Notes: This is my first dabble into Alien vs. Predator Fanfictionand hopefully not my last. I found the movie to be good as a stand alone, as long as you didn't work to compare it with the previous movies. I hope that I have Lex in character and that you enjoy this short and introspective story.

Disclaimer: The Alien, Predator and the characters of Alien vs. Predator are the property of their respective creators and 20th Century Fox. No copyright infringement is intended.

After The Fall

By Frozen Phoenix

I still don't know what I'm going to tell the Weyland Corporation. Creatures from another planet coming to hunt other monsters that breed inside of humans are one hell of a bedtime story.

I still can't believe what I saw, even as I clutch the spear with my free hand sporadically. Until this day, the only aliens that crossed my mind were in the form of "little green men," not bulked up warriors or the most horrifying things even nightmares couldn't create.

The first thing I did after they left was to get the truck fully started. I didn't go through hell in that pyramid and possibly drown the ugliest thing I've ever seen to go down with hypothermia or frostbite. After everything that's happened to me in the last few hours, dying like that would have been demeaning.

It will take me some time to get back to the ship, but I'm grateful for it. I'll need all time I can get to think, to decide where to go from here.

Even now, I think I'm in shock over being alive. The fact that I survived and he-I think it was a he-didn't is almost a stroke of poetic justice. Or maybe it's just surreal in itself.

I can remember the feel of the serpent's breath on my face with only a little effort. The way they killed everyone without mercy and the eggs they laid makes me all the more glad that they were blown to kingdom come.

But I worry about the one that was pulled beneath the ice. It was larger than the others and pissed as anything. Thinking about it more, I wonder if it was some kind of Queen. Queen bees and termites are usually larger than the rest of them and lay all the eggs.

Whatever she is, I can't be sure that she's gone. She could have used that acidic blood of hers to melt through the chain and detached herself from the tower. Surviving without heat or food for a hundred years has to have made her adaptive.

I can't even count on the knowledge that the ice will freeze over where she fell as consolation. She could go somewhere where it's thinner or use her blood to melt it and then we would all be dead. It would start all over again.

Despite knowing the danger, that's one little detail I'm not telling the corporation. Who's to say that they wouldn't go looking for her, hoping to use her in some scientific or military operation? I wouldn't put it past them. When it comes down to those people and money, everyone else be damned.

I've been trying to think of words to describe what I worked alongside. Words like "terrifying, nightmarish and deadly," aside.

Hunters and warriors come to mind, though they weren't exactly honorable. If they hadn't come and brought those things with them, everyone would still be alive. Weyland…Sebastian…the whaling community of 1904 and whomever else has been manipulated or dragged into the fight.

I'm depressed that the one who helped me is dead nonetheless. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have made it. Without the spear and the attempts at weapons, I would have been completely on my own.

I wonder what changed things in his eyes. Perhaps my trying to follow him or spearing one of the serpents or maybe killing Sebastian-my own kind-was what did it. He marked me like he did himself and the one who was his leader presented me with one of their spears, like I was one of his own.

I don't care what the suits say or try to do; I'm not letting them have it. It is valuable evidence, but they don't deserve it. They wouldn't have lasted ten minutes alone in the pyramid and since I doubt the hunters can be bought, they wouldn't be considered worthy of a helping hand. Or claw.

Right now, I don't which thought is more frightening; that the Queen may still be out there frozen and waiting somewhere to revive or that the hunters will return in a hundred years to begin things anew. No matter the monster, with mankind caught in the center of it all, it will be a battle that can't be won.

The End