by jordan

Chapter 12/12

Epilogue: Past, Present, and Future

Something was wrong.

Scully sat in the back seat of the patrol car, a battered tan Buick with a faded sign painted on the door, staring out the back window. The town might not have much in the way of funds to pay a lawman, but the sheriff had been decent and courteous to her, professional with Skinner, and was doing a very thorough job of things. Surely he must have thought the story strange, as he tromped around the snow with the other men, marking sites with yellow tape and little surveyor flags. But he had never so much as raised an eyebrow or let a cynical tone creep into his voice when he spoke to her.

Two agents were being flown in from a Washington State field office to escort her home. That was the first thing. Why had Skinner called them? Why wasn't she flying back with him? He was going back at once, not even coming back to town, but going with one of the deputies to someplace further south, a town with an airport and chartered flights.

The second thing--and it took her the better part of an hour to figure this out--was that Skinner was deliberately avoiding all eye contact with her. From the moment he had called her "Agent Scully," everything had changed. It wasn't even a coolness about him, but more of a denial of her existence, as if she had simply become a problem he had to deal with.

Now as she sat on the cheap vinyl seatcovers that reeked faintly of vomit and urine and old dog, her stomach rumbled and her head ached and her nose dripped from the cold, and every time she wiped it she looked at the tissue expecting to see blood. She felt weak and tired and discouraged. She hadn't been handcuffed--that was a good sign--but she'd been told in no uncertain terms to stay there, and no one would tell her anything else.

The first incredible high had worn off; that had been earlier, when Skinner told her to get into the truck and then he got in and rolled up the windows and turned the heater on full blast. They had sat there luxuriating in the warmth, Scully with her eyes closed and her palms flat on the dashboard which the full sun had heated, Skinner going through the brown leather briefcase he had found on the front seat. He had grunted to himself a couple of times, as if he'd forgotten her presence, leafing through files and taking some out, reordering others. And one or two, if she wasn't mistaken, had gone quietly into his jacket. She'd been waiting for him to speak then, but he had never said anything to her.

There was a CB scanner in the truck and Skinner had no trouble raising help. The sheriff had been out patrolling the roads and was there in twenty minutes, and other people showed up inside of an hour. A coroner. A local doctor. A couple of part time deputies. Skinner had talked to them, and put on his best FBI-in-charge voice, but what he said to them, she didn't know. She'd just been escorted to the cruiser and told to wait.

She wiggled the back door handle experimentally. Locked, with the inside popup lock unscrewed and bolt-cut at the base. With a good pair of tweezers she could probably get out of the car, but she didn't even have her purse with her. And anyway, what was the point?

Finally a deputy came to her window and rapped his knuckles against it. It was only then that Scully saw that the window handle worked. She almost laughed, and rolled it down.

"Ma'am, we're going to take you back to town until your own people can fly in and escort you back to Washington. Mr. Skinner said to ask you if you wanted anything before we go."

"Tell him I want to talk to him," she said.

She watched the deputy, a long legged boy of no more than twenty or so, lope up to the tall, somehow remote figure of Skinner, interrupting him as he and the sheriff were talking. She saw Skinner turn his head in her direction, saw his shoulders lift and fall in a sigh as if to say, oh well, if I must.

When he crouched down by her open window and looked at her and said, "What is it, Agent Scully?" she wanted to say a thousand things. But when she studied his cool, impassive face, she saw nothing of the dark lover who had taken her in the night, who had touched her with such tenderness that she'd thought it had to be emotion and not just skill. She suddenly remembered a detail so poignant it brought tears to her eyes: after they had made love she had left one hand out of the bag, and he had pulled it back inside, tucked it under the goosedown. As if he could feel her cold then, as she could feel his now.

Suddenly he made eye contact and she was the one who had to look away from that chilly inner sanctum where there was no place for her. "What's going to happen now?" she asked, hating herself for the meekness in her voice.

"We'll talk in Washington," he said.

"Am I in custody?"

"Technically, yes," he said, "But there's enough evidence in Crawford's briefcase to clear you a dozen times over. I just want to make sure we observe all the formalities so there's no question about anything that happened here."

If he recognized the irony in his own statement, he didn't acknowledge it. He said, "Crawford seems to have known that these two women who looked like you--possibly because of plastic surgery, or whatever--had been planning for some time to commit a series of robberies, blame them on you, and then escape, leaving you to take the fall. Making it look like you made a run for it and then got caught in flight, while your partner, Dave, got away with the money. He's got all sorts of dated and even notarized documents and photos that show these women in places it will be easy to show you were NOT. He even has some samples of your blood in the briefcase to show what you were drugged with; I'm not sure what the results will mean but we'll have the lab work on them. Our only real problem is going to be convincing these people not to waste their time searching for the women or their bodies."

"Why did Crawford do all this and yet never just call the police?" Scully asked.

Skinner looked uncomfortable, as if weighing his answer. Then he said, "I guess we'll never know."

Everything dawned in slow light over Scully, bathing her in relief. "Then...it's going to be all right?"

