Alex was not unused to closed doors. People closed the bathroom door every time they walked through it. The doors that led outside were almost always closed. Daddy shut his nursery door every night. The door to the room where they kept the large, shiny, growly things was always shut. A shut door was by no means a new concept to Alex. This time though, he had the pervasive feeling that he was on the wrong side of a shut door. That had never happened before. He wasn't really sure how he felt about that.

No one was around. The only time Alex was ever really alone was when he was supposed to be sleeping, and even then Daddy was usually with him until he fell asleep and was there to wake him up in the morning. 'Alone' was a strange feeling, but he didn't understand the world enough to be afraid of 'alone.' He got upset when he couldn't find the person he wanted to be with, but there was almost always another person there to comfort and entertain him. If he woke up alone, he could whimper and whine and someone would show up to cuddle him.

Did Grandma know he was alone? Had she left him outside on purpose? Sometimes Daddy would put him in his crib when he was chewing the wrong things (usually people) and being "bad." Had he been bad so Grandma put him out here? Alex's ears sagged and he whimpered. He didn't want to be bad. He put his paws up on the back door: the cool glass actually warmer than his snowy, wet paws. He barked once at the door, then twice, but no one came.

Alex turned around and headed towards the end of the porch. He stopped at the top step and looked back at the house over his shoulder. Maybe she was upset about the toast. Maybe that had been her toast and she'd wanted to eat it. Alex slunk down off the stairs and walked around the backyard.

Now that he had freedom, he wasn't sure what to do with it. He'd never had the freedom to go wherever he pleased. Doors were very often shut in front of him, keeping him where he was supposed to be and out of where he wasn't supposed to be. His first instinct was to go to his big pen in the backyard, but even the door on that – the gate – was shut to him.

There were two parallel fences that ran along the side of the yard; they were wooden, slatted, privacy fences that he didn't know had been installed not long before his birth to allow his Other Daddy to come and go without being spotted. To the left of the house, Alex knew there was something, like him, that barked. But he couldn't understand its barking; it was as much gibberish as most of what the grown-ups said. He wasn't sure what was behind the other fence. He couldn't get passed either fence, anyway, so it didn't matter. He had two options: he could go to the woods, which were always dark and had lots of things he could smell but couldn't always see or he could go to the front of the house. He knew more about the front of the house; Daddy had taken him to the front of the house and placed him inside one of the big, shiny growling creatures and taken him to lots of faraway places. He thought maybe if he went that way he'd see something familiar. Maybe he could even find his way to Other Daddy's house.

Other Daddy. Other Daddy could never be mad at him.

It was settled. Alex rounded the right side of the house and headed to the front yard. It looked like the entire world had been covered in the not-quite-ice-cube stuff. There was, however, a long strip of black, with almost no white stuff on it, in front of the house, leading to the left and to the right, as far as the eye could see. His paws were getting colder and wetter, so he headed for the strip of black. Once he was in the middle, he looked left and right, trying to remember which way the metal creature had taken them to get to Other Daddy's house. He was pretty sure it was the right; things looked more familiar in that direction. He headed in that direction, his paws slipping on little patches of smooth coldness that he couldn't see, but could feel. Sniffing at the air did nothing to help him; for some reason the smells all around him seemed muted and dull. He didn't understand that the cold air made it harder for smell.

He wasn't sure how long he'd walked when he heard a loud noise behind him; it was like a cross between a howl, a bark and a growl. He looked behind himself to see one of the shiny metal things moving towards him. It had two eyes that reflected light, like the bird that sometimes sat outside his nursery window at night. The lights kept blinking off and on at him as the loud noise continued. Alex ran out of the creature's way and off the black strip. He hid under another one of the metal creatures, but this one was asleep. It didn't move, didn't make a noise, and sat quietly in the front yard of someone's house, the same way Daddy's and Finn's slept in the front yard. Grandma's and Grandpa's slept in their own room in the house.

After watching for a while, a few more of the angry things roared by, coming from both directions. They made so much noise; Alex was terrified they'd wake up the one he was hiding under. And what would stop them from coming this way? Alex decided to find another way to his Other Daddy's house. The black strip wouldn't be safe. He emerged out from under the creature's backside. He almost banged his head on its tail (which was, strangely enough, located off to the side of its rump, instead of in the middle like Alex's own tail). He went around behind the house and saw the back of another house. He was too busy looking in front of himself that he didn't look to the side. There was a sudden loud barking: a much bigger bark than Alex himself could make. There was a big black animal running at him as it barked. It looked almost like Other Daddy, but much smaller and louder. It seemed angry, though. Alex couldn't picture Other Daddy angry – didn't want to. Alex ran from the mean wolf creature as fast as he could. He didn't know it was chained up and couldn't follow him very far, so Alex kept running until he no longer heard its barking and then ran some more just to be safe.

