Author's Note: This story will make little sense unless you first read these three Solain Rhyo fanfics: Surviving This; Sacrifice Theory (first ending) & Solitary Trial. Picks up 1 ½ minutes after Solitary Trial ;-)

My sincere thanks to Solain Rhyo for permission to use her original characters and follow her story line; for her interest, encouragement and words of wisdom along the way, and for being my first fanfic's first reader. Basically...thank you for rocking so hard in so many ways!

Disclaimer: I don't own the original AvP characters. The Scale, Tank, Ana, Cora and Reed characters belong to Solain Rhyo.

(Story is complete but I'm doing some editing. All chapters should be up by the end of the week). EDIT: obviously this didn't happen! They'll be up soon enough though.

xxx

We didn't leave right away. Whatever lay ahead, it seemed that at least for the time being there was no hurry. And I was glad. I had decided to follow where Scar led---to the hunters if need be---but I wasn't looking forward to the latter possibility. No, not one bit. I knew my body had healed as well as it probably ever would, but my mind was in many ways still raw, still bruised. Sometimes I felt as fragile as the soft puffs of snow that had fallen throughout the last winter—wisps of beauty that blew apart in the wind before they ever touched the ground. And although I had no regrets about what I had decided to do, if truth be told I was still terrified by the enormity of what I had chosen.

After Scar pulled me to my feet I stood with my back bared to him once more as he resumed his inspection of my old battle scars, albeit a more cursory one. With a curved nail he worked his way from the nape of my neck to the lower curve of my back. He snarled into my ear as he traced the waterfall of acid scars that coursed down my back, and I wondered if he was remembering that final fierce and desperate battle in which Celtic had fallen. Terrifying, derisive, indomitable Celtic who would not have minded seeing me dead, but whom I could only suppose had been Scar's friend.

When Scar eventually signaled the completion of his perusal with a low growl, I turned to face him and was promptly hauled into another rough embrace, my head resting against his chest as if it belonged there. When he released me, I amused him by grabbing his wrist as he had done mine ,and tugging as hard as I could on his arm to pull him down to the floor of my den. His soft chitter of laughter followed us to the floor.

To my great wonder, I realized that we had taken up our old, familiar companionship as if no time had passed at all. We fell into a comfortable silence, save for the occasional purr from him, and "oof" from me when with a rough finger he prodded the bite on my neck, which was steadily growing tender. I took up my own study of his body; with my fingers I traced the vertical slash running the length of his side that had helped to bring us together in the caves of Boutevoya. Here was the scar left when he had been impaled, and right there was the large scar left from the alien erupting from his body. I had previously only had brief snatches of opportunity to look at his body closely, and I was somewhat bemused to discover now that I knew it better than I had realized.

And on the wood floors of my den, away from the pyramid, caves, and above all the foul scent of alien slobber, I discovered Scar's scent for the first time: metal, musk, and inexplicably--trees.

I hadn't yet lost all traces of shyness before him however, and as soon as I could persuade him with unkind nudges of my shoulder and elbow in his side to ease the weight of the arm which lay around my shoulders, I rolled over, sliding to my hands and knees as I did so, and retrieved my tank top and sweatpants from where they lay pooled on the floor. I dressed as gracefully as I could, feeling self-conscious under his regard which I knew remained steadily on me, although I was not looking at him. Unlike me it seemed, Scar had not an ounce of shyness in him. He lay as we had fallen to the floor, the clothing he had shed still settled carefully near the wall.

I was retying the drawstrings of my pants when I felt...something...falling on me like a heavy weight. I knew that feeling too well. I had lived with it for months. Before Bouvetoya, before I knew aliens existed, before my world had turned upside down--the last feeling that had suffocated me as much had been the jet lag that overtook me after my twenty-two hour flight to Nepal. Except that I knew I couldn't banish this particular weight with sleep and that I was about to break down in front of Scar, I did the only thing I could think of. I stammered something quickly to him---I don't know what--- and beat a hasty retreat to the bathroom.

xxx

Despite the flickers of anxiety that churned my stomach, I groaned when I glimpsed my neck for the first time in my softly lit bathroom mirror. For lack of anything else to do, I soaped my hands up lavishly and rinsed off the suds. I wiped my hands dry on the hand towel, shaking my head ruefully. The bruise that had formed from the impression of his teeth into my skin was a nice one all right. Dark red, with great promise of turning purple, blue and black in the days to come. The bastard.