He nodded. "Yes. I think it will be. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it's something you and Mulder can pursue if you wish when you're back on the job."

Mulder. Scully remembered with a rush of pleasure that Mulder was all right, that she'd be seeing him soon. The very thought fortified her. She took a deep breath and said, "Thanks, Skinner."

He patted the car door a couple of times and got up. Scully watched him walk away, the stiffness in his back, the long strides away from her. All too obviously glad to be away from her.

Well, what had she expected? Avowals of undying love? He was a man, she was a woman, they'd been in desperate circumstances. So she discovered he was a wonderful lover. It was just something she would have to put behind her. Something she would have to forget, as he had probably already forgotten.

The deputy got in and started the car. He gave her an awkward smile in the rearview mirror, probably meant to be reassuring, and pulled the Buick through the tangle of cars and onto the open road beyond. Scully saw a man in a grey jacket, most likely the doctor, kneeling by the blanket that had been placed over the empty clothes of one of the not-Scullys. Skinner stood beside him, his back to her, broad shoulders so familiar she thought she could pick him out from a crowd at a stadium without seeing his face. Despite herself, she felt a strange, tortuous twist of grief. Then her breath fogged the glass and she saw nothing but the vague white world slipping away through a mist like tears.

The car moved on. The men moving around the snow had churned it to slippery mud, and were watching where they walked, and no one looked up to see her go.

**********************

Skinner waited until he could no longer hear the engine of the Buick before risking a glance after it. She was finally gone. Thank God.

He still felt a prick of irritation from that one bad moment, the urge that had been almost uncontrollable to reach out and shake the word out of her head when he'd said "Mulder" and her eyes had suddenly lit up for the first time that morning.

Mulder. She would probably stop at the hospital that very day to see him. He was undoubtably sitting up by now, harassing the nurses with his stupid jokes. He would have regained enough physical ability so that when Scully came in he would be able to put his arms around her, hold her, feel the way she shapeshifted to fit against him. And he'd know. Men knew. Not right away, but he'd figure it out eventually. He'd feel the new warm heaviness of her body, the loose muscles that used to be clenched all the time. He'd see the way her mouth turned up at the corners when she was staring into space, thinking no one was watching. And maybe he'd guess exactly what happened, but more likely he wouldn't. Sad to say, but when women got laid, Skinner was usually the last suspect on the list.

And yet.

He had not talked to Scully about anything. They would have to talk, if only to get their stories straight. She'd keep her mouth shut until then. He knew he could trust her common sense, and her sense of propriety. Before the hearing. During the investigation. She HAD to talk to him. Somewhere in DC. Somewhere safe, where they could be alone, unobserved. She'd see the logic of that. And when could Scully ever resist logic? Eventually, the Subject would come up. What we did. What I did to you. Hard and deep and fast, the way you wanted me to. Remorse, guilt, crocodile tears. Maybe a little comfort, a little forgiveness afterwards. A little something to make them both feel better.

Georgetown was in the middle of a hot, sultry summer, long days and leisurely dinner hours as the sun took its own sweet time about setting. There would be plenty of time for them to meet after work. Plenty of time, in the light, in places where she could feel safe. That was the key. Sooner or later he'd find a time and a place for what he wanted. If she resisted him--and of course she would� he knew just what it would take to get her to lie down under him again, just when she needed to be bullied and when she needed to be begged, just where the line of her resistence would melt to the right touch.

That was a promise he'd made to himself the minute he saw her pulling on his jacket, when he suddenly realized it was all over. It would NOT be over. Dana Scully would feel him inside her again, as often and as thoroughly as he could manage it. She'd be shy and ashamed and a little scared until she finally figured out that she was safe with him, safe with those feelings, as long as she believed that it was just a series of accidents that happened between them and no demands would be made on her.

After he made love to her again, he would let her go. And let her go. And let her go. He'd never try to hold her, ever. But one day she wouldn't want to go. One day she'd wake up in his bed and it would be morning, and she'd lie between the clean white sheets and smell the coffee he was making, and she wouldn't want to bolt for her clothes or jog the three blocks to where her car was discreetly parked or call and tell her mother she was spending the weekend with friends. One day she'd only look at him sleepily and let him do it all again, in full daylight, with God watching in smiling approval.

And one day, if he was careful enough and distant enough and passionate enough at the right moments, Dana Scully would tell him she loved him. Then he might let her know he'd always been in love with her, or he might pretend it was a gradual thing with him, too, or when she said it he might just sit and stare at his hands and will himself not to weep like a child.

One day.

Skinner was waving at the sheriff, walking away, already a million miles into the future somewhere with his hand on the side of Scully's face, where it fit so perfectly. He gave himself one last over the shoulder glance at the roof of the shack, which was poking up like a witch's hat from under all that snow, and he smiled. One day Walter Skinner would be Dana Scully's lover. Yeah, right. One day when pigs flew. One day when hell froze over. Or once on a cold day in July. Hell, anything was possible. Hadn't they already proved that?

End

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