Author's Notes: Thanks to my friend Alia who came up with the idea for the invaders' food supply in her novel "Provender". I couldn't resist borrowing it here.

When I was young I spent my summers on my uncle's farm and winters in the city with my mother, so much of this is based on my own experience and knowledge. Although I am finding myself doing a fair amount of research as I go along.

The title is from the song by Crosby, Stills and Nash, 1969.

Spoilers: A/U after the movie X-Files: I Want to Believe.

Many thanks to my beta Mimic117 as always for that sharp red pen.

Long Time Gone
Rated R
Suzanne L. Feld

~ I ~

April 2014

Scully woke up feeling safe and secure, which wasn't something she felt very often anymore. Mulder was wrapped around her, one strong arm securely around her waist holding her back against him. His legs were curled beneath her bent ones. His breath ruffled her hair, soft rumbling snores issuing from behind her with every movement of his bare chest against her naked back.

Though it was unwise, they had gotten in the habit of sleeping in the buff. Their boudoir, as Mulder had sarcastically named it, was safer than staying in their farmhouse overnight but if something did happen, they would have only moments to dress.

Scully no longer cared much. If they were captured it probably wouldn't matter anyway.

She could faintly hear birds singing, though nowhere near as many as they'd have later in the year. Outside, the undergrowth rustled and branches snapped; she wasn't alarmed as she knew it was probably foraging early-spring squirrels or one of the many feral farm animals in the area. If not, well, she could think of no reason to get up and see, not when she had a delicious early-morning erection poking into her back.

Keeping her eyes closed Scully took hold of Mulder's wrist and after a moment of resistance, moved his hand up to cover her breast. At the same time, she rubbed back against his erection, which burned along her tailbone and lower back. His fingers squeezed her rounded flesh gently as his snoring stuttered to a stop from behind her.

"Good morning to you, too, Scully."

She smiled, loving his deep, gravelly morning voice. "I didn't think you'd mind me waking you up in this case."

"Astute, as always."

His hand went from gentle squeezing to rubbing and caressing, and her nipple rose erect under his palm. She let out a low moan as he pushed back against her ass, and she lifted her top leg to rub her foot along his calf.

The warmth of his hand and body disappeared and the covers were flung off. Scully rolled onto her back, opened her eyes to the wooden board ceiling, and found Mulder's face descending towards hers. Though she hesitated to have him kiss her due to morning breath, he very shortly made her forget about it with his talented mouth. His hands were all over her, running from her shoulders down her belly and lower to delve through her curls as he kissed her breathless. Scully moaned again and ran her fingers through his soft, thick hair, then grabbed his shoulders and urged him over on top of her. He resisted for a moment, then broke the kiss and groaned, "You ready?"

Though it was cool in the room, the remnants of the banked fire kept it from being too cold and the row of small windows along the top let in enough light for them to see by.

"For you? Always," she breathed, then sighed as he removed his fingers and moved between her spread legs. He stretched out his long body on top of hers, sinking into her four-limbed embrace.

Though morning sex was usually more along the lines of a quickie, this time Mulder managed to last a while, making love to her with long slow strokes, kissing her languidly all the while. They were neck and neck at the finish, and ended up in a sweaty sated tangle afterward.

Scully reached down and tugged the covers up; it was cool in the room now that they were done moving, and sweating, despite the banked fire at the end of the bed. They lay curled together for a while, dozing a bit, kissing and caressing.

"The animals aren't going to feed themselves, Mulder," Scully finally said with a regretful tone in her voice.

"They did until they found us," he argued, not moving as she sat up on the edge of the bed.

"And so they know they've got it good here with us waiting on them. C'mon, I don't want the cows to start a racket."

Grumbling under his breath, he got up. They dressed in yesterday's clothes and headed out. To leave the treehouse Mulder tossed down a rope ladder through a hole in the floor, which was covered with a board while inside. After they were down, he used another rope, this one on a pulley, to take it up and pull the board back in place.

Next was a pit stop to the camping toilet a short distance away, hidden beneath a camouflage half-tent. When the power had gone out last December so did their septic system and Scully, being a doctor, knew that they had to get rid of solid waste without endangering their water supply. When they made their run to Richmond one of the books they'd picked up was a camping guide which explained how to make a safe, homemade chemical toilet from a large bucket, two garbage bags, quicklime, and a seat. With a few tweaks, they had a safe and environmentally sound toilet.

As they walked through the woods toward the main house, Scully glanced back and was still impressed at how well camouflaged their treehouse was. They didn't feel safe staying in the farmhouse overnight; if there was anyone that the invaders probably wanted to get hold of, it was them. When they did captures, it was invariably at night.

