Title: Echoes

Author: Belladonna

Category: XF, Doggett/Skinner

Rating: R (I guess)

Summary: John thinks about his past and the present.

Archive: Basement, XFMU, FSHA, all others ask.

Feedback: Pretty please? I'm new to this...

Spoilers: Up to "This Is Not Happening", as well as about Doggett's son.

Disclaimer: They belong to CC and company, not me. More's the pity.

Author's Notes: Written for a challenge on the DoggettSlash list. Use the opening line: "There was
something in his eyes that said he was broken.". Fair warning, I think this might be two fics all tangled
together...

Echoes
by Belladonna

There was something in his eyes that said he was broken. John knew that look well, after all; he’d
faced it in his own mirror for years. But it was strange to see it on Walter Skinner, even as they
stood next to Fox Mulder’s body. In fact, for a moment John was sure that Skinner had been in as much
pain as Scully was. But then Skinner had wiped his glasses and put them back on, hiding his expressive
eyes behind glass and behind his Assistant Director look again.

But, now, hours later, in his hotel room Skinner looked broken again. he’d finally dropped the front
he’d put up for Scully, the mantle of calm he’d adopted dropping away as soon as John had closed the
door behind them.

John remembered another night very much like this one; the first night after he’d looked down on his poor
Luke in that field. That night there were four of them. John, Barbara, Monica and Barb's sister Janet.
There were four tonight too. Skinner, John, Monica and Scully. Different, but the same. Two people
broken, two unable to help.

Skinner had that look now that John had worn that whole night. And in response, John could feel his own
face twisting into strange look that Monica had wore at his side, sympathy, fear and pain all tangled
together.

Monica had stayed at his side that night; for the whole night, never leaving him. she’d stayed because
she loved him. And that’s why he stayed with Skinner now. she’d never spoken that night, not when the
doctors had to sedate Barbara and take her to the hospital, Janet at her side. She hadn’t even said
anything when John put his fist through the wall in the tiny interrogation room at the police station. And now, in a painful echo of that, Dana Scully was sedated, sleeping off some of her stress and grief of
the last two days with Monica sitting quietly at her side in Scully's hotel room. And it was John was sat
quietly at Skinner's grief stricken side. Skinner hadn’t been his father, but he had been his friend,
and that lack of a familial bond did not lessen the grief. So John tried to do as Monica had done,
sitting quietly as he watched Walter Skinner pace, waiting for the explosion he knew would eventually
come.

And hour later it did as Skinner out his fist through the wall next tot he bathroom, the cheap drywall
crumbling beneath the force of his anger and anguish. And John felt a strange sense of déjà vu as he rose to do for Skinner what Monica had once done for him. John gently tugged the larger man into the small
cubicle of a bathroom, washing to drying his hand, bandaging it up as well as he could with a ripped up
hand towel. When he was done John squeezed Skinner's wrist gently and met his eyes with his own. And then Skinner did what John had been unable to do that night. He began to weep, huge sobs ripping at his chest, shaking his shoulders. And John did what Monica hadn’t been able to do, and took Skinner in his arms in the dingy bathroom and let him weep. After what seemed like hours Skinner's hands came up to wipe at his wet eyes. John could see the man’s face begin to heat up in embarrassment, the flush creeping up his face to the tips of his ears.

So John did the only thing he could thing of. He kissed him.

They both might be broken, but they were alive, and as John tugged Skinner to the bed in the center of the
room he knew that Fox Mulder would forgive them for this. After all, Mulder had loved too. Love was such a quicksilver thing, and it had been too long since John had felt it. And he knew that Skinner might
regret this in the morning, just as John had regretted using Monica to hide from his own grief, but unlike he and Monica, John was sure that Skinner loved him back. They would make love, they would try to sleep. And in the morning, they would accompany Dana Scully and her lover’s body on that plane. But right now, right now there was only the two of them.

END