Scully swam up from the first real night's sleep she'd had since Mulder had disappeared over the ridge two months before. His arm was slung heavily over her, his palm tucked under the swell of her left breast. His body was a warm weight at her back, his breath blowing softly against the nape of her neck.

She curled into him more closely, feeling the hard heat of his morning erection pressing into the softness of her bottom. Scully let her eyes close drowsily again, luxuriating in the basic animal pleasure afforded simply by lying abed with him, feeling his skin, his warmth, his arousal...proof he was real.

Lifting his arm and slipping out from under it without waking him, she bent and pressed her lips to his slackened cheek before pulling her discarded, overlarge poly-fleece back on over her goose-pimpled flesh to fight the chill. The fire had gone out, and that was a priority. She could fancy that her breath was fogging in the cold of the room.

The ashes were still warm and it was fairly easy to get a fire crackling and snapping again. There was plenty of wood. The rest of the camp made certain that she never had to go out and get it herself. Not that she wasn't capable, Howie had assured her when her eyes had started to spit blue fire, it was just that there was no need for her to split and carry wood when they were doing it anyway. She had rolled her eyes and let them.

It was easier to pander to a man's need to play provider and protector than it was to fight it.

Once the fire was blazing, heating the chill air of the room admirably, she rummaged in the makeshift crates that functioned as cabinets and found the newly restocked bag of oats. First she would get oatmeal started before she made the first of many of the day's trips to the frigid latrine. Too bad she hadn't gotten pregnant during a point in her life when she had access to indoor plumbing. Timing was everything.

She scooped up a bowlful of the dry oats and set them nearby. Dry goods were really all they could store. There certainly was no long term refrigeration. The all-too-rare freshly killed meat had to be eaten almost immediately...though that was no problem for 13 people. 12 with Mulder gone. They had all forgone such things as flavor, though Scully had been learning what could be done with salt. She was concerned that she was not meeting the nutritional requirements her condition called for, but she did the best she could. The vitamins that Mulder had found for her would help.

There wasn't really anything else she could do till spring anyway. They had not had the time that fall to build a storehouse or any sort of a curing shed, so they'd just stocked up on what they could and prayed they'd make it through the winter.

It was amusing to think that the Indians had not wintered up this high. Even crusty old mountain men had known better.

Taking the blackened pot, she went to the door and cracked it open, planning on scooping up snow for water. Instead, she froze in the opening, the cold air biting at her hands as face...watching as the stranger, Hobb Strick, made his slow and careful way back across the camp to Howie's cabin. He slipped inside and a moment later the clearing was still again.

Frowning, she filled the pot with snow and withdrew into the warmth of the room. What could he have been doing sneaking around out there this early? Not like it necessarily meant anything...but she'd noted her paranoia was running higher and higher the bigger she grew. Shrugging it off, she set the pot on the iron hook Howie had drilled into the stone of the fireplace.

Mulder continued to sleep the sleep of the dead and she let him. She knew him. Knew how he worked. Long burn and hard crash. That was his pattern. It wasn't pretty, but it was how he did things. Always had. She gingerly arched her back and lowered herself into a chair to wait for the water to boil. It wouldn't be too long before people would be coming over to ask Mulder questions. Wanting to know what he'd seen, what he'd brought back. The radio was a prize, though she found herself a little frightened to discover if there really were people out there. Scared to find out there weren't.

Another noise from outside caught her attention and she craned her neck to see out the window. The three children trooped across the center of the camp, Denny in front. She smiled faintly at Pike and Shan, gamely struggling to keep up with the longer legs of the 15 year old in the deep snow.

Denny. Her smile turned wry. He was a nice boy, and he'd helped her out a lot the past month looking for medicinal plants in the woods, but he was getting on her nerves. She was capable of recognizing a teenaged crush...odd as it was to have a crush on a woman the size of a Volkswagon Bug. It really wasn't that abnormal though, as Mulder the Psychologist would tell her. The boy had no other real female objects to focus his budding adolescent feelings on. Cissy wasn't exactly his type, he being a white little Montana boy. Jenn was too old. Anna stayed apart from everyone, and she was Lesbian besides. Roz was a Hybrid. That left her... the short, pregnant woman.

