TITLE: Sad Lovers and Giants 20/20 - The Best Film He Ever Made

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.

… and thank you, Susan, for putting up with my tantrums during beta.

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 20/20 - The Best Film He Ever Made

by Mik

It's been a long time since I've been in a literal line of fire. I've been in political and emotional battle zones far more frequently than I'd like, but I've passed through them as part of the journey of my career and, more recently, my feelings for Fox Mulder, but it's been a long time since I've actually been on the awkward end of a gun.

I should have been frightened. I'm sure I was on some base level, well below my awareness, but my initial response was more weariness than wariness. For the first few moments of the crisis, I had been an observer, not a participant, and I could focus on my concern for the other passengers, but that gun pressed behind my ear made it personal, and it actually made me angry. The big picture constricted in to a minute examination of what I truly defined as crisis; our floundering, gasping love affair. What more could go wrong between us? Wasn't it bad enough that I was doing my very best to destroy our relationship? Wasn't it enough he was trying to throw himself behind bars with a murder confession? Did we really need to throw in a hijacked plane?

There's no debating that it was a selfish response, but I make no apology, it kept me sane, and possibly kept me alive. My senses were too acutely alert to him and what was happening to us to react to anything else, and thus actually missed opportunities to act foolishly.

I'm not sure what motivated Mulder to take action, although I knew all along he would. I'm not even sure what he was doing, except that caring for that girl had enabled him to get behind the first perpetrator. I had thought, for a while, he'd try some flank attack, never considering that the man who held a gun on me would see any move he made and kill him before he got close enough to do any damage. I agonized all the time he knelt there, trying to look as if he was capable of medically treating the flight attendant.

The man with the knife was railing at me, but I had no idea what he was saying. None of it registered. I was watching Mulder, and I knew the very moment that mental magic of his completed the trick. I was shocked when he stood and pronounced my name. Our status as law enforcement agents probably was best kept under wraps for as long as possible, but Mulder saw some need to reveal at least mine. For a moment I thought he was getting some sort of revenge for my stupid remarks as we boarded the plane. But Mulder wouldn't play games like that if it meant endangering other lives.

Gradually, I understood. They had mistaken me for someone else, and that someone else was in greater danger than I could be. Mulder seemed intent on keeping both of us alive, though. He exposed his own weapon. He exposed much more.

When he admitted to killing his father, on that plane full of witnesses, that's when I began to be afraid. Very afraid.

It wasn't just a matter of his confession. That could be written off as an attempt to connect with a madman. There was something else, something perhaps he intended to communicate only to me; that he not only believed himself deserving of punishment, he actually sought it. Would he let himself be martyred just to set his soul free?

From the moment of his confession time slowed into interminable increments, taunting me that this might be his last breath, or this one, or this. I could barely make myself breathe, watching him. He was hardly calm, no matter how easily he spoke. His body was tense, there was a pulse in his throat that was visible even to me, several feet away. I had to stand there, behaving as if I had nothing more to be concerned about than my own life.

He kept his hand wedged against the man with the knife, and they stood there, nose to nose and those interminable increments ticked on, one after another, as slowly and surely as a drip from a nearly dry spout.

"You're going to be punished, just like him," the hijacker told him, a solitary tear sliding down his cheek. "Do you deserve that?"

Mulder's eyes drifted toward me, and then back again. "Yes," he answered simply, and with conviction.

The man stood there a moment, stunned by his reply, then something came over him; rage or fear, and he smiled meanly. "I'll be happy to save the taxpayers the money." He moved his hand again.

Mulder jerked his hand, hard. "Not this way," he hissed. "Because it won't just be me, will it? Don't put any more blood on your boy's hands. He killed an innocent man. He's going to pay for that. And I'll pay for what I did as well. But no one else here is going to pay the price with me." There was a sickening crack muffled between their bodies and the man winced and went up on the balls of his feet. "Not even you."

"Bastard," the man howled. "Son of a bitch. Kill him. Kill him!"

The other man, largely forgotten by all of us, didn't immediately understand that he'd been given an order. Belatedly, he pulled the gun off me and lunged forward, arm raising to take aim. He shouted, sounding in as much pain as the man who had dropped the knife and was cradling his limp arm and swearing. Mulder, reacting purely on instinct, I think, threw whatever he'd been holding in his free hand. I only saw a flash of white as I thrust myself between the gun and Mulder's body.

I felt the recoil. I actually felt the heat of the discharge against my chest. I heard the delayed pop of the casing as it spent. Passengers went from stunned silence to frenzied screaming. Despite the chaos that erupted, I heard a faint 'ungh' and I turned.