I touched my neck gently with my fingertips, then strangely, try as hard as I might, found myself unable to tear my eyes away from my reflection. My hands gripped the edges of the bathroom vanity until my knuckles outlined harshly through my skin. I wondered if I stared hard and long enough at myself, if I could possibly find the pieces of me that seemed to have broken away one by one over the last year, but that I could sometimes feel like a phantom limb. I was still flushed from sex, but my eyes stared back at me, haunted and solemn. I had experienced life after Scar, without Scar- and it had been hollow. I had been hollow, only a shell of my former self. Now, Scar's return--how he had made me feel the night before—had felt like the stirrings of spring after a long, frozen winter.

But it seemed even now the nightmares and shadows that stalked me, day and night, were not ready to release me. In between sleep and waking consciousness, I had heard the aliens' shrieks, and the otherworldly screams of the alien queen as she stalked the two hunters and I across the snowy Antarctic ice. And an old dream that had resurrected itself to haunt me: Reed's face leering over mine, as he stabbed me over and over. My mind turned now, as it had so many times before, to that damned pyramid where I had watched or heard the members of the team I was supposed to lead safely instead die agonizing, unnatural deaths. The names could play in a continuous loop in my mind if I allowed it: Weyland, Sebastian, Graeme, Adele, Maxwell....the other members I had barely known and whose names I didn't even fully learn until after I had been forced to meet with Weyland Industries' lawyers. And they were all gone now.

In the last few months I had tried hard not to think of Scar, but my thoughts had inevitably turned to him and the many unanswered questions he had left me. I even sometimes tortured myself with my knowledge of his role in the death of my team. I had turned around just in time to see the gleam of Scar's blades as they pierced Weyland's body. But then I would remember Reed's death and whatever residual anger I felt towards Scar would be immediately quelled. In the face of my own barbarity, who was I to judge Scar for his judgment on an enemy, one not even of his own race?

Weyland and I had grown to understand each other a little, I thought sadly. His words to me, the insight of a dying man, had allowed me to find a small measure of peace in my father's seemingly senseless death. True, Weyland had obstinately pressed forward with the mission against my advice, with disastrous results---but he had respected and been considerate of me in his own way.

"Get her out of here!" he had ordered Sebastian, even as he knew that at that very moment death was striding up the steps to meet him.

Sebastian....

Intelligent, sweet, brave Sebastian. I could say without a trace of vanity that the archaeologist had begun to look on me as more than just the guide. I had certainly begun to notice him despite my own professional code. If he had lived, if I had not met Scar....But Sebastian had died. By my trembling hand. Tiny pinpricks of tears began to suddenly sting the corners of my eyes, and I grew angry. What in the world was wrong with me? Why, when my future awaited me outside the door, was I continuing to dwell on what I needed to leave behind?

I fought the tears back, wiping them away furiously with the back of my hands as I gazed at myself in the mirror. I was so tired of crying, so tired of still being afraid. By all rights, I should be fearless. I had survived against all odds, and walked away from certain death in the bowels of the earth. An accomplishment of which anyone---any warrior---could be proud.

Warrior.....

In the sleepy, night-time quiet of my bathroom, the word hung in the air accusingly, like the echo of an unforgivable lie.

Sighing, I tore my eyes away from my reflection and washed my hands again, needlessly, shaking them dry over the sink. I left the bathroom, still lost in thought and came to a standstill. Scar was up, clothed now I noticed, standing at the den's mantelpiece as he intently examined a row of photographs there. I studied his profile-- so unmistakably fierce and strangely regal. His alert curiosity suddenly reminded me uncomfortably of the intensity which I had seen him previously display on the hunt, and I looked away, ashamed of the small frond of unease which had unfurled inside me.

Yes, the decision had been made, almost without my being able to stop it. Although I had consciously chosen to let things go this far, the truth was that I was now as irrevocably drawn to Scar as he seemed to be to me. I didn't regret the decision I had made, but I knew we didn't have an easy road ahead of us. And I still had my own monsters to hunt.

When I looked in Scar's direction again, he was looking at me quizzically.

"Lex," he said in Sebastian's voice.

Feeling suddenly and unaccountably as if I bore the burden of the sad past on my shoulders, I walked across the room to him. He pulled me closer, purring steadily, knuckles brushing the mark on my cheek and the shadows retreated.

For now.