A/N: Thank you for listening to what I've had to say throughout all these years. This one's for all of you.

Epilogue

2 days since last feed

It's the glint on your gun that tells you the sun has crawled up into the sky.

You blink your gritty eyes and stretch, each disk in your back popping back into place, the click of your spine settling barely noticeable over the sounds of the rousing forest. It's windy today, has been for a few days, and the hiss of the leaves as they rub against each other all sound like a million voices. Kurt says it'll rain, a downpour bordering on a tornado, and he's usually right about the weather. You've grown not to question it.

With a yawn you swing your rifle over your back and slowly make your way down from the watchtower. You built this yourself (and maybe a little help), old wood and metal scrap, and it stands guard over the sprawling expanse of trees that stretch out farther than the eye can see. It's cold up here some days, the winters more bitter than anything you've ever known, but spring has given way to the full bloom of summer and the sun warms your weary bones.

It's been a year and a half since the winter winds carried you away from that prison.

In the distance, you see the radio tower from the Canadian base hidden amongst the trees. Sue had refused to leave the helicopter until she bartered safe passage, and all you've ever given them are vials of your blood. Sometimes Quinn's, too, but there are no more experiments. No more pain. Not for any of you.

The chain link fence rattles as you shake it, making sure the gate is firmly shut, before you make your way further inside the compound. All of you had refused to stay at the base for more than a few days, the memory of your ordeal fresh in your memories, and had quickly found another place to call home. Over the past year and a half you've slowly made a place in this world, rows of plants heavy with fruits and vegetables in the back of the large farmhouse, a barn that Mike and Finn are working hard to repair. The old owners of this place were long gone when you found it, half-desolate in the center of a meadow, but your battered family has made it their own.

You all sleep in one room, beds shoved against the wall, refusing to be kept apart. After all that's happened, it's amazing how much comfort you're able to draw from another person.

Finn sits hunched over the fire-pit at the front of the barn, a thin rabbit from last night's spoils slowly roasting for breakfast. He smiles despite the dark shadows under his eyes—a life on the land is harder than any of you had thought, and you from three years ago would never have imagined it—and you finally smile back. After Rachel died, he spent months in mourning and emerged as someone... else. He may still say things that make you want to strangle him, but he lost a lot of his oafishness those first few seasons.

(Now that he's thinned out, the fat gone from his face, he may even be able to be called handsome. But you'd sooner strangle yourself than tell him that.)

"Today the day?" he asks, shifting on his wooden stool. His forehead glistens from an early morning chopping firewood.

"Yup," you reply, "is Tina up?"

"Should be. Think Lauren's been at it all night."

Your little family has grown a little. You met Lauren at the base in the scant few days you'd been stationed there, and by the end of it she had wormed herself into the hearts of most. There was a great big technological gap where Artie's chair had sit and her skills proved almost as good as his own—Mike bristled a little, his friend so quickly forgotten, but he caved to her brash personality eventually. Last you knew, she'd even started to teach him, a eulogy that he never got to write appearing in every new creation Mike made.

"I'll go see. Don't burn it this time."

He grimaces. "I'm working on it. You're the chef."

"Excuses."

You pass the barn and enter the main room. What was once a kitchen has been re-purposed, ripped out to accommodate a variety of makeshift tables strewn with scrap and a hefty radio whose signal comes from the tower placed behind the house. Lauren's creation—you still aren't sure where she got all the parts. You don't want to ask.

To the right of the entry is the living room—threadbare couches and an old furnace that pumps out heat into the rest of the room but somehow leaves your toes like ice every morning. Quinn blinks at you from the end of the couch, refusing to let her feet touch the cold hardwood that runs throughout.

"Mornin'," she mumbles, shoveling a spoonful of porridge into her mouth. All that's left from her ordeal in the research lab are her memories, nightmares that come until one of you crawl wordlessly into her bed, and the silver scars that litter her body.

(And a previously unfounded hatred of needles.)

"Morning," you reply, attempting to slip past her, but stopped squarely by a hand on your chest. You turn, immediately noting Tina's unimpressed brow and a similar bowl of porridge in her hand.

"Do I have to?" you whine, eventually snatching the bowl from her when Quinn's infamous brow joins the force. Sitting down next to your blonde leader with a bit more force than necessary, you sullenly spoon a mouthful of it past your unenthusiastic lips. You're getting so damn sick of porridge. They put something in it that makes it as dark as the oddly shaped black bricks that create the well outside. As dark as the hair of a girl you used to know.

(Now now, none of that today. It's a happy occurrence.)

"Don't give me that," Tina scolds though her back is turned, "you know you have to eat like the rest of us. Unless you want poorly smoked fish as your breakfast?"

None of you have quite managed to get a handle on the smokehouse yet. It's a work in progress.

