TITLE: Dendrite - Chapter Four - Vital Signs

NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. Not suitable for children, Baptists or Republicans.

SUMMARY: First time M/Sk. Do you need any more information? Well, I guess you do. I know what this story appears to be…but please, please bear with me. It's gonna' be okay. They promised.

ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Okay...hmmm...no specific spoilers for specific eps. Back in the good old days when Skinner was still their boss, nothing had been burnt and no one's best friends had died needlessly for the sake of ratings or to jump sharks.
KEYWORDS: story slash angst Mulder Skinner NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I personally think Chris Carter, et al, should just give them to me, since they're not using them anymore, and anyway, I treat them much, much better, but there you are.

Author's notes: See Chapter One for assorted notes, credits and ramblings. They will be omitted henceforth to save virtual trees.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Dendrite - Chapter Four - Vital Signs

by Mik

My jaw was beginning to ache...a feeling so familiar as to be almost heartbreaking. I know that no one else, except possibly the young woman beside me, would understand that I actually welcomed the pain. No one could put me on edge the way he could, no one could make me fight all my impulses and struggle with regulations and expectations. It was against all expectations for his superior to weep openly at his funeral, and therefore I maintained that regulation expression.

As we approached the waiting car, his mother detached herself from a cluster of official condolers, and approached Agent Scully. A small figure made even smaller by a swath of funereal crepe, she seemed to pin his partner to the door of the car without a word, a gesture. Agent Scully seemed to recoil without moving or scowling. She actually managed more kind, warm words even though her first offering had been dismissed before the graveside service. I hadn't been aware of it, but Mrs. Mulder had wanted him buried next to his father, and Agent Scully had actively opposed it. Had I known, I would probably have aided my agent in that fight. There was something about the entire ritual which had felt wrong, and inappropriate. I could almost feel him beside me, scowling, feeling his righteous indignation flowing over the gathering.

I don't know what she said to Agent Scully. I wanted to listen. I wanted to stand by, be supportive if only in silence, but something in me held back, something in me was unwilling to get close to that woman. It was almost as if I dreaded the smell of mothballs and I expected her to reek of them, or I thought she might say something to suggest I could have saved him. Or maybe I just thought I could have, and I didn't want her to see my own sense of failure.

She spoke her piece to Agent Scully, and whatever it was, it pricked glitter in her eyes. They sparkled dangerously and she looked away sharply. Then Mrs. Mulder turned to me and offered a tiny hand in a tiny, crepe glove. "Mr. Skinner, you never appreciated him." Her voice was not grief-raw nor weak. It was soft, yes, but strong and full of conviction. "You had an opportunity, and you failed to take it." She raised her head and for a moment the veil of her hat floated upward so that our eyes met. She started to say more, but stopped, her lips parted, her breath catching audibly. She peered up at me, her hand drawing back. She glanced to the ground and then back to me. "Yes," she said as if I had spoken. "Good afternoon."

Agent Scully and I pulled together and watched her walk away, unpinning her hat and unwrapping the veil. "What did she say to you, Sir?" Agent Scully asked.

"That I wasted an opportunity," I said, and indicated to the young man waiting at our car that he should open the door for her.

She tipped her head up and managed to smile despite her downturned lips. "She said exactly the same thing to me."

I looked back to the gravesite, now abandoned by everyone but those whose job it was to repair the wound in the earth, and make the final, tidy gestures of Agent Fox Mulder's life. "This didn't seem right." I followed her into the car.

"No," she agreed, reaching for her safety belt as we pulled away from the curb. "Through the entire service I had this eerie feeling that he was standing next to me." What little color had been in her face seemed to drain away and she laughed weakly. "I know that sounds very Mulderish, but Mulder wouldn't miss his funeral, if he could have come. He felt our need to bury our loved ones in the ground, like treasure, was morbid."

I shrugged faintly. "It is, in a way."

"He...he felt that the human body was just like all other biodegradable products and should be allowed to decay naturally and give back to the soil...like...like..."

"Compost."

"Yes." She sniffed a little and dug into her bag.

I produced my handkerchief for her. "But surely he could understand and respect our need to revere our loved ones in some manner."

"He didn't think a cemetery was conducive to reverence, only to feeding the death industry." She rubbed at her nose. "Makes sense, if you knew Mulder. The only person he ever loved and lost had no burial, so he couldn't understand. For him, his sister was always still in the world."

"I knew Mu-Agent Mulder." I was stung by the implication. "I knew about his sister."