Denny's more overt attentions were just going to have to stop. She'd tried putting him down gently on more than one occasion, but he wasn't getting it. She'd just have to be firmer. Especially when the boy started getting jealous of her partner. It was only a matter of time now that Mulder was back. As it was, he already talked of Mulder with scorn in his voice.

The water had begun to boil and she dumped the oats into it, stirring it for a moment before covering it and pushing to her feet.

She touched the pocket that still held the penicillin Mulder had brought back gently and then quickly pulled on her boots and her coat. A last caressing glance at his sleeping form and she pushed out into the haze of the snowstorm. She had time to visit Anna before the oatmeal was done.

It was not a loud, howling blizzard. Yet. The worst ones were always quiet, stifling, suffocating things at first. It spoke of a true storm to come. But now it just cast a silent unifying blanket of dense, heavy, wet snow over everything, hiding all. It was so eerie in the still, gray blankness... the fat falling flakes building up even as she watched. A last look back at the cabin over her shoulder and then she was pressing through the drifts past Chris's cabin, onwards down the slope to where four more squatted in the opaque whiteness.

"Dana..." She heard her named called from behind and she stopped and turned in time to see Chris trudge up, his gray eyes concerned.

"What is it Chris?"

"Have you seen Pike? He wasn't in the cabin when I got up this morning."

Scully smiled. Chris was a little overprotective of his son. It was understandable considering the world they lived in now, but Pike was a boy. And boys were always getting into things. Especially this boy. Peter was an especially bright and active child. Her mother would have called him a 'handful'.

"Yes. I saw him and the others pass by a few minutes ago. I think they might have been headed for your cabin." Chris was the only person in the camp in possesion of an actual board game, and the kids tended to spend a lot of time playing it. Especially since the snow had come.

A look of relief passed over the man's kindly face and he smiled at her.

"Thanks Dana. How's Mulder? He looked tired as hell last night." She could hear the unspoken questions behind his words. He wanted to know what Mulder had found.

"Still sleeping." she shook her head then, her smile fading. "He didn't find anyone, Chris. But he did get the radio like we'd hoped."

"That's something, I guess." Chris reached up and rubbed at his reddened nose. He glanced in the direction Dana had been headed. "Going to check on Anna?"

She nodded.

"Ummhmm. Got some Penicillin. She'll be better in no time."

"I'll let you go then. Thanks," he said, gratitude for a number of things evident on his face. He turned and moved off in search of his son.

She resumed her slog through the snow, entering the treeline and following an obscured trail she knew by heart until the shape of Anna and Roz's cabin crouched before her far apart from the others.

Anna had mild pneumonia. Scully had managed to treat it with a few clumsily administered local herbs, but it lingered. Dr. Scully, Medicine Woman, she was not, though Mulder teased her unmercifully with the title. As for the pneumonia, the Penicillin would drive it away for good. The big bottle he'd found would be a good resource to have. No good against the virus, but still effective against the lesser ailments. Ailments that people still came down with. The humans anyway.

It was Roz, the Hybrid, who opened the door when she knocked. Disconcerting, she thought...as she always did when she looked at the tall brunette. She knew that Mulder had a harder time than she did. Roz was one of Samantha's clones, one of the many that they had seen over the past years. She was nothing like his sister, Mulder had told her time and time again. She was hard, unforgiving, and completely lacking a sense of humor. No surprise to Scully. What kind of a life had the woman had? This was no coddled younger sister, this was a pawn. An experiment. A lab rat. How could she not be hard?

But beyond her steely exterior, she was imminently capable of compassion and love. Scully knew that better than anyone, for she saw how she doted on Anna. Roz nodded at her, a flicker of something similar to relief in her eyes when she opened the door wide to let her in.

"Dr. Scully," she greeted her bluntly. "She's no better, but no worse."