Mulder, though no engineer, had designed a sturdy hideout for their nights. It started as an old child's treehouse at the back of their property, a few yards into the woods and just before the wire property fence. With help from books and the two of them puzzling over problems, it now comfortably fit both standing up, and had a sturdy full-sized rope bed with enough room to move around comfortably. The fireplace was a metal fire pit on legs, and while there was no chimney the smoke got out via two rows of tiny windows just beneath the roof overhang. While she wouldn't want to live there for long, it was fine for the night.

Though they sometimes wondered if her implant could lead the invaders to them, they'd agreed to take precautions anyway. The implant hadn't bothered her since the incident at Ruskin Dam, so it was unlikely that it was still in use as a tracking device though it did seem to be keeping her cancer at bay.

It had been a warm spring and there was dingy snow lurking only in the darkest corners. The temperature was nice for early April, around fifty or so Scully guessed. The forest they walked through was just beginning to bud, green sprouts pushing up through last year's fallen leaves while sap surged through the trees. If she knew how to identify the correct kind of maple tree, Scully thought, she'd love to try and make maple syrup. That would probably take another trip to the Richmond library, but it wasn't important enough to risk the dangers. She wasn't sure if the right kind of tree even grew this far south.

Ah, for the days of the internet, she thought wistfully as they stopped just inside the treeline, looking around carefully. How simple it had been just to type a search term into the computer, and have the information you wanted delivered in moments.

As they stood looking, several dogs came bounding across the open field, beginning to bark and yelp. "Quiet, you guys!" Mulder called, to no avail. Though the dogs had trickled in over the last few months along with other animals, they were already attached to their new owners. The first, and largest, was a beautiful black and tan German Shepherd whose tag said her name was Rosie. When they'd gone to return her to the address on the tag, they found bodies with the telltale pustules and swelling of the super-smallpox. Rosie had whined and sniffed around, but went back with Mulder and Scully without hesitation. While they weren't sure how much dogs understood, it certainly seemed that this one knew her previous people were dead and had found herself new ones.

The other seven dogs were a mix of purebreds and mutts, mostly medium to large sized, all of whom had gravitated to the farm. Mulder and Scully assumed that they had also lost their families and didn't try to take them home, but made sure that word got out through the grapevine that they had the dogs. No one had come to claim them, though they'd had given away several of the smaller dogs to travelers who wandered through and wanted them. The larger dogs were more use around the farm, although they did keep one small, scruffy terrier as a ratter since no cats had found them yet. They were struggling to feed enough mouths as it was.

The dogs cavorted around them as they walked across the open field, keeping an eye out for alien aircraft. Though the invaders had never bothered them, both knew that they weren't out of danger. In general, small bands of humans were left alone, but any group larger than two or three adults and a few children were either bombed to kingdom come or captured, it was guessed to be vessels for more aliens although no one really knew what they did with imprisoned humans.

One thing was obvious—the invaders weren't about to let a revolution come together.

As they approached the large, rather rickety grey stone barn, a cow mooed loudly. Another joined it, and then there was a whole deafening chorus. Added to it was the barking of the dogs, bleating, and clucking. "It sounds like a goddamned circus," Scully half-yelled as they went over to the closed double doors.

"E yi e yi yo," Mulder hollered back, laughing, and helped her remove the heavy bar to spread the doors open.

Animals spilled out into the dirt yard between the house and barn—cows, goats, chickens, ponies. Scully went to the side of the barn where a pair of stools and a half-dozen old, dented silver buckets were stacked. Mulder waited until the animals were a little calmer before taking hold of a large black and white spotted cow's halter and leading her over to where Scully waited.

Over the past year or so, quite a few domesticated animals had gravitated to them. They soon found out why after a short trip—it turned out that they were the only humans in a ten-mile radius, maybe further. When the animals began hanging out in the yard they were at a total loss as to what to do; they were both city-raised and had no idea how to take care of livestock.

They had figured out that the cows and goats needed to be milked and managed that, though they didn't know what to do with the buckets of thin, warm liquid. When the other animals drank them, it was as good a solution as any. At first they left the barn doors open at night so the animals could take shelter as they wanted, but they soon noticed a lessening in the number of chickens and even goats.

Luckily, an older woman, Susan Kulwicki, who came to be treated for a sprained ankle had grown up on a farm and gave them a crash course in animal husbandry. She showed them how to properly milk the cows (though they hadn't been doing badly), how to handle the goats, and explained all about chickens—and what to properly feed all of them. They were much more confident with the animals after her tutoring.