"Then you understand," she responded, her eyes still fixed on the green and marble and synthetic sense of peace outside her window. Her head seemed to shudder on her shoulders. "I can't shake this...this...feeling."

"That he's here?" I prompted.

She pointed with the hand that held my handkerchief to the space between us. "Right here."

When I turned to look at her, just for a moment, not even a moment, his profile hovered between us like a veil. "Yes," I said, letting the s draw out harshly, "I know what you mean."

She still didn't look back at me. I almost believed she was afraid if she turned she would see him, as well. "If Mulder were here, he'd believe it." She laughed softly, but with a voice heavy with tears. "If Mulder were...here..."

I let my hand pierce that veil to capture her hand and hold it. It was only my imagination, I told myself, that the air between us was warmer than the rest of the car. "It ought to be cold," I mumbled.

She looked at me then. "What?" She pulled her hand away self-consciously and rubbed at her nose again. "What ought to be cold?"

I put my hand back on the wheel. "Nothing." There was a warm place there between us. I felt it. "Must have been the sunlight," I decided aloud.

"Sir?" She sounded a bit alarmed.

"Nothing," I repeated. "Would you like some coffee somewhere?"

"No." She looked at her watch. "No, thank you. It's late. I...have things..."

"Yes," I let her off the hook as quickly as she had tried to wriggle away. "Yes, of course. It's been a trying day." Tentatively, I put my hand on the seat between us. Still warm. Something about it made me...smile. Odd as that sounds, I felt not quite happy, but definitely amused. It was so out of place in the coldness inside me. Mulder would have appreciated it. Mulder, who loved the unexplained, the paranormal, those precious, precious X-Files of his, would have loved this sneaking sensation of warmth that shouldn't be there. He would have poked and prodded and explored. He probably would have torn the interior of the car apart looking for proof of the improvable. And he would have been amused that I felt it as well.

I put my hand back on the wheel. "A very trying day."

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By the time the elevator doors opened on my floor, I wasn't feeling so amused. I felt cold and shaky. I felt as if my strength was flowing out of me. I told myself it was grief. I told myself I was picking up a bit of a cold. I told myself a stiff drink and a soft pillow were exactly what I needed. Despite all the promises I made myself, I could barely force my legs down the corridor to my door. The keys weighed too heavily in my hand, my fingers trembled uncontrollably as I tried to fit them in the lock. My head ached and spun. Finally, I leaned against the door, pressing my forehead to the cool veneer, and let it all rush out of me.

After a moment, the faintness passed and I was able to unlock and open my door with ease. I entered, shrugging out of my coat. I perused my mail, hung up my coat, listened to my voice mail...more condolences, more instructions from the brass, telemarketers offering 'the chance of a lifetime'. I didn't want to think about lifetimes. Because sometimes a lifetime just isn't as long as it ought to be.

At the bar I poured a fistful of scotch into a glass, and my hand quivered a little as I lifted it to my lips. The smell wasn't as warm and inviting as it usually was. I gulped it down anyway, almost in defiance, and gasped, coughed and staggered backward into a chair. Something in my head was screaming, 'What the hell are you trying to do?' and I didn't have an answer. At least not an answer I wanted to own.

Tears rushed out of my eyes…not tears of grief, no, those were locked up and stored away. These were the physiological response to unexpected stimulus…like the tears that rush to one's eyes after a yawn, or a heavy cough, or…or…a first drink.

I sat up and scrubbed the wetness from my face with my sleeves. "Stupid," I announced. "Stupid," I repeated with more force. I'm not sure why, but at that moment I felt I had to defend my reactions. To me? I don't know. To God? To Mulder? Jumping to my feet, I moved back to the bar despite some great internal resistance. "It's been a bad day," I said to myself/God/Mulder, "I need to get drunk."

Still, the bottle weighed more than it should have, almost more than I could lift with a hand exhausted by spending the day clenched into a fist of protest. It shook and splattered as I tried to aim toward the open, thirsty mouth of the glass. But I was resolved, and I got more into the glass than onto the bar, so I was the victor. I took my time with this one, sipping slowly, and save an occasional shudder, it went down smoothly and soothingly.

And it poured easier the third time. Slid down my gullet like well waxed skis on a fine powder of fire. I filled the glass a fourth time and ambled back to my favorite chair, settling down, letting my head fall back. One of my last thoughts was that I hadn't gotten drunk to forget things for a long time.

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"People, move to the center of the quad. Walk, do not run, to the center of the quad. I repeat, for your safety, walk, do not run, to the center of the quad."

I woke with a jerk. The words were still echoing in my ears even as my breathing slowed to normal. For the first time since it happened, I let myself hold on to the dream, and remember. Remember Mulder.

