Title: Skinner's Ashes

Author: Philiater

Rating: PG13. no smut, but the last two stories I've 

done have been far too happy and smut free. I like 

Scully angst-ridden or pissed off. And no one 

suffers as well as Skinner does.

Category: Angst, hurt/comfort, Skinner/Scully but not 

romantic. Heavy thread of MSR. Vignette. I'm 

ignoring Doggett for this one.

Spoilers: Everything. Takes place post TINH.

Disclaimers: Not mine, never were.

Feedback: philiater1nospam@yahoo.com (leave out 

the no spam)

For my new friends at IWTB and the truly kind 

support they've given me.

 

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

 

 

Sometimes she wonders where it comes from; the 

melancholy that threatens to cloud her eyes and 

strength of will. It generally occurs without warning 

and that's why she hates it so much.  She likes 

order, likes the preciseness of planning.  This is not 

part of her careful daily preparation. This is a 

decidedly random thing and she hates it more than 

almost anything she can think of.

 

Today it rushed up suddenly after a small 

occurrence.  She noticed a portion of the wallpaper 

in her bedroom had started to curl in one corner.  It 

could have been from the general humidity, a leak 

in the roof, or from being hung improperly in the 

first place.  It was such a little thing, but it made her 

sad in a way she couldn't explain. It suddenly took 

on a significance it should not have.  As if it was a 

metaphor for her life: she was pretty paper hung on 

the wall with a noticeable flaw.

 

She sat on her bed staring at it for hours.  It was a 

flowered print hung by a previous occupant.  

Mulder hated it, and she'd always intended to 

change it, but never seemed to find the time. Now 

she had the time, but not the motivation.  The longer 

she sat there, the worse the flaw became in her 

mind.

 

Without thought she started stripping it off.  There 

was an awful satisfaction in the physical act of 

tearing something apart; of hearing the high pitched 

sound of paper as it shred in her hands.  Like a 

woman possessed, she continued along the entire 

wall, and then began to destroy the rest of the room.

 

When she was done, she found herself breathing 

hard, covered in dust, sitting in the center of a paper 

storm. She began laughing uncontrollably, rocking 

back and forth causing a dry rhythm of rustling in 

the paper.

 

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

 

He found himself checking the clock every ten 

minutes.  She hadn't come in yet.  He'd called the 

basement office several times this morning, and 

always heard the voice mail.  Mulder had been dead 

for a month, but she'd left his voice on the 

answering machine anyway.

 

He'd also been checking on her more often than he 

should.  Not just because of the pregnancy, although 

that's what he told himself. He checked on her 

because she'd come to depend on him.  

 

And she didn't like it.  She tried to hide it of course, 

but he knew it just the same. 

 

She hated it not only because she saw herself as a 

fiercely independent woman, but also because she 

wanted him to be someone else. In the beginning it 

had hurt him.  He tried to hide it by being even 

more solicitous in their encounters. She'd been 

taken aback by his behavior, but accepted it as a 

new facet of his personality.  

 

It was harder to keep up the charade of protective 

friend when she started to show.  Something about 

the gentle swelling of her belly turned him to jelly. 

He wondered if it was an instinctual reflex in the 

male; as an indirect way of protecting his offspring.  

But this baby wasn't his; it belonged to another 

man, as she did.

 

But he couldn't help how he felt. It was a curse and 

penance he had to endure for losing Mulder.  She'd 

trusted him with her lover, and he'd lost him.  It was 

something he could never pay for enough. 

Especially when Mulder turned up dead in the 

woods.

 

His mangled and disfigured body lay like a 

discarded soda can.  He'd looked used up and tossed 

away like the husk of a seed after the meat has been 

consumed. He tried to keep her from seeing the 

body, but her frantic movements to get past him 

eventually won over.

 

She'd touched Mulder's face in the gloomy clearing, 

and he'd heard her grief-stricken wail in the house 

over her loss. In all of it, he'd been unable to 

comfort her, or offer anything that could hope to 

help her understand it.  Inadequacy was as foreign a 

sensation to him as love, and he couldn't admit 

defeat to either one of those feelings.

 

In the end he let her come back to work so he could 

watch her, knowing that inside every charitable act 

was buried a small sliver of selfish need to see her.

 

As he wanted to see her now.

 

With a sigh he picked up his coat and made the long 

journey to her apartment.  He could never have 

predicted the pitiable site that would greet him.

 

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

 

 

She was still laughing when Skinner showed up. 

Her own ironic giddiness had kept her from hearing 

his frantic knocking on the door or his violent entry 

when she didn't answer.  So buried in her world of 

misery that she might have been inside the plain 

metal coffin with Mulder.

 

She did feel his powerful arms lifting her body 

against him and pulling her into his lap as he sat in 

her rocking chair. His massive body dwarfed the 

chair, but she didn't resist when he lifted her legs 

sideways over his.  Nor did she struggled when he 

wrapped his arms and the ends of his wool coat 

around her and placed her weary head on his 

shoulder.

 

His rocking mimicked her earlier movements, and 

his deep voice rumbled words of comfort under her 

ear. He was so warm; his chest so reassuring, that 

she lost herself to him.  The tears she'd refuse to 

shed in his presence soaked the front of his shirt like 

soft rain.

 

Time held no meaning in her small room.  She lay 

against him, buried in his warm embrace for an 

eternity. The healing sleep that had eluded her for 

so long came to claim her now. The smell of him 

surrounded her in a comforting cocoon of strength 

and softness; a life raft in a violent sea of 

devastating emotion.

 

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

 

At first he thought she was crying.  The sound 

emanating from her bedroom was high pitched and 

mournful.  But when he saw her sitting in a riot of 

destroyed wallpaper, her mouth was curled up in a 

grotesque smile.  The agony in her eyes belayed the 

mirthful sound she made; a laugh of someone 

teetering dangerously on the edge of sanity.

 

Her posture reminded him of a tradition from 

ancient times.  The grief-stricken would cover 

themselves in sackcloth and ashes.  Her sackcloth 

was a maternity dress, and her ashes were made of 

paper.

 

He thought she would be angry with him for 

intruding, but he simply couldn't leave her like this.  

Instead of trying to speak to her, he picked her up.  

He saw a plain white rocking chair in the corner and 

sat in it with her.  He knew it was a chair purchased 

in preparation for the baby; to be used as an 

instrument of comfort to a small human 

overwhelmed by emergence into a hostile world. He 

used it now for the same purpose, for a small 

woman overwhelmed by her own bewildering 

world.

 

Surprise was in store for him when she accepted his 

help.  Until now she'd seemed resentful 

of his attention to her.  She'd made it hard to know 

how to act, and physically turned away from him 

many times.  Now she turned into him, absorbing 

every offering of comfort and strength he could 

give. It was the finest moment he could remember 

having in her presence.

 

He didn't know how long they sat together, or when 

she fell asleep. And didn't care.  He could do this 

for her; he could help her at last and would do so for 

as long as she needed it. 

 

Tomorrow he could replace the paper, and help salvage

her fragile soul.

 

Her ashes would become his and her sorrow a 

melancholy bond.

 

 

************************************End