. Pike knew she was remembering the last strangers.

"He's just one guy. Lloyd said he was old. We can handle him." Denny spoke with an annoyingly superior tone, as if he would have anything to do with any 'handling'. He was 15, not 25. Pike rolled his eyes at Shan behind the older boys back and she giggled, a little of her fear disappearing.

"Besides, as far as what Mulder saw, who cares? We already know that there's nothing out there but the virus. And Shredders." Denny said sagely.

"My mom said that Helena had a better chance..." Shan stated a little defiantly. "Because it's in the mountains, and smaller than the other cities we've seen. Maybe it got overlooked..."

Both Shan and Pike were silent for a moment as they remembered the gutted carcasses of St. Louis, Chicago, and Philly that they had passed through on their way west. Only Shanida had seen New York, and she didn't talk about it.

"There's no reason that Helena would be any differ'nt." Denny scoffed. "Not like the people who lived there are immune to the virus any more'n anyone else."

"Well, maybe the virus wasn't released there?" Pike said hopefully. "Maybe the electricity works there, and the supermarkets are open, and they still use cars ...?"

"Don't get your hopes up." Denny scoffed. "The adults already worked themselves up into believing that crap after Mulder suggested he would go down and look around. The real reason he went down was because those assholes stole most of the vitamins. He was just getting more for Dan- Dr. Scully. He doesn't give a rat's ass about the rest of us."

"That's not true-!" Shan started, but Denny cut her off, not ungently.

"Yes it is. You're gonna have to smarten up if you want to survive around here Shan. This isn't the city anymore."

"Shut up Denny," Pike said, frowning angrily. He didn't believe a word of it. "You shut up. Mulder saved us all. We would never have known that cold kept the Shredders away. We'd all be dead."

Denny only shrugged nonchalantly, a gesture he'd picked up from Lloyd.

Lloyd was the man who had found Denny wandering the forest on a foray for Elk the past fall. A big, cold man, solemn and gruff, he scared the hell out of Pike. The youth tended to avoid him with alacrity. He'd heard Cissy one day asking his Dad how a man like that had wound up attaching himself to a child. His dad, in his typical slow fashion, had remarked that there were few people who had the kind of heartlessness it would take *not* to take in an orphan.

Not that Denny would have liked that title.

Pike had lost his own mother to the virus, watching her body go spongy and clear within a day...and then birthing the horror that had been gestating inside her. His father had had the sense to lock the thing in the bedroom, giving them the precious few moments they needed to get away.

He pushed the thoughts aside, disliking the tearing grief that tightened in his throat every time he remembered his mother. He wondered sometimes if Denny ever thought of his dead family with sorrow...or if Shan missed her dad as much as he missed his mother. These were not things that anyone spoke of...the people missing from their lives.

The rock face they had been aiming for loomed ahead and he eagerly picked his steps up with the other two when they saw it.

"I hope she's Ok," Shan said, her hand going to her bulging pockets. Pike could see the edges of a piece of cloth sticking out and he suspected she had snuck some food from her dinner the night before.

A dark crack rose up in the whiteness, outlines blurred in the snow-thickened air. He'd been through that opening many times now, but it always made him think of Joey Diller's house. He remembered Joey's house the day they had run from the thing that had killed his mother. The front door had been wide open, a darkness just within. He'd had dreams about the empty mystery of that open door.

Denny crouched at the opening, peering inside. He pulled his flashlight out, but he didn't turn it on. All of them had been ingrained with the necessity to conserve batteries.

From inside the darkness, Pike could hear the chuffing breath of an animal. She was still alive. A thrill of relief shot up his spine and he glanced over at Shan to see the same excitement reflected there.

Denny crawled inside, and a moment later, he and Shan followed.

After only a few yards of low ceilinged space, the rocky walls opened up, exposing a dimly lit cavern of sorts. The floor was dry and cold with hard-packed dirt. Their breathing echoed loudly in the space and they waited a moment for their eyes to adjust.

They had built a nest of pine boughs in the corner of the cave and two rough-hewn bowls of wood rested in front of the makeshift bed filled with water. But it was the creature that lay on the pine needles that held their attention.

An elk calf lay on its side, eyes half open and chest rising and falling slowly. Shan walked almost timidly up to the animal, settling on her knees beside it and resting a hand on its thick, shaggy coat. In the dark, they could almost forget that there was a deep slash across it's throat, dark and crusted with blood. It had been attacked by something. A Shredder. That's what Denny said.

The calf must have wandered up to the high country to die.

"She seems a little better, I guess." Shan said in a small voice. "Maybe we should tell Dr. Scully about it. She could help." Shan had said that every time they'd come up here since they'd found it two days ago.

Denny made a snort of derision just as Pike had known he would. The 15 year-old believed that he understood the ways of adults better than his friends, but Pike wasn't so certain he shared that view. Denny insisted that the adults would just kill the calf, seeing no point in trying to keep it alive. 'An elk isn't meant for a pet' was what he said they would say. It *did* sound like something his dad would say. But he wasn't so sure that Dr. Scully would.

Pike came up and knelt next to Shanida, taking her hand as they looked at the wounded animal. He'd had visions when they had found it of having it as a friend when it was grown. It would follow him around and eat treats from his hand.

Denny had said that would never happen, but if he thought that, then what was he doing here? Why did he bring it water and food? Shan pulled the tied cloth out of her pocket and withdrew several half-crumbled Saltines. The calf didn't even lift its head to sniff the offering. Maybe she didn't like crackers.

"It's gonna die." Denny said flatly, staring at the half-open brown eye. Pike glanced over at Shanida to see the beginnings of tears on her cold cheeks and he glared at the older boy balefully.

"You don't know that! She's getting better..." he squeezed Shan's hand in empathy. His own throat was suspiciously tight. Did everything have to die? Images of his mother returned violently and he felt tears sting his own eyes.

A sound from outside, the distant rattle of tree branch on tree branch...a snapping echo in the hollow void of the snowfall.

The noise startled both of the younger children and they looked up at Denny a little fearfully. The older boy was staring out the crack into the blaring white, his hand clenching and unclenching on the big skinning knife that he always carried around on his belt. He said his father had given it to him. They must do things differently in Montana...his dad would never have given him such a big knife.

"Stay in here." Denny whispered, narrowing his eyes at both of them. Shan curled her fingers into the thick coat of the calf. And then he walked out of the cavern, his body briefly silhouetted against the white glare.

Pike looked at Shan, his breath fogging in the icy air of the cave, their fingers tightening on each others'.

"What could it be?" Shan whispered with wide eyes.

Pike shook his head, holding his finger up to his lips. It couldn't be a Shredder. Mulder said it was too cold up here for them. Only the sound of the calf's labored breathing could be heard.

And then, a shadow at the entrance.

"Come on out. There was nothing there. Musta just been an old branch giving out under the snow weight."

A brief moment to stroke the calf and then they were pushing out into the half-light of the snowfall. Denny stood a little distance from the opening staring into the nearby treeline with narrowed eyes.

"We'd better get back before anyone notices we're gone." Then the older boy simply turned and trudged off down the slope back to the camp, leaving them to hurry to catch up.

It was only once they were almost back to the camp that Pike noticed a large set of footprints pressed down amongst their smaller ones in the snow.

The tracks of an adult.