Mulder's hand was against his chest, and his eyes were round in surprise as he started to drop forward. I reached for him, no longer caring about anything else, and as he sank into my arms, he groaned, "That's what happened."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Agent Scully was charging through a throng of hospital personnel, police and security, brooking no obstacles to get to me. "Well?" she demanded when she reached my side.

I was dangerously close to tears. I had been fighting them since they put Mulder on the gurney. Now that I was face to face with his partner, I was no longer sure I could contain them. "I don't know," I admitted. "He's in surgery." It had been hours. Why hadn't I heard anything by now?

Either Agent Scully didn't fully comprehend my state or she was too politic to concede it. "Sir, Director Ashcroft will be here soon, he was leaving right on my heels." She risked putting a hand on me and drawing me as far away from curious passersby as she could. "Can you tell me what happened?"

I pinched my nose, hard, to hold back unwanted emotion. "No, Agent Scully, I can't. I honestly don't know what happened. One of the suspects drew his weapon on Agent Mulder, and I attempted to stop him. Somehow ..." I stopped, remembering the awful realization that I'd helped a man shoot Mulder, "... somehow the weapon discharged anyway. Agent Mulder sustained injuries as a result."

"Yes, I understand that part, but why did a man want to shoot him?" Scully asked patiently. "We haven't received any official reports yet. There was a rumor of an attempted hijacking, but we haven't even gotten that confirmed."

Judge Fullerton probably sealed the entire incident, to prevent other people from getting ideas about throwing the lives of innocent people into the cogs of justice. There might never be a complete investigation of the events on that plane. But I knew what I knew and no one could stop me from telling it. "Two men boarded the plane intending to divert it until they could force an Appellate Court judge, who was on board, to change his ruling regarding a death sentence." I was keeping my voice low, but Agent Scully was leaning in, canny enough to know this might be the only time she'd ever hear this information, and determined not to miss a word of it.

"It wasn't a very well organized attempt," I continued flatly. "But the men were desperate enough to make them just as dangerous, or perhaps moreso. Agent Mulder was ultimately able to disable one of them by getting close enough to physically prevent him from triggering a crude explosive device he had strapped to his body. I believe ..." I paused a moment, to fully appreciate the amazing strength he had demonstrated in his own desperation to save lives, "he broke the man's arm. His accomplice then aimed his weapon at Agent Mulder, and that's when Agent Mulder was struck." I swallowed back bile. My shirt and hands were still covered in his blood. "With the plot basically unraveled and both men distracted, others were able to overcome and hold them until authorities could be brought on board."

"Are you all right, Sir?"

I looked at her sharply. I was falling apart. I might have killed him, he might be dying on the operating table while I cowered in a corridor hiding from the truth. I'd never be all right. "I'm fine. I sustained no injuries."

She gripped my hand, and saw the blood there. "Where was he shot?"

"In the chest." I demonstrated with my other hand. "In the upper left side of his chest." Dear God, I didn't even have to close my eyes to see the blood leak through his fingers as he held his hand to the wound, or to see the astonished look in his eyes as he started to fall.

Scully's mouth drew down. "An inch one way or another could mean life or death."

"He was still breathing when they put him on the Medi-Vac," I offered, hoping that her medical expertise would reassure us both that it was a good sign.

It must have been. Scully discarded the subject and started another, glancing around at all the security clustered near us. "Sir, I have to ask again. Why were you on that plane? You were warned -"

"As I believe I explained to you last night, Agent Scully," I broke in, "Agent Mulder was in no condition to be left alone. I would have been abdicating my responsibility if I'd left him on his own last night. I believe he could have harmed himself."

"Are you suggesting Mulder was suicidal?" she gasped.

I hesitated. No, that wasn't exactly what I was suggesting. "No," I said, at length. "I believe he was exhausted and overwrought, having been through a very difficult ordeal, and wasn't fully responsible for himself last night. It was in his best interest that he not be left alone."

"He hasn't been himself for weeks," Scully conceded. "I've been very worried about him ever since that seminar in Buffalo." She looked up. "You saw him there. What happened?"

What happened? Almost everything. I know the guilt was painted on my face in vivid colors. I hoped she would attribute the shake in my voice to the events of the moment rather than the guilt and grief for the past. "I noticed nothing out of the ordinary in him that weekend, aside from the natural stress of being confined in a hotel with no power, no heat and no way to leave."

