TITLE: Sad Lovers and Giants 19/? - Toy Plane in a Southern Sky

NAME: Mik
E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com
CATEGORY: M/Sk
RATING: NC-17. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.
SUMMARY: A blizzard. A power cut. Finding their way in darkness.
ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.
FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist.
TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: Nnnnnnnnnope.
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'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything. But when I become king...

Author's notes: Sad Lovers and Giants, the two things hardest to conceal.

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.

Sad Lovers and Giants 19/? - Toy Plane in a Southern Sky

by Mik

You know, one would think that climbing down into the pit of mental excrement that was a pedophile, and climbing out with fecal matter clinging to your memories, confirming the fear that you were raped as a child, and that you killed your own father because of it, would qualify as probably the worst day of your life. But, no...

I would have to say, speaking objectively, that the next day was twice as bad, and subjectively, I'd go so far as to say a thousand times, a million times, a googol times as bad. I began the day with the certainty that all those things I'd learned about myself the day before were realities and not just some horrible nightmare I'd carried off from a crime scene like toilet paper on my shoe. And I had to meet the eyes of the man I felt more for than any other person since my sister, or possibly Scully, knowing that he knew everything.

He told me not to surrender to it so easily. That there were people to talk to, things to be done before I held my wrists out for the cuffs. And even if all I said did prove true, he was going to stay beside me, despite my disclosures.

Disclosure. Interesting word. More apt than I realized. People always speak of seeking closure; of shutting a door, of sealing a tomb. But disclosure is quite the opposite. I felt as if there was no longer a door to shut out the evils in my life, that the grave had been ripped open, and all its putrescence and worms had been revealed.

To me.

To him.

And it just got worse from there. Try as he might to hide it from me, I knew he had basically been given the five minute warning on his career for coming down to rescue me from the pit swallowing me alive. He tried to be Skinneristic about it; strong and stoic, pish-tushing my fears like the father who sees the claws of the monster under the bed and still wants his child to go to sleep, but he couldn't fool me. Not only had I fallen into the chamber pot, I'd pulled him down with me.

The thing about Skinner that I learned that morning was that he doesn't like getting his hands dirty after all. When we boarded that cigar tube with rubber band propellers, and he had to look into the faces of all his peers, he couldn't bring himself to admit that he'd touched something as flawed and messy as me. He found another place to sit.

So, what would make a morning like that just perfect? Sitting wedged between a fussy baby and a priest who was shuffling mass cards like a demented dealer in Las Vegas? Feeling as if I'd worn the same clothes for a week and they were threatening to become part of my epidermis? Needing coffee so bad I was actually looking forward to that death trap attempting to get airborne so I could get my hands around a styro cup of lukewarm instant Folgers? No, what I really needed to make that day complete was a terrorist hijacking. And guess what ...

I'm not sure what it was that first caught my attention. He seemed too big and bulky and ungainly for the sharply tailored suit and overcoat. Moreover, he seemed uncomfortable in it, as if he was out of his own skin. He was taking steps carefully, his arms tight to his sides, holding something more than himself together. Once inside, his eyes darted over the cabin, not lighting on empty seats, but on faces, searching. My skin started to prickle.

He wasn't the typical terrorist. 'Terrorist' has become associated with Middle Eastern religious zealots, but anyone who means to cause harm to innocents for any cause no matter how righteous is a terrorist. The very definition of terrorist is a radical who employs terror as a political weapon. He didn't look radical. He looked scared. But resolved. The most dangerous kind.

I shifted in my seat enough to catch Skinner in the farthest point of my field of vision. He'd seen it as well, and was sitting up, looking alert. The way the suspect was behaving suggested to me he was waiting for a signal or sign from someone else on board, which meant there was more than one person involved, and I tried to pass that message on to Skinner as surreptitiously as possible.

The flight attendant really started it. She approached him, trying to get him into a seat. I'm not all that sure that things were supposed to start that soon, because there was no concerted response. I'm guessing he panicked when she got close to him. Then she panicked. And then her colleague screamed and that really started a panic. People all over the cabin were screaming and throwing things and climbing over their seats. He didn't like it. He was getting a very dangerous look in his eye.

When I stood up to try and get people to shut up before they pushed him over his very narrow and rapidly crumbling edge, I spotted the other one. Right behind Skinner. The two of them were a pair, and didn't even know it. Both of them at the edges of their seats, both of them trying to oh, so carefully go for their weapons. Only ... the one in back got to his first. And he put it at the back of Skinner's head. Now. Now my day was a perfect disaster.

