Somewhere under Arizona…

If Viet Nam had taught Walter Skinner nothing else, it had taught him to listen to his instincts. Now, with his back pushed up against the cold stone wall of the cavern, his heart slamming into his ribs, and the prospect of death as close as the next breath, Skinner was listening very hard indeed.

He heard the hollow drip of water somewhere deep in the cave, a sound like horses’ hooves echoing on concrete late at night. He heard the faint shimmery rustle of his clothes as he tried to crush his oversized frame into the slight indentation in the cave wall. And he heard the stir of something moving off to his right, a shadow of sound disturbing the roar of silence like a crab moving inside a seashell.

He moved slightly towards it, holding his right hand with his left so he could bring the gun up faster: in the next few seconds, Skinner was going to have to make the hardest decision of his life. He was going to have to either kill Dana Scully or be killed by her.

Silence. The underground shelter that Gibson Praise had used as a hideaway had turned out to be part of a long, twisted maze of tunnels, the rocky passages corrugated as cardboard. So far he had managed to avoid her by matching his zig to her zag, but she was smart, and now she seemed to be anticipating his moves. He had to know where she was.

He spoke so softly there was no echo to his voice.

“Scully.”

She made absolutely no noise with the final movement that brought her into the open, around the edge of the outcropping. She might as well have materialized out of thin air, and for all he knew, that’s exactly what had happened. The world he had lived in three weeks ago had vanished forever, and all he had now was this strange geography of possibilities; it seemed that anything, anything at all, could and might happen. Great ships could lift against gravity into the night sky, and bear Mulder away. Little girls could swell up and change into hefty men whose "blood" was mist that burned like ammonia fumes. He had not willingly given up his perspective of the world; the veil had been ripped away, and where it had been torn he was still bleeding.

Her gun, like his, was held pointed forward in a two handed grip. They had faced each other like that before, long ago, when Mulder had gone missing, presumed dead. There was nothing comforting in its familiarity. Skinner tilted his head back to keep the sweat from running into his eyes, which were still burning from the earlier exposure to the toxic gas; how the hell could he be sweating in air so cold he could see each breath?

With his face raised, the odor of mold and dank fungus filled his nostrils, and unexpectedly, he sneezed.

The pull of the hammer and the blast of the shot were almost simultaneous--almost, but but not quite. The microsecond of interval between them was enough for Skinner to hurl his weight forward and down, and Scully’s bullet sliced cleanly through the cloud of vapor the sneeze had left over his head. It smashed into the stone wall so close that the sparks flew out and stung his cheek. Enraged, Skinner let his momentum carry him forward and into her. She brought her gun down hard, but it was a glancing blow, striking his ear instead of his skull. With a roar like a bull he drove forward and knocked her off her feet, falling on top of her when she went down. She struggled like a wild animal, clawing and biting, but she didn’t have enough strength to push his heavy body off hers. Skinner managed to slap the gun out of her hand, tossing his down as well, and pinned her wrists to the floor. She gave a cry as much of frustration as of pain, and then suddenly just quit, gave up, and was quiet except for her heaving chest as she tried to get her breath.

She lay panting and glaring up at him, her bared teeth a glimmer in the darkness.

“What do you want from me?” he demanded. And then, because the question had burned in his mind above all else for weeks now: “Where is Fox Mulder?”

He sensed a change in her, the stillness going from surrender to something else, something cool and watchful.

She spoke for the first time, in a voice that was angry and skeptical and hopeful all at the same time. “Why are you asking me?”

He hesitated, unconsciously loosening the painful grip he had on her wrists, but not enough to let her go. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Special Agent Dana Scully, with the FBI.”

“We both know that’s bullshit. I don’t know who you are, but I know Agent Scully is with a search team right now, ten miles from here.”

“Don’t play games with me. I left the real Walter Skinner in the hospital. I saw you come in here when you were still in the shape of Gibson Praise-- and he's in the hospital, too.”

