by Josan
He rested his forehead against the door. Exhausted. Heart-weary.
The hostage incident was over.
As senior official in charge, it had been his duty to inspect the
mountain cabin down the road when the crisis was over, to
see to the bodies being bagged.
To inform distraught parents as to the contents of two of the bags.
To suggest that neither be opened in their presence,
that closed caskets should be considered.
To have obscenities yelled at him by a mother who would never hold
her children again. To be blamed by a father for the
death of his children.
To inform another set of parents of the death of their son, a son
they accused the system, through him, of failing.
To console his negotiator, a woman with children of her own.
To thank the field agents, the local and state cops for their help.
To try and abate their feelings of helplessness, to
recognize the long hours they had put in to trying to resolve this
situation without bloodshed.
Now, he had nothing left. Not even the energy to disrobe, to get rid
of the smell of frustration, fear, horror that permeated
his clothes.
He didn't even have the energy to hear the water running in the tub.
"Can you turn around?"
The voice drew him to try. Krycek.
He rested the back of his head on the door, too tired to try and
straighten up. Too tired even to be surprised that Alex
Krycek had shown up here in his motel cabin, in what was basically a
cross-roads, in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Krycek stripped him quickly, efficiently. He was getting much more
competent with that one hand.
He didn't speak, sensing that Skinner was beyond speech. He left him
there for the time it took to go and turn off the taps
in the tub. A shower would have been easier to organize, but the cabin
didn't come with one. Went back and manoeuvred
the man into the bathroom.
The water in the tub was hot, not unbearably so. Skinner knew he
would fall asleep if he stayed in for any length of time.
Then found he really didn't care.
Krycek took off his sweater to wash Skinner. The man's exhaustion was
written on his face. His eyes were bruises of
purple in a drawn face. He had never seen Skinner with stubble other
than end-of-the-day stuff. He figured the
beginnings of the beard represented the number of days the man had done
with either little or no sleep.
He knew, from the media reports, that Billy Lee had kidnapped the
Dawson twins a week ago, had been traced to the cabin
three days ago. After that, there had been a news blackout.
Krycek wasn't sure what it was that had made him check who was senior
officer. Or why, the longer the crisis went on, he
felt it necessary to get here. It wasn't as though he could stand by the
man in the field, or help with negotiations. He just
felt that he had to come, and for once in his life, he put his needs
before his orders from the Consortium.
He'd been with the FBI long enough to know what a senior officer's
duties were. He had heard the mother screaming, the
father cursing just like everyone else here at the motel which had been
designated crisis centre. Had seen, from behind the
curtains in the window of this room, Skinner move on to the van
belonging to the kidnapper's parents. Had seen Skinner
move among the men, console a silently crying woman. Had seen him stand
by the ambulances that took the bodies away.
He knew no one was going to come in and check on Skinner. It wasn't
their job.
Skinner's skin had been cold when he'd undressed him. Now the heat
was working and his body was warming up. He
was also slipping down into the water.
Krycek pinched him awake. "Come on, Walter. Get up." It was like
trying to get a gigantic bag of flour to stay upright.
By the time he'd succeeded, he was almost as wet as Skinner.
He braced Skinner's hands against the bathroom door, dried him down
quickly, propped him up again and got him out
into the bedroom. After the tub, it was relatively easy to get the man
into bed.
Krycek went to put some order in the bathroom, hung his wet jeans
over the towel rack, checked to make sure the outer
door was locked, even shoved a chair under the door knob to insure that
no one would come in and take them by surprise.
He dozed rather than slept so that when the nightmare started, he had
no trouble waking Skinner up.
"Walter. It's over. Let it go. You did everything that you could.
It's not your fault."
Skinner thought that Krycek was part of the dream. Suddenly dawned on
him that the man was real, was really here.
"Alex? What are you doing here?" He tilted his head back to look into
the face of this man who disappeared and
reappeared in his life.
"Came to see how you were doing." He kept his voice soft.
"Not well." Skinner closed his eyes. "I lost them, all three of
them."
