Georgetown Memorial Hospital
Friday, 5:10 pm

Dana Scully looked up as someone called out her name.  She saw three men rushing down the hallway towards her.  One was short and stocky, one tall and lanky.  It was the third one, in the brown suit, who had spoken.

"Thanks for coming, guys."

"Where else would we be?" Frohike replied, and Byers asked,
"How is he?"

The question seemed to force whatever emotions Scully had buried to the surface, and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears, which she blinked away furiously, apparently almost embarrassed by the display.

"It doesn't look good."  She took a deep shaky breath and found her control again.  "There was a lot of damage."

"Shit," Langly muttered under his breath, running a hand through his thinning blonde hair.

"What can we do?"

Scully looked into their worried, yet somehow calm faces, and felt something akin to gratitude just for their presence.

"Mulder's in with him now.  We just have to wait." She sat down abruptly in the chair outside of the intensive care unit, and slumped back in the seat, closing her eyes. 

The Gunmen looked at one another with distress, knowing it had to be bad if even the unflappable Dr. Scully was on the verge of exhaustion and tears.

"Shit," Langly said again.

Fox Mulder stepped quietly into the dim hospital room.  He was vaguely aware of the sound of his own breathing; loud in his ears over the muted mechanical sounds of the life-monitoring equipment clustered around the lone bed in the room.

Mulder approached the bed warily, blinking back tears to focus on the man lying on it. 

Walter Skinner lay so pale and still that for a moment Mulder thought he'd lost him, that he had just slipped away while he had been talking to Scully, and a shudder ran through his body. Then he marked the slow but steady rise and fall of the older man's chest, and he let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

Still moving slowly, like a man who's taken a vicious blow to the kidneys and expects to wet himself at any moment, he pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat carefully, mindful of the wires and tubes that coursed and snaked their way around and into his lover.  He took a moment to fret over the paleness of Walter's skin, in sharp contrast to the dark smudges under his closed eyes, and the bluish tint of his lips, speaking wordless volumes about blood loss and oxygen deprivation.

The bandages were even whiter than his skin, and they seemed to be everywhere.  One was wrapped stiffly around a bicep, another around the wrist of the arm opposite.  A square of white gauze covered a generous portion of one shoulder, and, finally, worst of all, peeking just above the blanket that covered Skinner from the waist down was a seemingly endless loop of bandages and gauze, thoroughly wrapping the man's torso.

Mulder put a hand to his mouth, aghast at the amount of damage that lay before him.  Even though Scully had quickly briefed him on what to expect, and he wasn't any stranger to gunshot wounds, having been on both the giving and receiving end of more than a few in his day (his own shoulder twinged with what could only be sympathy pain), nothing could have prepared him for this.

He'd been at home when the call came, sorting clothing into untidy heaps, trying to determine what he should keep, and what he should be donating to the Salvation Army.

He picked up a grey v-neck sweater and gave it a critical eye.  It was worn, but not overly so, and there were no holes in it, although the neckline was starting to fray a little.  He suddenly grinned bitterly as he remembered that this was his "shoot-your-neighbour-fake-your-own-death" sweater.  He immediately tossed it into the charity pile.

The next item was a black t-shirt, threadbare and more worn than the sweater, with a tear in the shoulder seam and another around the collar.  His smile was softer this time as he realized that the shirt was well past even second-hand standards, but would never, ever go to charity, let alone in the garbage, which is probably where it should have gone.

Impulsively, he hugged the scrap of fabric, thinking of the first time he had ever worn it, then remembering the many times after, and fancying he could still smell Walter's cologne on it, despite the many washings.  Then he laughed at his own foolishness, and set the garment gently into the 'keep' pile.  He knew that Skinner and Scully would have something to say about the shirt if they saw it.  Both of them, unbeknownst to the other, had lectured him already about his packrat tendencies.

Logically he knew he had to cull the junk-herd that was his home before the move.  And generally speaking, he was not overly sentimental about his possessions.  But it seemed that every time he tried to lessen the clutter in his life, it doubled instead.  'Must be an X-File', he thought, even as he wondered what the hell Walter, with all his austere tendencies, was thinking, wanting to combine households.

From somewhere under a pile of clothes, his cel phone chirped.  It took several minutes to find the thing, buried as it was, but it kept on ringing-whoever was on the other end was showing extreme tenacity.

When he finally unearthed the damn thing, he realized that he had just undone an entire afternoon's worth of work, and the clothes he had so carefully separated were now all jumbled together again.  He swore under his breath and thumbed the receiver switch.

"Mulder."

"Mulder, it's me."

Scully, probably checking on his progress.  He smiled.

"Hey, G-Woman!  I think I'm making some real headway here-"

"Mulder," she cut him off, and an internal alarm suddenly went off at the flat tone of her voice.

"What is it?"

"I'm at Georgetown Memorial."

"What?!  Scully, are you okay?" He gripped the phone tighter as stray thoughts of Scully's cancer, it's miraculous remission and not cure coursed through his mind.

"Mulder, it's Walter."

"What about him?"  His brain quickly inventoried a catalogue of ailments from heart attack to hangnail, and he prayed it was the latter.

"He's here. He's been shot."

The phone fell from suddenly nerveless fingers to land on the black tee shirt with a muffled thud, and he ran for the door.

