Somewhere in the back of my mind, when I think about it, I realize the signs were there even at the beginning, and if I'd paid closer attention or understood what I was looking for, I would have seen it in him. But I tend to narrow my vision where people are concerned, and with Skinner, I kept that track as closed as I could.
It was easier not to believe Mulder, once he finally told me. But my heart knew its truth, even as my mind said it couldn't be. I've grown accustomed to having truths hurled in my face, rather than working my way around to them gradually, accepting them on whatever level I'm capable of. Not that Mulder does it out of maliciousness, it's just a characteristic of our challenging relationship -- he keeps throwing pitches at me, and eventually I take off the catcher's mask and really examine the ball I've been catching and throwing back to him. It works for us.
But it's like hearing an awful song on the radio, and then it's stuck in your head for the rest of the day, no matter how you try to get rid of it. Every time I saw Skinner, every time I was with him, I thought of what Mulder said. That I couldn't discuss it with Skinner, that I was too afraid or proud or... something... only amplified the trust issues we had.
And then there he was, sitting all alone at the holiday party, nursing that one drink. He'd been there since I'd first arrived, initially with two other ADs; eventually they left, and instead of mingling, he just stayed there.
Occasionally people stopped to talk to him, although with Skinner, there's never very much chat. But all in all he stayed alone, with Mulder spending the most time with him -- unsurprisingly. I only watched him peripherally, uncertain what to do or how casually I could talk to him. But it would be my only chance. He exuded a desire to get out of there, and when he finally rose from his little corner table, I pounced, figuring this to be my last shot.
Clearly I startled him. "Agent Scully," he said, not adding more because there was no more to add. I like his economy of words.
"Sir. Do you have a moment?"
"I was just leaving." He looked at his watch for show as he sat back down. I think the party had at least four more hours left in it, but as far as Skinner was concerned, he'd done his directorly duty and now it was time to go home.
"I won't keep you. It's just..." I had no idea how to say it. All the times I'd thought about it, rolled it around in my head in a vain search for the appropriate words, but here I was and nothing was coming out.
He cocked an eyebrow at me and I thought perhaps I could see the faint trace of a smile. Although with Skinner that was hard to tell.
Taking a deep breath, I said, "Mulder told me. About what you did. The bargain you made."
To my surprise, he waved his hand dismissively and drained the last of his whisky. "Don't make a big deal of it."
I put my hand over his arm to stop him from getting up, which he was starting to do. And quickly wondered if other people were looking at us. Did I care? Well, yes, of course I did, everything I am is about propriety, about being above board and straightforward. But within the flash of this brief opportunity, calling attention to myself seemed insignificant.
"It *is* a big deal, sir. All this..." I trailed off, unsure what to call it. Doubt? Believing he was a liar and a traitor to us? The accusations I'd made flooded into my head, and I could feel my face flush.
He shook my hand off and stood, towering over me. "This isn't really a good place to talk about this, Agent Scully."
"Are you implying that you're willing to talk about it?"
True to form, he didn't say anything. But then he jerked his head towards the lobby and walked away, me following behind him at what I hoped would be a discreet distance.
He stood by the elevator banks, impatiently. His coat was in his hands, and he looked at his watch again. When we stood like this, even when I wore these shoes -- my tallest heels -- I had to crane my neck upward to look him in the eye.
"Look. You don't have to thank me. I didn't accomplish anything except the death of someone entirely innocent in this whole thing." He pinched the bridge of his nose.
I was used to this. There was self-deprecating, there was low self-esteem, but Skinner was something even worse. As if he thought so little of the person he really was. Or maybe that he'd taken all our criticisms of him over the years to heart, and believed them without balancing them with the thanks.
"Every time you do something for us, you act as if it's nothing. But every time, you've put your life on the line." I wanted to ask him if he enjoyed playing the martyr, just to provoke something in him beyond this impassiveness. But that wasn't what I was here for. "I just wanted you to know what it meant to find out the truth."
He grimaced. "Now I know. I appreciate it." He pressed the elevator down button. It almost made me laugh. If he thought he was going to get away that easy, he clearly didn't know who he was dealing with. When the door opened, I got on with him.
His shoulders slumped. That made me actually laugh, which caused him to turn to me and give me that "you are the thorn in my paw" look.
"I'm embarrassed by my behavior to you, in light of what you've sacrificed for me. It's irrelevant what the results of your sacrifice were. The relevant fact is what you were willing to do. You can't possibly think that I wouldn't care?"