"No. You don't take that kind of responsibility onto yourself. You
didn't lose anyone, Walter. They weren't yours to lose.
Their karma was bad, their time was up, God willed it. Whatever shit it
is that you want to blame it on, but not you."
Skinner shook his head, silently disagreeing.
"You did your job. You got the best people in. I recognized Hennesey
down there. Are you trying to tell me that she didn't
do her best to get those kids out of there? Is that what you told her?"
Skinner shrugged, dispirited. "There had to be a key somewhere.
Something I missed."
"Fucking shit, Walter." Krycek's anger got through to Skinner. He
looked at the man, more alert this time. "You of all
people should know that there are asshole- subhumans in this world. You
dealt with enough of them in VCU. You've read
enough of Mulder's reports to know that there are things in this world
that aren't human in human form. Billy Lee was
some amoral psychotic punk who got his jollies kidnapping and killing a
couple of kids..."
"He tortured them." Skinner's voice interrupted Krycek's anger. He
took a deep breath. "They started out as identical
twins and he tortured them in identical ways.
"Then when he was all done, because they still weren't quite dead
yet, he rammed his silenced gun up their asses and fired.
"He was seventeen years old and his parents don't understand how he
could have hurt anyone because he was such a
sweet little boy."
Krycek hadn't move all the time Skinner was voiding. Now he grabbed
Skinner's chin. Held it tightly. "He was a monster.
The kids are better off dead." Skinner made a growling sound in the back
of his throat. "What? Would you have
preferred the kids to live? Like that? Blind. Maimed. Emasculated. Is
that what you would have wanted for them, Skinner?
Them alive so that you wouldn't feel like you'd lost your little battle
with Billy Lee?"
"No!" Skinner pulled his chin out of Krycek's hand, pulled back from
Krycek himself.
"Then what the fuck have you got to feel guilty about? You did your
best. Your team did its best. You tried. The fact that
you didn't get the kids out has nothing to do with you. It has to do
with a monster who wasn't going to come out of there
alive no matter what anybody did."
Skinner got out of the bed, was staggering on his feet.
Krycek joined him, stood close behind him, not touching him. "If you
weren't so exhausted, if you had gotten some sleep
in the last few days, if you hadn't talked to those people, the parents,
you would know that you had done your best. That
you aren't responsible for what happened in that cabin any more than
you're responsible for Billy Lee."
He touched Skinner's shoulder then, had his hand shaken off. Skinner
took a step further away from him. "You don't
understand. If we'd found them earlier..."
Krycek was used to rejection. Found that Skinner's was more painful
than he wanted to admit. He went to find his clothes,
dressed.
Hesitating and then not touching for fear of further rejection,
Krycek passed Skinner on his way to the door. "Sorry. I
shouldn't have come. I thought maybe I could help." He stood at the
door, his back to Skinner. "Instead, I seem to have
made things worse."
He moved the chair from under the knob, began opening the door, ready
to slip out.
"Alex." Skinner's voice was hoarse with pain.
Krycek stayed for a moment. Felt a hand touch his shoulder. He
turned, back against the door. Skinner rested his head
against Krycek's shoulder. As the first sob broke through him, he began
sliding to the floor.
Krycek tried to hold him up, ended up on the floor with him. Cradling
him. Listening to him empty himself of the grief of
the situation.
Sometime before dawn he got Skinner into bed. He tucked the blankets
around the sleeping man. Bent and kissed him on
the temple.
Slipped away.
This Being the Third
t was
relatively early in the evening when Skinner shut the motel's
cabin door behind him.
Had seen his face when he turned to walk over to the cabin assigned to
him. Had even seen one of the agents stop another
from following him.
He finished stripping, slid into the bed next to this man who had drawn
him here. Skinner was sleeping fitfully. Krycek
pulled him closer, snaked his arm under Skinner's arm to around his
back, anchoring him solidly against him.
"Then he blew his brains out and died instantly. We found his jeans
soaking wet with semen. Caked with it. All the time
he was carving them up, he was coming.