"Well, something happened," she insisted, shaking her head. "He hasn't been the same since..." she let the words trail away.

I turned and followed her gaze. A man in surgical scrubs was approaching us. "Mr. Skinner?"

"Yes," I disclosed. "How is he?"

He sent a look to the woman at my side. "Is she next of kin?"

Agent Scully and I both groped for each other's hands. "No, this is his partner, Dr. Dana Scully. What is it, Doctor? How bad is it?"

He looked down at his own hands, gravely. "Let's find someplace to talk," he suggested and reached out to guide us away from traffic.

As he did, Agent Scully seemed to stumble slightly, and I dropped my arm around her to hold her up, even though I was crumbling inside. We moved away from the wall and as we did a man cut himself from the throng of security people and came toward us. A tall, imposing man with a determined march, receding hairline and wire rim glasses. "Judge Fullerton."

"I want to see him," Fullerton said, with no preamble, not even to acknowledge his identity. "I want to see the young man who saved my life."

"Come this way, please."

We were led around a corner, up a small flight of stairs, and into the ante chamber of an intensive care ward. Through the glass on the other side of the nurses' station we could make out what we hoped was Mulder's dark hair against the whiteness of a bed sheet. The doctor turned then and took us in with a mournful look. "I don't think we were able to save the use of his arm. The damage to muscle and tissue was too great to be repaired. I'm afraid this is going to end his career as an officer of the law."

"But he'll live," Agent Scully demanded. Her tone of voice made it clear there was no other viable option.

That seemed a minor consideration to the surgeon. "Oh, yes, he'll live." He flicked a hand in an economic indication of the room. "The only reason we're going to keep him in ICU overnight is that he experienced some mild arrhythmia during surgery, probably due to blood loss. It's a precaution, that's all. But he will lose most of the mobility and strength in his left arm."

Agent Scully responded with a sound that could almost be called a sob and pressed her face against my bloodied shirt.

"Is he awake?" Fullerton asked. "I want to talk to him."

"Well, I don't know -" the doctor didn't get to finish his sentence because Judge Fullerton was pushing his way into the room where Mulder lay, barechested, bandaged, tangled in tubes, his left arm in a sling. We followed as far as we could before the doctor stopped us. "One visitor at a time," he insisted.

Scully and I, still clutching at one another, but now more in relief than fear, stood outside the room and watched, straining to hear whatever transpired inside.

It wasn't hard to hear Judge Fullerton. His sonorous voice must be very effective on the bench, but it had to be very uncomfortable to patients in surrounding rooms. Mulder's replies, however, were faint, and oftimes we couldn't hear what he said. Sometimes even Fullerton had to lean in to hear them.

At one point, he drew back, smiling faintly, and looking regretful. "It doesn't matter what I think, Agent Mulder. The law in North Carolina allows for execution of juveniles who were tried as adults, and as long as that law is in place, I will uphold it." He patted the hand contained in the sling. "I think you feel the same way."

"I spoke to my friend in Virginia, Senator Dolan, this morning," he continued. "I learned a good deal about you. He says he owes you his life. So do I, now. Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all ... providing ..." he smiled again, "it's within the law?"

He leaned in again, and Mulder, clearly with effort, made a request. It appeared to be somewhat detailed in nature, and at one point, necessitated gestures. Agent Scully and I could only watch helplessly, as he struggled to point with his left hand.

Fullerton straightened, at length, looked back through the window at us, and patted Mulder again. "I'll do whatever it takes," he repeated. "I'm going now, others want to see you. You're very brave. And remarkable. Yes, remarkable." He left the bedside. "Remarkable," he repeated as he passed us.

Agent Scully didn't wait for permission. She simply darted inside as Fullerton left. I don't know what she said to him. Fullerton commanded my attention.

"Why does he feel it might require judicial intervention to keep you employed?" he asked me.

I jerked away from the window. "I beg your pardon?"

"He asked me to do whatever it took to see that you didn't lose your job. I thought you worked for the FBI."

"I do. I'm an Assistant Director." I sighed, sent another look through the window to where Agent Scully was holding his good hand tightly and speaking softly. "I disrespected a not so subtle command to return to Washington DC last night, in order to stay with Agent Mulder. If you spoke to Senator Dolan, you understand the nature of the case he was working on, and it was my opinion he should not be left alone last night." Judge Fullerton didn't need to know it was in my best interest to stay with him.

"So, you put the well-being of one of your men above your own political health?" He arched a brow at me. "It appears that you're remarkable as well."