She even showed them how to make butter, though she confessed that she had no idea how to make cheese which would be a good use of the milk. That was another book they needed from the library if they ever dared go back.

Now, at night, they gathered all the animals up and herded them into the barn with the dogs' help. Most of the larger dogs were left loose on the fenced property, though they rarely barked and when they did, it brought both people to instant attention.

The only time it had panned out to be something other than people at the gate was the pig. They had wondered where the animals were getting in at, and they found out when a medium-sized, reddish-brown pig decided to make a wallow in one corner of the cow pond on the north side of the property and the dogs led them to it. Just past the pond, they found the fence broken and trampled down. They didn't, however, fix it so that more could come in if they found them. None of the animals they already had seemed interested in escaping.

Unlike the others, the pig didn't want to be caught. It ran away from both people and dogs, although it stayed within the fence line. Mulder and Scully decided to leave it alone; if it wanted food, it could come to the barn in the morning with the others.

Just a few weeks later they ran out of meat, the last being from a wild turkey they'd hunted, and Mulder got the bright idea to try and bag the pig since it wasn't very large as pigs go. Though she refused to shoot it, Scully agreed to butcher it. They'd only killed fowl up to that point, but the thought of fresh pork chops got rid of any squeamishness she might have felt about butchering their own meat.

It was lucky that they were a hundred or more yards away when Mulder shot the pig in the head with a .308. Instead of a gush of bright red blood, steaming green goo bubbled out of the wound. The pig ran off through the break in the fence, though by carefully following the trail of green goo for almost two miles they finally found it dead deep in the forest. And there they left it.

It wasn't until then that they realized the invaders were truly here to stay. Their guess was that the invaders had genetically modified Earth meat animals to be their food source. The pig was the only one they had found so far, but they checked any new animals that showed up to make sure they were terrestrial.

It had occurred to Scully that blood vessels were clearly visible in the eye, and it would show if they had green or red blood. So each animal on the farm got its very own eye exam, including the chickens though they didn't appreciate it even more than the others. Both still had fading scratches from their disapproval.

Mulder brought the cows over to Scully to be milked, and when all seven were tied to O-ring bolts on the side of the barn they switched jobs, Mulder milking and Scully releasing the finished ones. When the milking was done, the buckets were emptied into a large churn jar they'd found in the basement and lowered into the cool root cellar beneath the barn to chill, which was the first step in butter making.

While he finished up, she wandered through the barn looking for eggs. They had begun building a coop for the chickens last year but with everything they had to do in a day, it was nowhere near finished. So the chickens had free run of the inside of the barn along with the cows, goats, and the pair of shaggy yellow ponies that had wandered in a just a week or so back.

She found a dozen or so eggs of different colors and sizes, tucking them into a hay-lined, threadbare old basket she'd found in the basement and now used around the farm, mentally thanking Susan again for teaching them how to deal with the farm animals. One of the most important things she'd taught them was how to make a manure pile and maintain it, as a clean farm is a healthy farm. Also, how to candle eggs to make sure they weren't fertilized, though since there was no rooster on the farm that wasn't a problem-yet.

"Scully? Ready for breakfast?" Mulder called, and she poked her head out of the stall she was in to see him hanging a coil of rope on a nail just inside the doors. One of the yellow ponies was standing next to him, sniffling his hair, and he absently patted it as he waited for her.

"Did you put down fresh hay and feed?" she asked as she walked out into the wide aisle, the old wooden boards creaking beneath her feet.

"Uh-huh. Find any eggs?"

"A few, but I've got to test them first. I'm always afraid I missed them for days and who knows how rotten they may be."

"I dunno, Scully, you do a pretty good job of finding them. Maybe you're part chicken." With one final pat he moved past the pony, who wandered off to join the group of other animals grazing on the emerging green shoots a short distance away. He was carrying one pail half-full of milk, which they used for their morning coffee and, after chilling in the basement, to drink. Though Scully was concerned about the lack of pasteurization, it hadn't caused any problems so far.

She rolled her eyes at him as they went up on the small back porch, stomping and scraping the dirt off their shoes on the steps. Rosie darted in front of them and pawed at the screen door, whining. They always let her in first to check the house and she took her job seriously. Two of the other dogs, a brown-spotted bulldog and a tan, curly-haired, medium-sized mutt, followed her when Mulder opened the door.

"Tawny better not chew anything up," Scully warned. "I can't just run to the store and buy new shoes next time she destroys one of mine."

"Then keep them put away when she's in the house," Mulder said as they listened to the rattling of the dogs' paws on the wooden floors. "Or don't let her in."