Scully dug in her pocket and pulled out the bottle of penicillin with a little flourish and a wan smile. She was pleased to see Roz's amber-green eyes sparkle with hope.

"He's back then?" she asked, folding her arms tightly across her chest as she followed Scully across the tiny interior to where Anna lay abed. Roz had not been privy to the excitement of last night. Scully only nodded, kneeling down and dumping two of the round tablets into her palm. Anna lifted puffy eyelids to look at her, mustering a faint smile. The girl was only about 17. She'd been a hooker before the world ended and how she had managed to survive since then was something Scully didn't want to know. The scars on her face and side spoke of nightmares to hear the telling. Likely a run-in with a Shredder...and that was indeed the stuff of horror movies.

"Take this, Anna. It should do the trick. No more dirty tea." She smiled. Roz had brought a tin cup of water and Scully lifted the girl's lank-haired head to help her swallow. Anna breathed an obscured thanks from around a watery, bubbling cough and then Scully was testing her forehead and checking her throat. Her breathing was still stentorian, but far better than it had been a week earlier.

She pushed to her feet as Anna's eyes closed. Already she was anxious to get back to Mulder. Being in Roz's presence often did that to her. She had her brother's eyes. Or, she should say, she had Samantha's brother's eyes.

"Same thing, Roz. Lots of water, try to get her to eat. She should be better by tomorrow." She doled out two more of the precious tablets and gave them to the woman. "Give her these this evening."

"Thank you Dr. Scully." Roz said, her usual stiffness softening with relief. Scully nodded.

"We have a visitor. He arrived last night. Just wanted to warn you in case you saw him."

"Visitor?" Roz's eyes narrowed. None of them were fans of strangers. It was ironic, considering how much all of them wanted to find other survivors.

"Hobb Strick." She said. "He claims he's on his way to Idaho. Seems nice enough...if a little 'off'. He'll probably just stay through the storm. He's in Howie's cabin." She explained.

Roz stared at her for a long, uncomfortable moment and then nodded almost as if she was giving the notion of the stranger permission to be real.

"How's Fox?"

"Fine. Tired, but fine." She wet her lips, seeing no way around it. "Helena was like the rest. There was nothing there. Just the dead."

Roz's expression stayed the same, but her eyes registered her disappointment. Another nod, this one resigned.

Scully turned from her before she could ask anything more. "Wait..." Roz's voice froze her with her hand on the door handle. She did not turn, but she did wait.

An embroidered scarf was shoved into her periphery.

"Take this." The gruff voice said. Scully bit her lips. All the people here continued to try and reward her for simply using her skills. It was uncomfortable, but she had learned that they wanted desperately to do something to pay her back. She took the scarf. It had been cut from a standard, green, wool army blanket, just like so many of them used, but Roz had sewn a spectacular pattern into it with what looked like colored thread. She didn't ask where she had gotten the thread, but she did turn to look at the woman in gratitude and awe.

"It's beautiful, Roz. Thank you." She faltered, not knowing what else to say. The taller woman shook her head, her stern face open in a rare moment.

"Thank you, Dana. If Anna'd died, I don't know what I would have done. And thank Mulder, for all he's done for us. I've.." she stopped, uncomfortable with showing emotion.

Scully stood there for a long moment, stunned, not by the words, but by the circumstances in her life that had led to this.

In the end, all she could do was nod, turn, and leave. Trudging back across through the ever-rising drifts towards her cabin, and Mulder...the only constant in her life now.

Lila was the only one in my family younger than me. She was cute as a button and dumb as a post. My mom used to coddle her to no end. She never had to do chores. Never had to do much of anything beside look cute. She attached herself to me for some reason.

I couldn't stand it. I hated having to look down into that sweet little buttercup face. Hated her empty blue eyes. Hated how she was never afraid of me, not even when I yelled at her.

