It is January and it is cold.

But our devotion to the Monolith keeps us warm.

He stuffs his boots with rags and puts on layers of looted shirts beneath his black and white camouflage. He has killed a Stalker for a pair of gloves. They are heretics and reprobates but they are still human and he had sworn to himself that he would never kill another human being for something so low as material possessions. The man's eyes haunt his dreams.

But our service to the Monolith is upheld above all else.

There is little food and little sleep, and they must be ever-vigilant. The watch-posts are manned at all hours and the wind seeps into his flesh, into his bones, into the marrow of his bones. He has not eaten since yesterday morning and there are no medical supplies to tend to his wounds. He has tied rags around the mutant-bites and hopes that that is enough. The gloves he has killed for only do so much to keep his hands warm, and he fears frostbite almost as much as he fears bullets and fangs.

But no hardship shall impede our protection of the Monolith.

He does not want to kill. He does not, he does not. But the Stalkers will come creeping through the Forest, through the trees and the mist, and they will try to hurt his God and Master if allowed to, and he must kill them before they harm what he holds most dear. So he kills them, he kills them with his rifle, and through the scope he watches blood and cerebral matter splash against the snow from the backs of their heads. He does not want to kill them, but they must die before they can attempt to destroy the thing he values most in all the world. They must die, and he kills them, and at night he feels their souls watching him from the edges of his dreams.

But all suffering can be borne in our defense of the Monolith.

Fog tells himself this as he lies awake at night, knowing that he will watch another slow procession of dead faces before the sun rises again, knowing that their ghost-eyes will damn him just as surely as his service redeems him, knowing that there is no escape. (He must sleep sometime, he must). And it is cold and perhaps he will not wake up again, the way two of his brothers have done this past month. He is hungry and his wounds ache and the only thing he lives for is the Monolith, which demands so much from him and which he obeys with such love. It is the only love he knows and it will consume him as surely as fire consumes wood, but he does not mind because if it is the will of the Monolith to be consumed then he shall gladly jump upon the pyre.

But in the meantime, he must sleep and face his dreams, and there is no hope of comfort. Fire cares nothing for the logs it devours, and his God is no benevolent paternal spirit. So Fog shivers and huddles a little deeper into his sleeping bag, looking across the darkened room where his brothers also sleep and wondering if they, too, dream of dead faces and accusing eyes. It is best not to ask.

Titan's eyes glimmer in the faint light, watching Fog as Fog watches the room, and eventually Fog notices him. Titan is lying still as death, and might even have been dead if it weren't for the way he blinked occasionally. For several minutes the two Monolithians looked at each other, saying nothing, watching, waiting. There is no reason to be awake at this hour unless a watch must be kept, and Fog wants to know if Titan suffers the dreams as well. He wants to know if there is anything that can be done to keep them at bay.

Slowly, slowly, as softly and silently as possible, Fog crawled to Titan's side. The other Monolithian made no move to stop him—did not move at all, actually. Simply watched. Fog laid down beside him.

"Why are you awake?" Fog murmured.

"Too cold, haven't eaten in two days," Titan answered, his reply little more than an exhalation of barely-shaped air. "You're the same."

Here it was, the confession: "I dream."

"So do we all."

"My dreams are not pleasant." Fog does not want to admit to seeing the faces of the stalkers, does not want to imply that, through his troubled dreams, he is disloyal to the Monolith. He would rather die than be disloyal.

"…Those dreams."

Fog nods, though he cannot meet Titan's eyes when he does so. He hears the sound of a zipper being pulled and looks up, watching his fellow Monolithian open the side of his sleeping bag. Titan looks back at him when the zipper is at level with his knees. "You can, if you want," he says. "I'll wake you if your dreams come, and you'll keep me warm."

"That's fair."

"It is. Come."

Fog crawls into Titan's sleeping bag with him, murmuring apologies when he accidently puts pressure on his fellow Monolithian's wounds (they are both hurt, and have almost nothing by which to remedy their hurts). There is little room and the end result of their attempts to get comfortable is a tangle of limbs—Fog's head on Titan's shoulder, Titan's leg awkwardly wedged between his, neither one sure where it was safe to put their hands.

"I meant to be warm, not smothered," Titan murmured.

"If you want me to leave…"

"No."

"Then try to sleep."

They try. Fog dozes, is woken slightly when Titan shifts against him, and retreats into a deeper slumber. The dreams come, as they always do, and Titan wakes him as he said he would—Fog opens his eyes because there is someone saying his name over and over, someone's arms wrapped around him and squeezing as he tried to escape from dream-enemies who wanted revenge for the lives he took from them. Titan stops saying his name when Fog goes still.

"Are they always like that?" he asked.

"Yes." Fog is sweating and slightly disoriented, listening to Titan's voice in the semi-darkness and seeing the glimmer of reflected light in a pair of living eyes so close to his own. He can feel the warm bulk of his fellow Monolithian's body pressed up against his own, can feel the slight pressure of the arms that had stopped him from thrashing by wrapping around him, can feel the rise and fall of Titan's chest as he breathed. He can focus on that, can calm down.

"I'm sorry." Titan's mouth brushes Fog's face when he speaks.

"You helped."

"And is that truly enough?"

"It's better than nothing."

Silence. Then: "There are four hours until dawn."

"Then sleep."

Titan settles against him, turning onto his side. He still has one arm wrapped around him and pulls him closer. Fog comes willingly, relaxing into this small, cramped pocket of warmth and letting himself get as close as possible to Titan. They are breathing the same air and their faces are touching, hands settled wherever warmest and legs tangled together.

Fog sleeps.

In the morning he will wake up again, and he will be cold and hungry, and there will still be no medical supplies, and he will go again to his post and kill stalkers, and more dead faces and damning eyes will join the procession that he will be forced to view every night. It is winter and his hands will be raw and aching, and his lips will dry out, crack, bleed. It is January and it is cold.

But our brothers keep us warm.