I shrugged jerkily. "I don't know that remarkable is the word. I just didn't feel it was right to leave him alone last night. He was distraught to learn he had been unable to stop the perpetrator before the young woman was assaulted. You see, his own sister -"

"Yes, I got that history from the Senator," Fullerton cut in. "He feels things keenly, does he?"

"Some things," I granted. "This thing."

"He feels something for you, as well," he observed. "That he would ask me to make sure you are not penalized for your decision."

I felt color rushing to my face. "Well..."

"He's very obliged to you."

Obliged. That was the last word I wanted to hear. I'd been so worried wondering if he was going to live, I'd forgotten to worry if he still loved me. "And I've had reason, over the years, to be obliged to him. I guess it all balances out. Yes, Agent Scully?"

She was at the door. "He wants to see you."

I nodded to Fullerton. "Excuse me."

I couldn't go in right away. I stood there in the doorway, unsure what to say, how much to say, how much to do. I wanted to pick him up and confess everything to him; every fear, every longing, every need. But what if he no longer had any use for those things?

I approached the bed with butterflies in my stomach...no, more like a murder of crows. "Mulder?" I called softly. "You wanted me?" Please say yes. And then I can tell you I want you.

He turned his head slightly. His eyes were foggy with medication and pain, but they met mine and locked. "That's what happened. I didn't do it, did I?"

That's why he wanted to see me. I sat carefully, at the side of the bed. "Do you remember, now?"

He made a sound as he shifted to give me room. "A little. Snatches. I don't know why I threw the towel at him. It was there on the rack and I grabbed it and threw it. Krycek turned the gun on me for a moment and Dad started yelling at me." He shut his eyes tight. "And then he...and then he..."

"Easy, Son." I put my hand on his good arm. "Don't try to get it worked out right now. The only thing you need to think about now is that you're alive. And so is everyone else. You saved us all."

"I didn't save him." His voice was dull. "I tried. When Krycek told him to shut up, I tried to knock the gun out of Krycek's hand. It went off. Dad had been moving toward me, and he got hit. I didn't save him."

"But that doesn't mean you killed him," I pointed out as gently as I could.

"Same thing." He opened his eyes. "It's just you can't prosecute someone for failing to save someone else."

I couldn't help smiling to myself. "No, you can't."

"Are you ashamed of me?" he asked.

"Ashamed of you?" I was stunned he could even think in such terms. "My God, no. I'm proud of you. So very proud of you."

He looked at me oddly for a moment, then looked away. "I'm tired," he whispered.

"I know," I whispered back. I wanted so much to hold him, comfort him. I didn't know how. I didn't know if he needed that from me. I didn't know if he'd accept it from me, even if he did. So I just sat there, being ineffectual.

He fussed slightly with the sling and grimaced. "The doctor says I'm going to lose the use of my arm." Reaching up, he brushed his hair out of his eyes, catching my gaze, briefly, between his fingers. "I guess I won't go back to the Bureau."

"No, it doesn't seem likely," I admitted. I didn't want to add that I didn't think he should ever go back into the field. I'd seen first hand the damage it did to him.

He looked away. "You sound relieved."

I struggled to explain. I wanted to hide everything; my almost crippling need for him, and how much I wanted to protect him and how much I owed him. I felt like a giant in a tiny room, enormous and undeniable, knocking things over with every movement. And my feelings were even greater. "Mulder, I..."

He didn't let me put the words together. "I'm sorry, Skinner...for...everything."

"Shh. Nothing to apologize for. You just concentrate on getting out of here."

His eyes slipped shut. "Skinner," he mumbled.

"Yes, Mulder?"

He was quiet. He must have drifted off. I reached for his hand and squeezed it gently. I didn't care if anyone was listening - or looking. I leaned forward and kissed his forehead. "I love you," I whispered.

I slid off the bed and turned around. Agent Scully and Judge Fullerton were nowhere around.

"Promise?"

His voice was thick and sleepy, and yet strangely wistful. I didn't look back. I couldn't. "I promise."

"Forever?"

Oh, just try and stop me. "Forever."

"No matter what?"

I started grinning. I couldn't help it. "No matter what."

"You won't send me away again?"

The grin faded. I could see his reflection in the window. He was staring at me intently. I met his eyes in the reflection. "I can't live without you. If I sent you away, I'd just have to go out and bring you back."

He was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was much stronger, and tinged with what might almost be called laughter. "Then get your ass back here and kiss me like you mean it."

So, I did.

Because I did.

And still do.

END