A\N: So I asked my friend Julia to give me a prompt to write to the Hanging Tree song from the Hunger Games. This was the result. Updates will be irregular, but it's high time I got back into my first fandom. Warnings for character death, apocalypse, and general joy of the RPM timeline ahead. Enjoy!

"You know, I bet if you asked they'd give you a few more days." Wes said hopefully.

Jen laughed. They were in a summer cabin his father owned, trying to clean out the worst of the mess. "I've barely unpacked and you're already talking about leaving? Jeeze, Wes." She tried out a twenty-first century phrase, one her research (or at least Wes' Facebook posts) had unearthed. "I feel so loved."

Wes laughed and crossed the room to meet her, taking her hands. "I want you to stay." He raised her hands to his lips and kissed both. "For ever, and ever."

Jen freed her hands to reach up and cup his face. Her strong, sweet lover; he seemed to have aged months for every day Jen spent in her time, and part of that was just the job, because the time she spent in the future was nowhere near the amount of time between when Ranisk had landed and when the few mutants who tried to copy him landed. The psychologist she'd been assigned had warned her that this might happen. Screw the psychologist. Jen pulled Wes in for a proper kiss, lips and tongues and love, and the two stood in each other's embrace for a long time.

She pulled away when the light changed. A cloud had come over the sun, she saw. A huge cloud. It stretched past the mountains, across the sky's horizon, promising a storm. "It'll rain soon." She said. "Let's get the cabin opened up."

Working together was simple and easy, motions that fit perfectly together. This was love, Jen thought. The way two souls could be as one, slipping into the empty spaces of the other and fitting like puzzle pieces. The depths of emotion that sprang from that fitting, the desire to see a smile, to feel a touch of hands, to steal a quick kiss. To love, and be loved in turn.

But that brought a darker thought, whispering as it always did. How long? How long until the mutants stopped aiming near the early twenty-first century and went for a time farther away? A decade, two, and Wes would be unrecognizable.

And enough decades away, and she would return to his grave.

Jen grabbed the duster and started thwacking at cobwebs a little more firmly than she needed to. No. She wouldn't think that way. She couldn't. It would hurt too much, and that pain didn't teach or prepare, it only left wounds. When it happened, she would break, she knew, completely lose herself to grief, but until then she would try and be happy. It was so little time. She would not waste a minute of it.

The sky got darker and the air grew colder. Wes tried to turn on the radio, mentioning music, but it spewed out static. Jen had already found an old supply of CDs, so she grabbed one and turned it on, then took Wes' hand and spun him into a dance. Wes laughed and started trying to lead, and nearly stepped on her toes. "Wait," Jen told him, "Am I leading or—"

"No, I lead—"

"But I'm already—"

"I got this!"

"You're going to step on my toes, you goof—"

They dissolved into laughter together, and thunder rumbled above them. Jen welcomed the storm. It would bring rain, and the air would have the sharp smell of wet sage. They were high up in the mountains, near the Nevada border; Jen wouldn't be surprised if a sagebrush hadn't already started trying to transplant itself into the car. It was everywhere.

Wes offered a kiss, and Jen took it, and it was gentle and chaste and perfect.

When they pulled apart, Jen was about to suggest taking it to the bedroom. Wes pulled away, though, and his sweet loving look was slowly morphing into amazement. "Jen, look! I think it's…snowing?"

Jen looked. Outside, the sky was completely gray, and fat white flakes were falling down. The air was cold, and Jen shivered as she went to the window.

The flakes had fallen onto the window, but they weren't melting. Jen didn't understand, for a minute. Then she thought, oh, it must be a forest fire, but it felt distant, as if she already knew she was wrong. Maybe she had the whole time.

Wes caught a flake. "It's…ash."

"Shut the house up." Jen ordered. Her feet were moving as soon as she spoke. The radio was still silent, and Jen didn't need to look at it to know it had stopped working. "Wes! Now!"

"Jen, what's wrong?" He was reaching for the window anyway, hauling it shut, and Jen stopped him, sweeping the ash out with her sleeve before shutting it herself. She moved as quickly as she could, but some of the ash had already gotten inside. "Jen, you're scaring me."

"Turn on the radio." Jen ordered. She was closing the last door now. She wanted to be wrong. She really, really did.

Wes went to flick it on. Nothing happened. Wes checked the power cord, flicked the switch back and forth, smacked the radio with his hand. "It's broken."

Jen held her morpher up, tapping it. "Lucas. Lucas, come in." She waited, and oh it was hard, to wait patiently while nothing happened. "Katie." More waiting, until it was obvious. "Trip. Trip, answer me!"

"Your morpher's broken too?"

Jen was saved from answering by her morpher's display flashing red. Wes' morpher started beeping too. The readout was in the modified English characters of the future for hers, twenty-first century English for Wes'.

Radiation levels approaching unhealthy levels. Morphing recommended.

Wes looked up, and he understood. Jen saw it in his eyes. The horror, the shock, the disbelief; it was mirrored on her face.

"Tell me there's a basement here." Jen asked.

"A root cellar."

Jen nodded and held up her morpher. "Ready?"

Together they said it.

"Time for, Time Force!"