The light in the elevator glowed a sickly yellow; it made him look old and weary. I never really thought of him that way. Most of the time I find him incredibly attractive; his masculine qualities and silent strength are hot buttons for me. But right now I was wearing him down.
"I made a mistake. I thought I could help, I thought I had the power to effect change. And it was a valuable lesson."
"What did you learn?"
"That your illness, that Mulder's quest..." He rubbed a hand over his face. "It's not my cross to bear, Dana. I'm not here to absolve you or grant you dispensation. I can't make the world a better place for either of you."
The doors opened to the hotel lobby, its glittering gold and reds made more dramatic by the Christmas decorations. He stepped out, not even acknowledging me, and walked towards the outside door, pulling on his coat as he walked. He had the valet ticket out in his hand when I caught up with him. No one was leaving yet, so the valet had no one else ahead of us, and he disappeared quickly to get the car.
"But you made them your cross for a reason. What I keep wondering is why you did it."
And as soon as the words came out, I understood. The lamps on the overhang glowed softly, and the cold wind that had kicked up shook the tree limbs, which made the strands of Christmas lights flicker their colors across his face. His eyes burned like something wholly different though, something dark and angry. A tincture of doubt clouded them. One of his hands clenched into a fist, unclenched. It seemed that time spiraled to a halt as we stared at each other.
Perhaps I'd always known. In that instant I could see it all before me, a map of his heart. I saw all the crosses he'd borne. Either I had ignored all these things, or I'd looked directly at them but never understood their significance. The knowing was both a new weight upon my shoulders, and the lifting of other, older burdens.
"You're afraid, aren't you?" I asked, surprised.
"No, I..." He said nothing else for the longest time, just watching me. "Then I suppose that's something we have in common."
"I'm not..."
His head did this little twitch, and there was a look on his face that said, Oh yeah? Finally he said, "The only thing you're really afraid of is being afraid."
I felt gut-punched; my breath left me in one huge exhalation. "How can you know that?"
He sighed heavily, opening his mouth as if to say something. A funny half-smile appeared abruptly, then it was gone. But the valet brought the car around and broke the tension, and he pulled some money out of his pocket as he walked around front, gave it to the valet, then stood by his open door. His jaw worked a little, then he said, "I'll wait."
I ran back inside -- up the stairs because I didn't want to wait for the elevator. I grabbed my coat, not even bothering to find Mulder and tell him I was leaving, then tore back down the stairs. Skinner was sitting in the car at one of the taxi stands, and when he saw me, he reached over and opened the door. Again I wondered if anyone had seen us.
We drove in silence to his place in Crystal City. I liked that about him, that he was willing to be silent. I've always used that as one of the yardsticks against which I measure my relationships with people. Silence brings with it a sense of trust, that you don't have to fill up space because you're afraid of what the other person might be thinking.
At his apartment I followed him up in the elevator, again not saying anything. These were the rules I'd made for myself, right there in front of the hotel: Whatever happened, he would decide; I would love him as much as he was capable of letting someone love him; I would let myself be afraid if need be. I kept them inside myself, waiting; orders from my heart.
I've heard that if you save someone's life, they owe you theirs, they're your charge forever. I wondered how many lifetimes I owed Walter Skinner. And I also wondered, as we turned to look at each other in front of his door, what he thought he owed me. He held his key in his hand, as if offering me one last chance to change my mind and back out. Even if he did love me, he didn't know me yet.
He was every bit the gentleman I expected. Standing behind me, he took my coat off and hung it up, with his. It felt magnetic, his presence behind me, pulling at me. Like my skin had a mind of its own and was drawing me towards his. I wanted nothing more in that half-heartbeat than to feel his skin against mine.
"Would you like something to drink?"
"What are you having?" His place was cold, and I rubbed my hands together. Then he turned on the heat, and the gas fireplace, but he didn't turn on any extra lights beyond that one by the door.
"Scotch."
"The same, then." I wasn't going to tell him I'd never really liked whisky of any kind. He went into the kitchen and I stood in front of his balcony window. There was no snow predicted, at least not in time for a white Christmas. I secretly hoped it would snow, even though I'd miss the best part because I was going to San Diego in a couple days. I hated palm trees at Christmas; it was supposed to be a holiday with snow. These were the things Mulder always found most amusing about me. It was no secret that everyone thought I was perpetually serious and dour; I'd begun to believe only Mulder saw that I had a lighter side, a childlike side. Missy had known, but she was gone.