Most of all I hated that she never had to worry about the nightly visits from my dad. He wouldn't have dared...though I caught him looking at her from time to time. Mom watched her too closely, because she was special. She was pretty and she was stupid. Both reasons to make sure she was always safe. She was too stupid to understand the muttered threats my dad made to me if I ever thought of telling.

So I hated her. And a lot of that hate was from the fact that my mom, knowing or unknowing, never protected me from Him the way that she protected Lila.

My dad was building a cattle pond for the east field. He needed river stones for the bottom, to hold the visqueen layer down. I was the lucky shit that got called to gather the rocks...and of course, Lila followed along after. Not like she had to work too, she was just there to watch me and smile at me and love me. For no goddamned reason.

I brought the old mule and the wooden wagon we used to Hay the cows and slowly, I began to fill it with the smooth flat rocks of the riverbed. I worked until my arms screamed with pain, till my back ached and my fingers were cold and numb from the water. Lila sat on the river back staring at me the whole time with an idiot's grin on her face.

It was only an hour from sunset when she got up and walked to the edge of the river to watch me as I waded back and forth to the wagon bed with rocks dripping water down my forearms. And then she put one foot into the water.

I started to tell her to stop, to get the hell away from the river, to sit the fuck back down...

...but I didn't.

She took another step into the current and I watched her, rock in hands, the water rushing cold and sharp around my knees.

Another step, grinning at me like she was putting the first footprints on the moon, and then she slipped. Which was bound to happen. She splashed down into the river, soaking her clothes, gasping from the cold. And she began to cry.

If there's one sure way to earn a whipping, it's making Lila cry. She began to howl, red-faced and I dropped my rock back into the river with a splash and began to wade towards her.

I had honestly thought I intended to help her up, to put her back on the bank of the river...but really, in my mind, I knew what I was going to do. I wanted that feeling back. The feeling I got when I broke Mr. Ears' neck. I wanted to see that same fear in her eyes. Fear of me.

And so when I got to her, I did not help her up. I flipped her onto her back in the water and I pushed her under. I wanted to see her eyes, I wanted her to see mine.

It was believed without question when I brought back her body, sobbing tears that I am still not sure were entirely fake. I earned a whipping, yes...for not trying harder to 'save' her when she'd been 'swept away'.

But that night, when my dad stole into my room, I could close my eyes and remember her face when she'd realized...like the dumb animal she was...what I was doing.

And it wasn't an accident. It was all me.

The morning was waxing on. Not that you could really tell in this storm, but things did seem to be getting a little brighter. The new wind bit sharply into the exposed flesh of her face and she huddled down deeper into her new scarf, tucking her mittened hands deep into the pockets of the Gore-tex jacket she wore.

The tracks she had just made up to Roz's cabin were already covered, mere dips and bumps in the smooth surface of the snow. She pushed through the deep drifts slowly, trying not to overly exert herself. The baby tended to react to too much exercise and the last thing she wanted to do was disturb the pregnancy. It had been dicey as it was just getting to this point.

Of course, she wasn't even going to go into the fact that she shouldn't have been pregnant to begin with. Who was she to look a gift horse in the mouth? The circumstances were not those that she might have wished for, but when you were given a miracle, it was best not to make demands.

A noise in the woods to her right halted her progress and she peered out through the ghostly trees. A shape, moving furtively beyond a stand of silvered Aspen trees. She took a few tentative steps out off the path.

"Hello?" she called out, her voice echoing in the vacuum of the snowfall. For some reason her heartrate stepped up a notch, her mind replaying the horror story Mulder had told her last night.

Even now the thought of it made her stomach coil and churn dangerously and she stopped, one mittened hand on the icy trunk of a massive fir, forcing her gorge to settle.

"Hello? Is there someone out there?" She had never been one to simply dismiss something suspicious, and there was a stranger in camp. There would be no repeat of what the last strangers had done. She was no trusting Howie to be hit on the head when her back was turned. She could feel the hard weight of the gun she never went without tucked into the large inner pocket of her coat.

