A/N: Thank you for all your kind words. My baby and I are both doing well. She eats too much, doesn't sleep, and...well, I guess that runs in the family. ;) Anyway. Onward.

Tread careful, friends. And remember you can always message me if you have questions.

This was a bad idea.

Bella tried to set the child down when she got to her shelter. He clung desperately to her, making a sound of alarm. Reminding herself she had whisked him away from what promised to be a brutal death to show him what little kindness she could give, Bella hitched the child onto her hip as she went about the business of caring for him.

Long in the habit of making priority lists in her head, Bella sprang into motion. She needed to do this as quickly as possible. Her own survival depended on her constant vigilance, and she was already discovering how easy it would be to let herself get distracted by the child's needs. The survivor in her was loud with its displeasure at her reckless action.

Bella first set water to boil, frowning because it meant she had to use the fireplace briefly, sending smoke into the mountain air. Then, she went to a shelf where she had already boiled—and cooled—canteens of water. She settled with her back against the wall—shelter was a one-room patrol cabin in the backcountry of Yellowstone—and moved the baby into the crook of her arm, copying the hold she'd seen on television so many times. She made a face as the boy groped at her breast, chapped lips smacking. At least she knew how his parents had kept him fed.

"Sorry." Her voice came out as a croak, sore from disuse.

"Ba?" the child inquired, patting her breast again.

"No. Water." She unscrewed the lid from the canteen and held it to the baby's lips, tilting carefully when he opened his mouth. "Slow down," she admonished gently when he grabbed the sides of the canteen with surprising strength, putting the whole head of the bottle in his mouth to suck greedily.

As Bella suspected, he had to be hungry and thirsty. He was filthy, and that couldn't have been comfortable, but food and drink were higher up on the priority list.

Bella focused her attention elsewhere, trying to ignore the emotion tugging at her long cold insides. It was better not to think too much of the baby. He was hard to ignore. His weight was heavy and awkward in her arms. He squirmed and made grunting and slurping noises as he tried to drink his fill. She tried not to think of his parents and how hard they must have worked to keep this helpless, dependent creature alive in this world gone mad.

A tug at her hair drew her attention. She looked down, finding the child had wrapped her hair in his fist. He wasn't pulling hard. He flexed his fingers, looking at it and then moved his grubby hand to her shirt, feeling and patting. His eyes met hers before she could look away. They were green. A light, pretty green.

A queer warmth spread through blood. Her breath pulled in with a shudder. The little boy's eyes held hers—intelligent, like he was trying to figure her out, and irritated because she wouldn't let him guzzle the water. He brought his hands to the bottle, grasping at it while he worked his tongue along the edge.

Smart little creature.

The survivalist voice—the only voice she'd listened to these last two years—got louder. She knew better than to get attached. This was the closest she'd been to another human being, one who wasn't trying to harm her, in two years. He was so innocent. Too innocent and pure.

Bella stood and put the child down on the floor as gently as she could. She moved quickly to the fire and removed the pot of boiling water off. She jumped when the child toddled into her field of vision, curious hands reaching for the pot. "No!" She snatched him up and away. "That's hot."

See? The voice in her head admonished. He didn't even have enough sense to keep away from a boiling pot of water. They were in Yellowstone, for fuck's sake. They were surrounded by water so hot, it could boil him to nothingness, not to speak of the millions of other dangers from natural to human they faced. It had been a near thing one too many times with Bella taking care of only herself.

And, obviously, the child's parents had failed all three of them.

Bella closed her eyes, her heart twisting as the baby babbled at her. She blew out a long breath.

Mercy was all she'd wanted for the child. Her mission here was to get him clean, to fill his belly and quench his thirst. He would sleep by her side this evening with her to watch over him. He'd be warm tonight. Hopefully free of fear, though nothing she could do could erase what he'd seen and that his parents weren't going to be there when he woke up. That was the deal. That was what she'd promised both of them.

She sighed as she settled him back on the floor and worked at the task of removing his filthy clothes.

Tomorrow, she would take him to the rim, not a long walk away. The child was too young, probably, to appreciate the view, but she could give it to him anyway. She could give him a glimpse of beauty.

"Better that way," she muttered. "You've seen how ugly it gets. You've seen what we do to each other." She held him over the dry sink and poured a cup of now warm water over his hair. He made a sound of delight.

She sighed. "Better that way."

~0~

Morning came too soon.

Bella let the baby sleep as the sun rose. She went about getting ready for the rest of her day—for after. Yellowstone was too dangerous a place to spend the winter in. Fighting to keep warm and fed in a harsh winter would be a full-time job with absolutely no time left over to keep herself safe from the threat of other human beings.