Before Scully could reply, which she was about to rather heatedly, Rosie came into the kitchen and bounded over to them, a ratty green tennis ball in her mouth and long black tail waving. Her reward for checking the house was a game of fetch, and Mulder took the dogs outside for it—all of them.

Mumbling to herself, Scully set the basket of eggs on the table, then filled a metal Dutch oven with water from the hand-pump they'd installed in the kitchen sink and set it on the black iron burner grate on the stove. She opened the oven to check the wood and kindling, which she'd refilled before leaving the house the night before, then took a lighter out of her pocket and lit the newspaper and hay beneath the logs.

Though the stove had once been a regular gas-fed range, they had torn most of the guts out of it and, instead, filled the oven with logs and cooked on top. Though it wasn't perfect, it worked well enough, mostly to boil water and reheat leftovers. Susan had also shown them how to make a ground oven, which they used to do most of the cooking when the ground was warm enough to dig.

Since it would be a few minutes before the fire was hot enough to boil water, she turned back to the egg basket.

Scully used the cold water in the pan to check the eggs. One by one she gently dropped them in and if they sank to the bottom, she put them aside as useable. Only two floated to the surface, which meant they were bad, and she tossed them in a large barrel nearby as organic waste which would go into the mulch pile. When she was done there were nine good eggs, the most they'd had since last autumn when the hens stopped laying for the winter. It was a good thing that Susan had told her they didn't lay in cold weather, Scully mused, because otherwise she would have thought there was something wrong with the birds and probably tried to treat them.

She never thought she'd be a veterinarian, yet so far she'd reset one of the dog's hips after it popped out of the socket, removed porcupine quills from another, and sewed up a superficial but long cut on one of the cows' legs among a few other cuts and scrapes. She wasn't sure if she could do much else, but she was finding that despite the species, mammals were enough alike that she was able to doctor just about anyone if it was something she could diagnose and understand. She was hesitant to use drugs on them, but luckily the situation hadn't come up other than a local anesthetic for the cow's cut.

She did get to practice on humans as well. Word had gotten out among the survivors that she was a doctor, so every now and then someone turned up on their doorstep needing care. Since the invasion Scully had delivered three babies, sewn up dozens of wounds, removed five bullets and treated several other through-and-through gunshots, and even removed a crossbow bolt from the shoulder of an unlucky hunter whose buddy thought he was a deer, among others. They had put a sign on their gate warning all visitors to wait there due to guard dogs, and that no more than two people at a time could be at the gate. So far, it worked.

They were also a sort of waystation. Shortly after the invasion began in December 2012 and Our Lady of Sorrows got swamped with the sick and dying, Scully figured out what was going on. But she ended up getting fired when she tried to tell her superiors what was happening. Instead, she and Mulder went to volunteer at a public clinic, which was equally overwhelmed. When it got to the point where there were more dead than alive, they finally stopped going although they made sure that word got out as to where they were. Now they collected food, clothing, and other supplies as payment for her medical services and then passed along what they could to others who stopped by in need. Sometimes it was just a duffel bag full of onions or a pile of clothing, but almost every morning when it wasn't freezing out, there was something left at the gate or people camping there, waiting for them. That reminded her.

"Hey Mulder, why don't you go check the gate while I'm getting breakfast?" She went over to the open back door and found Mulder just throwing the ball, which the German Shepherd leapt up and caught, much to the annoyance of the other dogs. "It's going to be a few until breakfast, you know how long it takes to get water to boil."

"All right. C'mon, guys, let's go check the mail."

Scully smiled to herself. Whether it was people waiting or retrieving dropped-off supplies or whatnot, it was "getting the mail" to Mulder. Which was ironic, because of course there was no more mail delivery.

She was glad that it was sunny enough not to have to light a lamp, and that a bank of long windows next to the back door let in enough light to see clearly as she worked. She was chopping onions at the butcherblock table near the windows when the dogs began to bark outside, excited and concerned barking; she'd gotten to understand their tones.

As she reached the front door, she saw Mulder coming across the front yard with an adolescent boy walking next to him, the dogs cavorting around them both. The kid, who seemed tall for his age, had a full backpack on and was carrying a bulging duffel, while Mulder had two more cloth bags that looked to be stuffed full. He was wearing a pair of what looked like new jeans and a plain black shirt beneath a too-small denim jacket that showed his thin wrists. She went out onto the porch to help them as they reached the bottom of the stairs, but froze with the breath caught in her throat as the boy stopped and looked up.

Her own clear blue eyes gazed back, but set in Mulder's face and topped with a shaggy mop of dark reddish-brown hair.

It was William. There was no one else it could be.