What would Skinner think? Was he attracted to my grimness? Or did he know there was something under all that? Your life perspective changes so drastically after a terminal illness; I'd had two so far, two chances to cheat death, and I knew how much joy and sorrow life could contain. It took an open heart to embrace both those things equally, and I did. Somehow I wanted Skinner to have seen that in me.
He handed me my drink and stood beside me, looking out the window. After some time he said, "You seem to be doing very well. You've made a good recovery."
"I feel good these days."
"It changes your viewpoint, doesn't it?"
"A lot. I won't say I don't sweat the small stuff, but I do give little things less precedence. And I'm less likely to waste time."
For the first time, I saw him smile outright. There was nothing subtle or removed about it. "When did you ever waste time?" he asked, incredulously.
I could only laugh back. "Well, you know what I mean. If there are no immediate rewards, I generally won't pursue something. I expect quick results."
"Unless it's driven by Mulder."
"Of course. That's always the exception to the rule."
"How many rules are you breaking, being here?" he asked sadly.
"I've rewritten my rules."
He moved his hand to the back of my neck, lightly running his fingers across my skin. My body went electric, I could feel the hairs there standing on end. He held his hand there and I turned to him. "And you rewrote the rules when you sold your soul for me."
Walter shook his head. "I didn't sell my soul. If it had worked, it would have been the best bargain I ever made. But it wasn't; I made it unwisely. I told you that. It accomplished nothing. I'm only glad that whatever Mulder did, it worked, and you're still alive."
I searched his eyes, looking for someone new there. His features, I'd always thought, were slightly mismatched and outsized in some ways, but they all worked together. Skinner brought out an erotic curiosity in me that was rarely felt; at times I would wonder what his strong shoulders would feel like gripped within my fingers, or what rhythm his heart would beat against mine.
"It's different now, isn't it, though?" I asked. "The weight of this secret off your shoulders."
Shaking his head, he answered, so quietly I almost couldn't hear him, "Yes, but now there's just a different secret to carry."
"We can carry it together."
He leaned forward, pulling me close to him. There was a wonderful scent to him, not like an aftershave or cologne, something more primal and strong. I slid my arms around him as best I could, feeling dwarfed by him. As if he were big enough to hold me in his palm.
Again he moved his hand over the back of my neck. I melted into him, ice into hot water. And then he kissed me and my God, I was molten, like unformed glass ready to be shaped into something new and fragile and beautiful, something made by his hands.
****
Now I'm sitting here watching him sleep, unable to drift off myself in spite of the alcohol I'd had. His face is different when he sleeps, all the careworn aspects and the serious lines erased. He's every bit as silent in sleep as he is during the day.
Sometimes I think about things like how love grows, or why it always seems to mutate and change over time, no matter how much we might wish to keep it frozen in its early perfection.
Mostly I wonder how much our affection for someone is created simply by knowing they love us. Always in the back of my heart I've had a fascination for Walter, but would it have taken this direction if I hadn't become aware of his feelings for me?
Mulder and I have such a strange love, one that I've toyed with off and on, trying to figure out where to take it. But underneath it all, I know how much loving him has nearly destroyed me; if we built up the romantic part of it, the foundation created through friendship might crumble. He could consume my life, destroy my heart. I know that, and I believe he knows that. So we've left it unfocused.
But Walter... he's a different game. He said my illness was not his cross to bear. But the truth is that of course it was, he made it that when he bargained his soul for a cure. Now I realize how much of our shared past was driven by his feelings for me, and what a duty he's carried silently. As I rejected him, insulted him, challenged him, he never said a word. He bears things well.
Will I bear this well? Mulder will find out, certainly, but I don't care. It may change the direction of my relationship with Mulder, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. I'm strong enough now to do anything. At times I feel invincible; looking at Walter now, trusting himself to me, I feel as strong as he has ever been.
While my faith has always been important to me, I can't say that I accept all its tenets, or believe all its myths. So many of them are designed for comfort or to give people a sense of direction; instead, I've always found those things in science. But there's an angel inside Walter, I know that, one of those guardians, powerful enough to sweep you up to the heavens or prevent disaster from occurring. He thinks he failed at being my angel; I know he brought me closer to the truth of what an angel is.
Right now I feel content, happy. Will I always feel this way? My guess is that this will change, like all things. Our lives make it such that any relationship will by necessity be short-lived. And I'm all right with that. I'm not afraid.
Because -- now -- we've changed the rules we lived by. I'm his lover,
not his cross to bear.
End
2/23/99