Skinner straddled her, easing some of his weight off her thighs. “I just got out of the hospital. I went to the school in time to see you slipping away, and I followed you here. There was no one else but you. I know what you are; I know you can change or make people think you change into people they know. But I’m not falling for it again.”

He remembered the humiliating fear that had frozen him when he had been in the hospital room with Gibson, when he realized that the little girl who had come in and looked up at him with those strange, alien eyes was some kind of a monster, when it began to change, and he fired in absolute panic, then choked on the blinding fumes…So it was in another shape now? What better ploy than to assume the form of the one person he wanted least in all the world to harm? Peering down into the shadows of her face, he saw the gleam of fear or anger in her eyes, and refused to believe it. He and John had watched this creature on the tape, realizing then that Scully couldn’t be in two places at the same time, so what the HELL was this thing?

He watched her now, preparing himself for anything to come. His gun was a few inches from his right hand, the hand holding hers to the ground. If she began to morph into something while he had her pinned like this, he would risk letting her wrist go long enough to seize his weapon and fire directly into the neck.

“I shot you once already tonight,” she said. “I’ll do it again. I will kill you.”

“You didn’t shoot me, and you didn’t blind me and you didn’t kill me,” he growled. “Now tell me what you are, and what you did with Mulder.”

Impasse. He felt her deceitful heart pounding through the pulses in her wrists. She stared up at him as if searching his face for something recognizable.

Her voice changed to a ragged whisper. “Skinner… Is it really you?”

“You know who I am.”

“Skinner…” the word trailed away.

He would have bet his life that the voice of the woman underneath him belonged to Dana Scully. The tone of compassion, gentleness, intelligence, the dignity with which she looked at him even from that position of utter defeat. Could it be that Scully had been following the morphing creature, knowing that it could not have been Gibson running off into the desert, and that he had followed the real Scully here? Or could the creature assume the mantle of personality as easily as it changed its physical features? She certainly smelled like Dana Scully, a scent imprinted on his psyche from years of association.

She seemed to sense his uncertainty. “If you are Walter Skinner…you’d know something about me…something no one else knows except John Doggett…”

“You mean the baby.”

Something glinted in the dull light reflecting from the rocks, and he saw a tear slide down her cheek to her ear. “Oh my God...It IS you,” she whispered. “It really is.”

“It really is.”

She was crying. He felt the trembling body, saw the tears, and all doubt dissipated. He let her wrists go and put his arms under her, partly to help her sit up, partly to comfort her. She laid her wet face against his neck and he felt like weeping himself. “Skinner, I'm sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s all right,” he soothed. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.” He rubbed his jaw against her ear, pushed the hair from her face, drew back a little and kissed her forehead. He could feel the fear and desolation and heartache in her embrace, and didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to tell her she was not alone. He kissed her cheek, murmuring something, letting his mouth trail down towards hers…

Her mouth was so soft it seemed to crumble under his like pink cake frosting. Her tongue was quick, responsive. Her body was trembling with some mysterious energy under him, so that he could feel the glow and throb of each muscle, the life force radiating under her clothes. His body answered with a powerful, overwhelming arousal that she had to feel against her lower belly. He raised his weight up on one elbow and tangled his right hand in her hair to deepen the kiss, his mind totally blank except for the taste of her, the feel of her arm sliding down from his shoulder and then -

And then she was stiff and fast and hard as she slithered up out of his embrace and brought his own gun up from beside them, holding it at his throat and thumbed the hammer without hesitation.

“Get off me, you son of a bitch.” Her voice shook but her hand was steady. He saw her finger tighten on the trigger. “This is for Mulder.”

Skinner gritted his teeth and half turned his face away, expecting that snicking sound of the hammer to be the last sound he ever heard. Except for one thing, which he remembered a split second before she realized it herself. He had slipped on the safety when he put the gun down during their struggle; it was a long engrained habit. Now she pulled the trigger against unexpected resistance, and nothing happened.