I'll give Skinner credit. He wasn't betraying a thing. The minute he knew there was a gun aimed at his grey matter, he never let his eyes stray toward mine. When he was told to stand, he did, slowly, hands just ahead of him, so as not to give away the location of his weapon or his badge. The man who escorted him down the aisle didn't say a word, just communicated by rough thrusts of the gun against Skinner's hairline. As the two of them moved out into the aisle, there was another, smaller scale panic, consisting mostly of whimpers and 'Oh, my God's but it was quelled pretty quickly by a look from the one at the front of the cabin.

The one bringing Skinner up to the party looked more like a typical terrorist; wild-eyed and angry, in jeans and a flannel shirt. I had a feeling he worked at a Starbucks somewhere on the west coast before he got this hair up his ass, whatever it was. Yet he said nothing. Just kept his eyes on his partner and kept the gun aimed at Skinner's thought processes, his body absolutely vibrating with emotion. That he was struggling to contain himself scared me. He was like a water balloon; overfull and ready to burst, he was just one pindrop away from exploding all over everything.

His counterpart waited until Skinner was just within arm's reach and then spat, "You son of a bitch!" and backhanded him with the fist holding the knife.

My body tried to lurch forward in protest even as my reason kept me pinned into the chair.

Skinner didn't respond. In fact, he almost appeared to simply move his head away from an annoying gnat. Only a tiny trickle of red at the corner of his mouth revealed that he'd been struck. He kept his expression even, not letting the fear or contempt that must surely be whirling in him to show.

That infuriated the man who held the flight attendant. For some reason, I was calling him Joe, because he looked like the average Joe, someone who just didn't belong where he was. Joe showed his anger by yanking on the flight attendant's requisite long blond hair and whirled her toward the cockpit door. "Open it," he rasped.

I didn't hear what she said but I can guess she told him she couldn't, because he shook her hard by the hair and it made her cry out. "Do it. Do it now, or I'll cut your tongue out through your throat."

Next to me, the priest raised a hand. "A little compassion, man," he said. "These are trying times for all -"

"I'd shut up, if I were you," the man with the gun suggested in a breathless voice that sounded seconds away from hysteric giggling.

The priest flicked his tongue over his lips, debating whether God would want him to say more, and decided God felt silence was the better part of valor.

The flight attendant was screaming and banging on the door. I was surprised that even this bucket had a new security door between the cockpit and the cabin, and either the pilots were deaf, or they knew precisely what was going on, and weren't budging.

"You'd better open this fucking door," Joe raged. "You know what can happen out here. You've read newspapers."

The flight attendant was screaming. The baby next to me decided to take up harmony.

Joe's pal whirled toward our row of seats, his gun still pressed against Skinner's head. "It would take me two seconds to shut him up," he warned.

The woman began to cry, and rock the baby desperately. I put a hand on her wrist and squeezed. Until Joe produced another gun or disposed of the girl he was holding, no one was going to shoot the baby. They wouldn't take the gun off Skinner long enough.

When it became clear that Joe wasn't going to gain admittance to the cockpit, he slammed the flight attendant against the door so viciously that she slid to the floor, leaving a trail of red much bigger than the one on Skinner's lip. The woman next to me cried harder and hugged her child tight to her breast. A man two rows back flung himself forward, emptying his stomach on the back of the chair ahead of him.

I couldn't sit still anymore. I stood and moved toward the crumpled figure against the cockpit door. Joe moved in front of me, brandishing the knife almost spear like. "Just let me see if she's alive," I said, holding my hands up in as nonthreatening a manner as I could manage, which was a challenge when I wanted my hands around his throat, squeezing until his eyes bulged out of their sockets.

"You want to be next?"

"No. But just let me -"

"Are you a doctor?"

I didn't even blink. "Yes." Well, I am.

He jerked his head and lowered the knife. "Don't be stupid, Doc."

"No worries," I promised, dropping to my knees in front of the girl. I had no idea what to do for her, but I had to at least make it look as if I knew what I was doing. I fumbled for her wrist and tried to find a pulse. There was a tiny fluttering under my fingers but I didn't know what that meant other than that her heart was still functioning at some level. "I'm going to reach into my pocket and get my flashlight, okay?" I called over my shoulder.

I felt the steel of his blade on my cheek. "Why?" Joe demanded, over the baby's cries, which had gotten louder.

"I need to check for...brain damage. Look, you can get it for me, if you'd rather." I stood slowly and indicated the correct pocket. The other guy was looking at the baby with increasing twitchiness.

Joe moved in and reached. There was an unmistakable scent of freshly unwound electrical wire and duct tape. He had a bomb under that expensive trench coat. Was he eager to use it? "Let the lady with the baby move to the back of the cabin," I asked as he fumbled in my pocket. "You don't want to kill a baby, do you?" I asked him quietly. "That's not what this is about."