He sounded so calm…even with certain death at his back. Death that rose up behind him like a black sea, roaring and crashing and swallowing him whole. He must have known it was there. There was that...everyone called it spookiness...about him that would have shouted 'Look out! You're about to die!' but he was too busy trying to save other lives.

I never thought of Mulder as a hero. He was a coward, in the intelligent sense of the word. Some men run toward death. Some fear the quiet death and would rather cut their allotted time short to have that poetic blaze of glory. Mulder ran the opposite way because he believed that he could keep others from untimely ends. It wasn't a God complex. Mulder didn't believe in God. Nor was he falsely modest. He simply recognized facts that could prevent needless deaths. He could see evil in men and stop them before they let that evil walk abroad. He could walk the path evil had walked and contain it. And he saved lives. There are cowardly heroes and heroic cowards. Mulder fell into the latter category, right to the end.

How ironic that when the end came, it snuck up on him from behind. In the end, Death was the coward.

The whiskey in my gut swirled ominously. I hadn't eaten in days and to drink on an empty stomach was foolhardy. I weighed the pros and cons of sitting there until the room stopped tilting, or finding a way to pull myself out of the chair and lumber toward the toilet. After applying the Benjamin Franklin test to the issue, I voted for sitting still. What was going to happen would happen, no sense risking a fall in the process.

The internal debate made my head ache, and I let my head fall back against the chair again, wondering as I drifted back toward darkness who the hell I was arguing with.

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His hand still trembled. The blood had been cleaned away. His hand had been placed against what was left of his chest. There was a sickening white blue to his skin. But his fingers quivered, his forefinger lifting up in a charade of accusation, pointing toward me. And then he opened his eyes.

I woke, vomiting violently, all over myself, my chair, the floor.

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Cleaning used whiskey and bile from white carpet gave me a focus I hadn't had in days. I felt more myself on my knees, in yellow rubber gloves tugged up high on my forearms, a bucket and brush at my side than I had during the procedures and protocols of death. This, vile as it was, was a symbol of life, of the body still functioning, still pulsing with blood, with signals from the brain, the dendrite receiving and directing to the synaptic input of the neuron.

My head was surprisingly clear; no spinning, no throbbing, no dark imaginings. I almost felt like whistling as I finished the miserable task. Maybe I needed this symbolic purge to rid myself of the guilt and horror I'd carried for days. That sounds like something Mulder would say, I thought, and that fragile sense of lightness began to take on weight again. Heavy in my chest, I finished and carried things away.

Stripping out of my stained and stinking shirt, I climbed the stairs toward the nirvana promised in a long, hot shower. I wanted to wash away the misery that still clung to me like dust on sweat. I wanted to cleanse myself of all that lingered from the last few days. I wanted to start my life over in steamy, soapy freshness.

At the landing, I shed my soiled trousers and shorts, and dumped them in a pile with my ruined shirt and tie. I'd worry about cufflinks and cash later. One hand pressed at the door frame while I peeled off my socks, that heaviness returned, this time the sense of not being alone was more pronounced. I shook it off and added the socks to the rest of the laundry and stepped into my room.

And there he was. Sitting on my bed with a knowing smirk, dressed and scrubbed and looking as if he'd just put an apple on the teacher's desk. And...all in one piece. "Gee...you shouldn't have," he said, barely containing a note of something like glee.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Yes, that is the stupidest question in the history of human communication, but it was the only one I was capable of formatting as my brain reeled from a shock of atomic proportions.

The smirk vanished. That worried puppy frown creased his brow and his eyes dropped to the carpet, looking for an answer. "I...I don't know." He put a hand over that crease. "To be totally honest, I've been a bit confused the last few days. A lot of things are happening that don't make sense." He chuckled. "Not the least of which is being in my boss' bedroom while he gets nekkid." His hand dropped to his chest. "I mean, I'm flattered and everything, but-"

"Get out." I grabbed the front of his shirt, and the lapel of his jacket and dragged him up from the bed. "Get the hell out of here. Go back to...to wherever it is you're supposed to be." I stumbled toward the landing, pushing him backward. It was only then that I realized I was touching something more solid than a hallucination or...or God-or Mulder-help me...a ghost. I pushed. "Get OUT!"

His face crumbled into astonishment and then fear as he tumbled backward on the stairs, banging and bumping, groaning and thumping until he landed in a noiseless heap on the travertine floor below.

And then I said the second most stupid thing in the history of human communication. "Oh, my God, I've killed him."

End 04