A dull red wave of rage washed through Skinner, obliterating everything else, reason, judgment, temperance. Scully would have pulled that trigger and shot him through the throat; he had been one millisecond away from eternity. But he was alive. Alive! It exploded through him and he lashed out, smacking the gun out of her hand so hard it skittered and clanked ten feet across the cave floor. She struck back almost as quickly and he felt her nails rake against his neck, felt the sting and drag as his skin sliced open and he smelled his own blood, and saw her eyes widen with surprise and horror when she saw it too: blood, the irrefutable proof of his humanity.

He wiped at the slashes with his fingertips and thrust them at her face. “You see?" His voice boomed through the cavern. "Red blood. Human fucking BLOOD.”

BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD... The echo seemed to go on forever into the depths of the maze, as a few drops spilled to the ground.

Skinner wanted to smash her face, to shake her like a rag and break her neck. Instead he smeared his own blood over her mouth and pushed her hard back down on the dirt and kissed her again. This time there was only the desire to hurt her, to humiliate her, to do something to her in return for what she had just done to him--shoved him to the edge of existence and then forced him to look down into the abyss. If only for one millisecond; that was still too long to make any man confront his own mortality.

Scully was crying. Crying and shaking. She had her hands on his shoulders, pushing him off, as she tried to turn her face away from his. As she squirmed underneath him he was acutely aware of her breasts against his chest, of her legs outspread on either side of his knees. The rage pulsed in him, changing. He lifted his mouth from hers, and took her hand, pulling it up under his shirt through the hair on his chest, and held it over his heart. “It’s me, Scully,” he rasped, the softness of his voice at odds with the roughness of his actions. “It’s me--Walter Skinner.”

He felt more than heard her words, words that struck him like blows of a fist: “Skinner, you’re hurting me.”

He had gone over the edge. He had been about to - what? Rape her? Kill her? How was that any different than what she’d tried to do to protect herself from what she thought was a monster? How was he NOT a monster? He let her go abruptly, supported himself on his hands over her, and tried to find the strength to talk, to get up, to comfort her, but all he could do was fight what he realized was a losing battle.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

His rage broken, all that was left was shame. Shame and remorse for things that could not be undone. He was crying with her; he felt the tears spill over in an anguished rush; it was she who put her face against his now, and pressed her lips to them to quiet him, to comfort him. “Don’t, please,” she murmured. “Don’t, it’s okay, I’m okay, Skinner. Look.” She pulled her head back to peer up at him in the gloom. “I’m all right, see?’

He took a ragged breath and looked down at her Her hair was tangled, her face streaked with dirt and tears, makeup smeared under her eyes. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and it make his heart ache in a new fresh wave of pain.

“Shhh.” Her mouth pushed against his as if to silence him. Once. Twice. She was kissing him. This time it was real. She drew back briefly and they looked at each other, lips almost touching. She was too close for Skinner to see her eyes, but he could feel the change in her body, the fear turned to shaky relief turned to desire the way it had turned in him. His erection throbbed against her thigh like a toothache.

One of them moved, at last, and then everything broke loose, and they were kissing feverishly, grasping at each other, clumsy with the urgency of their sudden mutual need. The darkness helped; it gave him courage and seemed to melt her inhibitions. He fumbled with her warm naked breasts under her blouse, pulling at her nipples, stiff as small stones, and reached lower, hoping for an elastic waistband but finding a belt instead. Scully struggled with it as he shifted his weight and unzipped his fly; she was only able to wriggle her pants down to her knees, and he hooked his thumb and forefinger under the crotch of her panties and tore them loose with a sound of ripping cloth that echoed off the cave walls. He tried to reach down again, tried to finger her wetness and ease the way for his penis, which he knew would be too big for her if she wasn’t ready, but she was more than ready, she was demanding, and she pushed his hand aside impatiently and rose up against the constriction of her clothing, and he drove forward to meet her arching hips and slid inside her, tight but slippery and grasping and hot, hot, burning hot.

Then there was nothing but the fast furious grinding of a man and a woman lost in the ultimate primal affirmation of life as he pounded her hips into the dirt floor and saw his grunts in plumes of mist and heard her building groan come to climax like the cry of some strange lost bird dying in the hollow twists and turns of the maze. His answering cry a few seconds later was equal parts pain and pleasure.