It was a little warmer in the thick of the trees, the wind did not bite so strongly as it did in the open. But it still shook and whistled in the treetops, sending a fine mist of dislodged snow spray down to mix in with the fat flakes. The crisp scent of pine sap and ice filled her senses, clearing her head, sharpening her mind.

There was nothing out here. She really had been seeing things. She provided a mental picture of herself, all pregnant 5 foot 1 of her, standing in the middle of a snowstorm chasing ghosts. Mulder would say she was being stubborn. He would see right through her false bravado. He'd say she was just trying to prove to herself that she was not a helpless pregnant woman. That she was just as capable as she'd always been.

Maybe so, she admitted reluctantly. Part of it was fear. This pregnancy came packed with it. A nice, built-in terror. Fear not for her own life, but for this baby. This child that shouldn't be, but was.

She stubbornly forced her legs to carry her a distance further into the woods, her eyes still scanning for that flitter of movement she'd glimpsed. A little ways in and she found herself cresting a rise, looking down on a thickly forested slope, granite rocks jutting from the earth here and there in shadowy monoliths.

In the surreal dusk she heard a sound under the moaning of the wind. A twig snapping.

Her breath caught and she spun around, her eyes scouring the blurry details of the white forest. Her hand closed around the grip of the gun in her pocket, quickly stripping off the mitten and shoving it inside her jacket. The handle was icy cold in her warm hands, her fingers white against the dark gray gunmetal.

"Who's there?" she called out, ashamed by how breathless her voice sounded.

Nothing. But now she could *feel* the eyes on her. She could almost fancy she heard breathing. Freezing fingers of fear traveled up and down her spine and she struggled to control the breath that was billowing from her lips like the smokestack of a train engine.

She was *not* afraid. Not of something she couldn't even identify. It was probably a squirrel.

"I'm armed!" she called out, moving in a little circle, squinting to see through both the snowfall and the false twilight.

Then she heard the unmistakable crunch of snow under a foot.

"Show yourself, goddamnit! I'm not afraid to use this!" Her voice was soaked up into the soft air of the snowfall.

The silence was like a palpable presence all its own. Even the moaning and twisting of the ever-increasing wind did not camouflage it. The cold was biting uncomfortably into her fingers and she knew that all too soon her hand would be nerveless. What in hell had she been thinking to walk out so far from camp alone? What had she been hoping to prove?

She gathered all the anger she felt towards herself and began to walk forward, the gun still out and ready, her eyes skimming all sides of the suddenly murky forest for movement. She managed to keep her cool for a grand total of 15 steps before she stumbled into a trot and then a lurching run through the deep snow, glancing over her shoulder for any sign of pursuit from her unseen watcher.

She was only about 100 yards away from where she'd left the path when she glanced over her shoulder to see a thin reddish shape standing like an apparition in the swirling snow holding a long shape that looked alarmingly like a rifle.

Her heart ratcheted up about twelve more notches and she dropped her false bravado and simply ran, cursing the ungainly bulk that reduced her to clumsily plunging through the snow. She could hear his breath now, chuffing in and out, the crunching of his feet in the snow. Her breath was growing short and she could feel a stitch forming in her side. This sort of thing was exactly what stimulated a miscarriage, but she couldn't stop. Every instinct she'd ever gained over her years as an investigator told her she couldn't stop.

The pain was growing, her steps were slowing no matter how hard she tried to press on. As soon as she gained the path she spun around like a deer at bay, her gun out, her eyes wild. The world was a study in light gray, the figure was gone. She spiraled around with her gun a few times, trying to orient herself, trying to find the threat she knew had been there. Her uncovered hand was numb now, the pain of the cold had receded to a dull stinging ache.

Her breath was coming in sobs now, gulps of frigid air that seared her lungs and froze her nose hairs. Red coat, her mind reminded her when she saw nothing but trees. It had been real. Red coat.

Another noise. The soft sound of snow compressing under boots right behind her. She spun again, her gun still up, finger tightening on the trigger... and found her barrel pointing right between Mulder's eyes.

It was too much.

For the first time since her cancer three years earlier, she fainted.