By the time he stopped running, his heart was hammering, it stung his chest to breathe, his paws were numb from cold, yet throbbing from pain, and he could barely hold his tail up. He crossed over another black strip (or was it the same black strip? He couldn't be sure), and hobbled over to another house's porch. There was a hole leading under the porch and he could see brown earth underneath. Finally, he could get away from the cold white stuff. He had to dig a little to squeeze himself through the hole. When he got inside, he collapsed in exhaustion.

He wasn't alone though, not anymore. He could see two glowing eyes staring at him, and it smelled rank under the porch. The thing with glowing eyes had been so shocked to see Alex that it hadn't moved at first, just stared at him, but its shock quickly ended. It stomped its feet at him. Alex's ears pricked in curiosity. This thing was smaller than him; it didn't look like it had sharp claws, its head was too tiny for it to have mean teeth, and, overall, it looked rather cuddly. Yet something deep inside Alex warned him to stay away. The soft, yucky smell that permeated the porch was a small sign of things to come, his instincts said. Slumping his shoulders, Alex gave in to the little voice at the back of his mind and pulled himself back through the hole in the porch. His entire body ached as he tried to find another place to hide.

xoxoxo

They'd checked each room already, but now they were re-checking the rooms and looking under and in things to make sure Alex wasn't just ignoring their calls. Every door had been closed when Carol woke Kurt up, telling him she couldn't find Alex. That didn't make any sense to Kurt. Where could Alex have gone if all the doors were shut? Carol couldn't even be certain what time she'd last seen him. He'd eaten all of his breakfast, which narrowed the window of time slightly, but not by much.

Kurt opened up his parent's bedroom door and immediately saw Carol half under the bed, a linen box pulled out from under the bed and laying next to her. The closet door was open, the boxes of family records – insurance information, birth certificates, marriage certificates, tax documents, mortgage and loan contracts, Alex's Unhuman Registration Certificate – were all pulled out and sitting beside the door. One box had tipped over and spilled bundles of business receipts onto the floor.

"What happened after breakfast?"

Carol came back out from under the bed and sat back on her heels. "I cleaned. I did chores around the house."

"Like?"

Carol closed her eyes, trying to cut off outside sensations and distractions so she could focus on the memories. "I washed down the counters first. I didn't use any bleaches or anything, so he probably didn't get in the closet." Kurt had checked there anyway. "I paid some bills at the table. Alex watched me pay the bills and finished up the last of his omelet then, I remember that. Then I mopped the kitchen floor. Alex, he left the kitchen then, I'm sure of it. But all the doors were closed. I don't know where he could have gotten."

"What next?"

Carol drew her lips in tight, squeezing her face as she engaged in deep thought. "I started a load of dishes from breakfast and then I-" Carol stopped herself when she caught the look on Kurt's face. He dashed out of the bedroom and downstairs. Carol had caught up with his thought process just as she was getting to her feet and chased after him. The chances of that happening were next to zero, but they'd checked everything else. When Carol reached the kitchen, Kurt was already standing with his back against the counter, the dishwasher open next to him. He had a slight look of relief on his face (as opposed to the sheer terror on his face before), yet at the same time it was still creased with worry. The dishwasher was empty except for dishes. Carol looked around the kitchen, trying to ignite a memory; she had kept so busy all morning that she hadn't even thought about Alex. He was being so quiet and well behaved there was no reason to think about him. She continued scanning the kitchen: the upper cabinets, the counters, the appliances, the lower cabinets…she spotted the empty garbage can. "Kurt…" He looked up at her sound of worry and fear. "I went outside. I - I…I took the garbage out, but I checked on him first. He was with you on the couch."

"Oh, god." Kurt said it more to himself than to her. His hand gripped slightly at his stomach as a feeling of nausea swept over him. "We still…we still need to check."

Kurt turned the doorknob, Carol hovering over his shoulder. To someone watching, they probably looked like they expected an ax-murderer on the other side of the door.

He went up to the edge of the porch and looked down the stairs. His worst fears were realized as he peered at the snow and saw tiny footprints in the light dusting on the porch steps. He looked over the side and spotted a large hollow spot in the snow where something Alex-sized had landed. Leading from the hollow, was a trail that wound back to the porch steps, back down the porch steps, and in several large circles around the yard. From Alex's corral, the paw prints led to the side yard, and from there, Kurt could only imagine where. He…they were going to need help. He pulled out his phone and dialed the first person he could think of. "David," Kurt's voice broke as the tears he hadn't realized were there began streaming down his face. "Alex got outside."