It was over in only a few minutes, and then he fell forward, spent, and they lay together, panting, cooling, in a kind of slow dawning aftershock.

Scully turned her face away as he moved his weight off her. Even as the waves of pleasure were subsiding in him, he realized he had committed an act of criminal proportions, a crime against Scully, against himself, and worst of all, against Mulder.

He got up on his knees, turned away from her, zipped up his fly. Tucked in his shirt as best he could, smoothed the dirty fabric down over his chest. Her torn panties were a white scrap on the floor and he picked them up discreetly to save her from that humiliation, and shoved them into his pants pocket. Moved a respectful distance away from her and got up, wanting desperately to help her to her feet but knowing it would be the wrong thing to do at that point.

Scully got up, too, with a kind of terrible, wounded dignity that struck him to the soul. Even then he wanted to reach out to her but he knew she didn’t need anyone’s help to stand on her own two feet again, and that was one of the things he loved best about her.

They stood for a moment in silence, heads down, long enough for either or both of them to say a prayer. Skinner squeezed his eyes shut so hard he saw sparks, and felt a curious wave of dizziness come over him, almost as if he was about to pass out. It was over in an instant; when he opened his eyes he was almost surprised to find that he was still there, standing in the underground cave, with Scully a few steps away and the warmth of her body still impressed on his.

They left the underground hideaway without saying a word to each other, collecting their fallen weapons, walking through the rocky corridor where the smell of cordite still hung in the air, and went up the ladder to the square of light outlining the trap door and into another world.

The blazing Arizona sun revealed a landscape as alien as the face of another planet, burning away the recent moments as if the past was attached to them like a fuse to a stick of dynamite.

They got into the Explorer without saying anything; to break the silence would have been some kind of violation, But as Scully settled into her seat gingerly, she made a little sound of discomfort, sore because of him, because he had been inside her, and Skinner’s penis, limp as a Dali clock, gave a sudden heroic twitch of life.

He reached into his pocket for the keys and his fingers closed around something silky. Her panties, still damp, slid against his skin, and for a thoughtful moment he rubbed his thumb over the fabric in a way he knew would make Scully squirm if she was still wearing them.

Then he untangled the keys and started the car and put it in gear, and pulled quietly away from what he now thought of as the scene of the crime. Scully stared straight ahead through the windshield, but when he looked at her she glanced at him briefly. The mute misery in her eyes must have been reflected in his own, but he was relieved to see no accusation there, no horror when she looked at him. They would have a long time to rationalize what had just happened; maybe if by mutual accord they refused to acknowledge it, they could somehow make it go away.

Except that he didn't want it to go away.

He wanted to tell her it had been a basic reaction to the stress of the moment, the intensity of what they’d been through. He wanted to explain his shaken hold on reality and convince her he was not himself but would soon find some solid ground to stand on. He wanted to comfort her, to reassure her, to bring Mulder to her wrapped up with a bow, if only to make that look go out of her eyes.

But more than anything else, he wanted to lie down with her in a real bed, with clean sheets and pillows and phones off the hook, and make love to her slowly and carefully, in a way that would show her what he really felt for her.

Scratched, bruised, sore, with the adrenaline in his blood rapidly turning to lactic acid that would crystallize in every muscle and hurt like hell for the next couple of days, Skinner felt a strange guilty pleasure stealing through him. He was with Scully. He would be united with her in their desperate quest for who knew how long? Sooner or later she would come to him, in some vulnerable moment, when she realized that he was the one she could turn to, that he was the one who would always be there for her.

Somewhere in the origins of time, he knew, Mulder and Scully’s names had been written in a heart on a driveway when the cement was still wet. He was never meant to be a part of her life. But then again, the rules of the universe had changed in the past few weeks, and who knew what new possibilites had opened up? Maybe there would be a way to reconcile the irreconcilable, and find some kind of peace for the three of them.

And maybe not. But he had something to hold onto now, a center, a core. And he was never going to let it go again.