He jerked the flashlight from my pocket and shoved it into my hands. "You." He pointed the knife. "Move. Back there. And shut that kid up, or I will."

So the answer was no. He didn't want to use it. We just might be able to talk our way out of this. I opened one of the girl's eyes with my thumb and flicked my flashlight over it, the way I'd seen Scully do a hundred times. The pale blue iris squeezed shut like an angry fist. I barely managed not to sigh in relief. So far, we had no body count. I wondered how long we could keep it that way. "I have to stop this bleeding," I called. "Give me something. A shirt, a tie, a towel ... something."

A towel was tossed at my head. I folded it and began to press it against a really ugly abrasion on the girl's scalp. But I wasn't seeing the cut, the blood, the towel, or the girl. I was trying to see what was going to happen. There was a piece to this I didn't yet perceive. What was it? I couldn't understand why the other guy hadn't taken Skinner's gun away from him. He knew it was there. He must have seen Skinner go for it, why else would he have revealed himself and taken Skinner hostage?

Evidently, whatever I was doing was convincing because Joe lost interest in me and turned back to Skinner. "You murdering bastard!" he yelled and hit Skinner again. "You've got one chance. Just one chance. And then everybody dies." He waved the knife around. "Everybody. You won't just be killing him. You'll be killing all of us."

Skinner's voice was far calmer than mine would have been if our situations had been reversed. "What is it you think I can do?" he asked as if he truly wanted to know.

"I don't think...I know. You can get on that radio in there and have someone stop it. Or," he pressed the knife to Skinner's throat, "do you really believe in it that much?"

I rocked back on my heels, twisting the towel in my hands, as the phenomena began to coagulate like the blood on the flight attendant's brow. They mistook Skinner for someone else. Who the hell else was on this plane? Who else could motivate this kind of reckless, desperate act? Who was going to kill ... Son of a bitch! Local headlines leapt up at me. "You've got the wrong man," I asserted, wiping blood from my hands.

Joe was ignoring me. He was raging at Skinner.

I stood. Slowly. Hoping no one had noticed me palming my own gun. "That's not Judge Fullerton."

Joe turned to me. One hand still held the knife toward Skinner, but one hand was creeping toward his coat. I moved in on him. Got in his space. "You've got the wrong guy."

Joe never took his eyes off me. Never took his hand off his coat. "Check him," he grunted.

"His name's Skinner," I put in before his friend tried to make a choice between holding the gun on him or frisking a dead man. "Walter Skinner. He works for the FBI. I'll grant you he looks a lot like the judge who sentenced your son to death, but it's not him. I don't think Fullerton's even on the plane." Actually I knew exactly where he was. He was the one who'd left breakfast on his neighbor's shoes.

"We got the wrong guy." The hysteria was welling in Mr. Tall Latte's voice. "What are we going to do? We got the wrong guy."

Joe's eyes had widened in alarm and disbelief but now they narrowed and he looked into my eyes and said, "Kill him."

I had to move. "Don't be stupid." I thrust my hand between his hand and his coat, and pressed my gun hard enough so there was no mistaking what I was holding. "Is this the way you want to do this? It won't change anything, you know. Killing innocent people is not going to encourage them to show clemency on your son."

"He's only seventeen fucking years old. They've got no fucking right to kill him." There were tears in Joe's eyes, but there was no grief in his voice, only rage.

There was no point in debating laws and penalties with him. "And killing us isn't going to stop them. Might just speed up the process. Is that what you want to be the last thing you do for him?" I pressed a little harder. "Is it?"

One tear spilled over and ran down his ruddy cheek. "No one has to die if they just turn him loose."

I smiled sadly at him. "You know they won't do that. They can't do that. Right or wrong, good or bad, we've got laws in this country. If we break them, we have to pay the price. Breaking more laws isn't going to stop that."

He was trembling now. "What do you know about it? Have you ever killed anyone?"

I didn't let my gaze waver. "Yes," I told him.

He wasn't expecting that response. For a moment he was just curious. "You did? Who?"

"My father." There. I said it out loud for someone else to hear, someone who wouldn't move planets to protect me.

"You're not punished," he sneered. "You're free to walk around, you carry a gun. The laws -"

"Not for long. How do you think I know who he is?" I tipped my head in Skinner's direction. "He's taking me back to Washington D.C. so I can turn myself in."

Joe was staring at me as if I was the madman. "What's the point?" he argued. "Don't you know you're going to be punished, like him? Do you deserve that?"

I let my eyes flicker toward Skinner's for a fraction of a moment. He was watching me, a strange almost imploring look on his face. I stood up straight and drew a deep breath before I met Joe's eyes again. "Yes."

End 19