"How do they even make this?" you grunt. "Don't they need fields? Or is this the only food after the apocalypse that no one wanted to eat?"

"Stop bitching," Quinn replies, finishing her meal, "or else they'll hear you and stop trading with us."

"I don't think that's how it works, Princess," says Lauren, previously unseen at the table. "What you have is more valuable than what they do. It works out."

"Says the one who isn't bled extra every few weeks."

"Hey now, I've chipped in for Blondie's feeding frenzy. We all do our part."

"How is that, by the way?" Tina asks. "The hunger? Manageable?"

You shrug. "It keeps it away. That's the best we can hope for."

"Speaking of what we can hope for," Lauren drawls, pressing a few buttons on the radio. It explodes with static, squealing before silencing again, "I think this signal is all we're gonna get."

"I'm pretty sure you just woke up everyone in the house."

"Bite me. This wasn't easy."

"Thanks, Lauren," you give a rare, genuine smile, "it must have been hard."

She brushes off her shoulder, a smirk finding its way onto her face though she tries to hide it. "I'm mad talented, what can I say?"

Quinn nudges you. Despite her usually stoic demeanor, you can see the excitement glimmering in her eyes. "Get on with it."

You sneer at her a little but in reality you're as excited as she is. The tips of your fingers tingle as you creep into the next room, the eyes of everyone else on your back, into the relative darkness of the bedroom.

There are only two people still sleeping. Mike grumbles his hello, firm body twisted in his sheets, and you give a little wave as you sneak further into the room. His eyes flicker to the other end, a smile creeping onto his face, and he rolls out of bed to get some breakfast after giving you a morning hug. His touch brings you an odd amount of comfort now, a calmness that quells the butterflies dancing in your throat. You slink to your bedside, the tangled sheets and thin cover half on the floor, the waking sun beginning to pour through the window set between the two rows of beds. It illuminates the figure slumbering on, oblivious to the world around them, a sliver of skin peeking out and set ablaze by the light.

You trace the curves and contours first with your eyes and then your hands, smiling as the body underneath you begins to stir.

"Hey," it's groggy, borderline comatose, but the ribs underneath your hand move outwards with a breath. It's been a long time in the making, but Brittany's finally starting to become soft like you.

"Hey," you reply softly, leaning on the mattress, "you don't usually sleep this long."

"Weird dreams," she mumbles, yawning widely and scrunching her nose. Her blonde lashes brush her cheekbones, no longer sharp and dangerous on her face. "Wanted to see the end."

"Did you?"

"No," but she kisses you soundly, smiling against your mouth, "but it's okay. This is better."

"I'd agree. Happy birthday, baby."

Brittany blinks, her brows drawing inwards. "Birthday? It's summer."

"I know your real birthday is in February, but... this is the day you woke up, remember? The day you were reborn. I just wanted a better memory to take its place."

Her eyes do that thing where they flash, bright and fast, and if you didn't know her so well you'd think you were about to witness the last few moments of your life. The kiss this time is longer, hotter, the flick of her tongue against your lower lip, but the shout of hurry the fuck up, it doesn't take this long to raise the dead has you reluctantly pulling away.

"Later, San," she smirks as you swallow a little, your jaw instinctively tensing a little. "Why are they so loud today?"

"Well," you drawl, "we got you a present."

"A present?"

She pauses halfway through dressing, her pants hovering around her thighs. Here, leaning over, you can see the scars of her past (present?) life; the gunshot wound in her belly, the lines running thick down her torso, the puckered twist of a knife in her thigh. She used to hide them, back when you were first learning how to live without the constant threat of death looming above you both, but you've long since showed her that they can only add to how you think of her. All the times she's defied fate, defied herself, to come back to your side. A perfect pair.

"You bet."

"What is it?" she wheedles as you walk into the main room with her, holding hands. She doesn't stop asking as you approach Lauren, doesn't stop as you sit her down, not even after you plop the headset over her ears. It's only then she notices her surroundings, blinking out of her stupor to glance at the radio.

(It's hard, sometimes, thinking of how close you got to losing her. But she's here, in all her fucked up, scientifically impossible glory, and you're never letting her go.)

"Turn it on," Tina encourages, and she presses the big glowing button after looking to you for reassurance.

The signal hisses and cracks, a voice coming through from hundreds of miles away.

"Britty? Is that you?"

The way Brittany looks at you, so full of disbelief and raw, unfiltered love, assures you for the millionth time that you can still have a happy ending, even as this earth slowly begins another cycle of decay and rebirth.

"M-mom?"

You don't know how you managed to find her in this wasteland of a world, and years from now, she still won't know how she managed to make you stay.

But this love of yours?

"It's me, sweetheart. It's me."

It's never going to leave.