So, toward the end of summer—it was the end of Spring now—she would head south. To do so, she needed a semi-reliable food source. Every year, she figured out how to carry more of what she needed. This year, she was trying to figure out the old school process of jerking beef.

Back before the world had gone to hell, she'd had a dehydrator.

She set about her ritual of sharpening knives and carving her homemade spear to a deadly sharp edge. She strapped each of her knives to their various holsters—both thighs, her boot. She packed a small carrying pack with lunch and a canteen of water along with an empty, large metal water bottle and a smaller sack which she would use if she happened upon wild berries or other edible plants.

The child woke then, crying plaintively for his Ma and Da. He was upset when he only got Bella, and how could she blame him? She changed him out of his dirty things, cleaned him up, and swaddled him in another cloth she'd cut for that purpose. She'd cooked a quail the night before and now slathered the meat with a paste of mashed up berries. The little boy gnawed happily on the piece she gave him, eating in that slow way only very small children were capable of. He looked up at her, grinning happily from his place on the floor, declaring, "Mmm."

Her heart panged, and she looked away.

~0~

Bella replayed the million of reasons she was doing this as she made the short walk. He was a distracting creature. She'd rigged up a sack to carry him—and to bury him, for that matter. He wiggled, and she worried he would fall. He cooed and articulated. Loudly. Her paranoia spiked, and she swore a hundred eyes watched her from the forest.

The child was fixing to get her killed in less than twenty-four hours. Wouldn't that be ironic after all she'd been through? She'd feared every man she'd seen in the last two years, and it would be an infant who brought her down.

Poor little creature. It wasn't his fault; she knew it wasn't his fault.

In a clearing a semi-safe distance from the edge of the mountainside, Bella set the child down on the grass. She offered him a few random items she'd put together—impromptu toys. He set about exploring them, passing them between his uncoordinated fingers with a curious expression on his face.

He was precious.

Bella squatted and caressed his cheek. "I promise, I'll remember you," she whispered.

She walked off a few feet and began to dig with the small tools she'd brought. She didn't let herself think of what she was doing. In such a short period of time, the child had breathed warmth into parts of her that had long gone cold.

Her long forgotten humanity and compassion would leave her in the same boat as his parents—broken, her body discarded and blood painting every available surface. No one would bury her. Whatever was left of her would feed the wildlife.

There was mercy in this. There was good.

When she'd dug a hole sufficiently large—and so small, so desperately small—and gathered enough rocks to cover it, Bella stood. She stared out at the natural beauty all around her—the only beauty left in this awful world—and tried to breathe deep. Her eyes stung.

Some minutes later, she still hadn't moved. She started when she felt a weight at her legs. She looked down. Of course, the little boy had barrelled into her legs. He fell down on his bottom and giggled, looking up at her with a big grin. He used her pants to pull himself back up to his feet and stared up at her with his beautiful green eyes.

With a shuddering sigh, Bella stooped and scooped him into her arms. "Look at you, smiling and laughing after all you went through yesterday." She smoothed his hair back. "Not going to make it easy on me, are you? That's good. You shouldn't. You deserve to go out fighting a good fight."

She walked a few more feet and pointed out across the great distance. "Look. You see? It's better here. Where it's quiet. Where it's peaceful and beautiful." She sunk down, crossing her legs and settling the boy between them. She rocked him a little. "It's not going to hurt."

For a few minutes, she held him close, lamenting the state of the world. She resented so much having to do this. She gritted her teeth against the gritty sob that threatened to rip its way out of her throat. Then, she breathed in deeply and out again.

Then, she reached for the gun she had tucked in her waistband.

Her father's gun. How she loathed the instrument. She didn't even know why she kept it. There'd only been that single bullet in it these last two years.

It was a good use to that bullet. A quick end.

"It's not going to hurt," she whispered both to herself and the child in her arms.

She cocked the gun. Despite how much she despised the weapon, she'd kept it in good working order. She'd cleaned it. She hated the way it felt in her hands. Reaching deep within her, back to the cold, she put the gun against the child's head.

Pain went down her arm as she found herself yanked up and hurled away. She hit the ground, and before she could push up, there was a weight on her, a knee digging into her skin, and her arm wrenched hard behind her back. Terror threatened to blank her vision. She could hear the baby crying.

Whoever was on her was speaking. The words didn't coalesce. The tone was what caught her attention—a low, furious growl.

A man.

A/N: Sooooo. How we doing?