And now here he was, sitting stunned and disbelieving and staring dumbly at his lover, trying to reconcile the damaged figure before him with his own mental picture of Walter Skinner.  Walter who was the hero of the play that was his life, who was the strong one, the holder, the protector, the-

This was so wrong.  He was the one who was supposed to take it on the chin, not Walter.  He was the one who was supposed to be in hospitals, who was always in trouble, who was always getting hurt, who was always putting himself in the line of fire.  He was the one who deserved-

Abruptly he reached out for the hand nearest to him, taking a gentle hold on it, mindful of the I.V. and the bandages.  He curled his fingers around Walter's, imagining that somehow he'd get a response.  He didn't.

A silent sob made his whole body shake, and he gripped Walter's hand a little tighter as his vision blurred again with tears. 

A sudden noise behind him, and he bit his lip, blinked back the tears and turned slightly, not relinquishing his hold on Walter's hand.

Frohike stood in the doorway, looking as miserable as Mulder had ever seen him.

"Hey, Mulder-" He wasn't sure what else to say.

"What are you doing here?" 

"Scully called us.  I guess she thought-" He shrugged, not knowing what Scully had been thinking, but Mulder knew.  Scully knew that the Gunmen were the closest thing to friends that he had, herself excepted, and she knew he relied on them in ways that he didn't think even they were aware of.

He gave Frohike a ghost of a smile.

"Where are the other two Mouseketeers?" he asked.

Frohike came around to the end of the bed, absently gazing at the chart attached there, more from force of habit than from any real expectations.

"Byers went with Scully to the Monroe wing-she wants us to check out the blood samples they got from the perp.  Langly's gone to get coffee-figured you could probably use one, and wouldn't want to go too far-"

Mulder, who was staring at him, some harsh and surprised expression on his face, cut him off.

"They caught the person?" he demanded.

"Well, yeah.  Didn't Scully tell you?"

Mulder let go of his lover's hand, stood and bolted for the door, pausing only a moment to give Walter's comatose figure one last anguished glance, and then he was gone.

Frohike almost followed, then held back a moment and appraised Walter sorrowfully, as concerned for the older man's condition as he was for his friend's sanity.  He'd been the first one to figure out that Mulder had a thing for his boss, and had only been slightly surprised when they got together.  He'd figured Skinner to be too uptight for an office romance, never mind one with a younger man, but now that he'd seen them together, he knew that Mulder and Skinner were meant for each other, and that their strengths and weaknesses worked so well together that it would be devastating for either man to lose the other at this point. Especially for Mulder, for whom abandonment issues were more than just a topic on the John Bradshaw show.

And he didn't want Mulder asking for his porn collection back.

"Hey, big guy," he whispered.  "Come on back to us.  To Mulder."

Mulder came tearing out of the room so fast that Langly didn't stand a chance.  The three cups of coffee he was balancing precariously in his hands wound up on the floor as Mulder pushed past him without a word.

"Hey!"  He brushed ineffectually at the hot coffee that had sprayed across his "Ben Folds Five" shirt, and watched as Mulder went from a quick walk to a trot to a dead run before he'd even turned the corner.  He looked down at the rest of the coffee pooling around his beat up sneakers, and kicked one of the paper cups viciously.

"Shit!"

Scully looked up at the sound of running footsteps to see Mulder sprinting towards her, and she mentally steeled herself for the upcoming ugly confrontation.

"They got him?" he demanded breathlessly of her, ignoring Byers and grasping her tightly by the upper arms, his fingers digging unintentionally cruelly into her flesh.  "Why didn't you tell me?"

Scully just looked pointedly at his hands on her, then into his face, her own gaze expressionless but full of meaning nevertheless, and he abruptly let go of her, chastened, but still demanding.  "Well?"

Byers cleared his throat and they both turned to look at him.

"I'll-uh-we'll-that is, I'll get the guys on this-"he held up a blood sample in a small sealed tube. "Right away. We should have something for you in no time."  He backed away from them, looking embarrassed and uncomfortable and slightly ill-par for the course for John Byers, whenever confronted with extreme personalities of any sort.  And Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were about as extreme as ever at this moment.

"Scully…" Mulder forced her attention away from Byers and back on him.  Scully took his arm and started leading him away from the room she and John had been standing outside of.  A little further down the hall were a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs, and she pushed him into one.  He immediately jumped back up to his feet, not surprising her in the least, and she slammed him back down, reminding him of exactly how she managed to ace all the physical requirement tests at Quantico.

"Mulder."  She crouched down in front of him and took both his hands in hers. "Listen to me."

"I'm listening."  His tone was as cold as his hands, but Scully refused to borrow guilt.  Not when there were so many other pressing issues.

"You didn't give me a chance to tell you," she began, and he knew she was right, just as he knew his anger was unfounded and a convenient tool he was using to keep panic at bay.

"Scully, just tell me what the hell is going on."

"Walter wasn't the only one injured.  Special Agent Crane is dead, as is A.D. Maslin, and Kersh's assistant.  Kim Cooke-"

"Kim was injured too?" he interrupted, feeling a fresh pain in his heart.  Kimberly Cooke was Walter's personal assistant, and had been for many years now.  She had also been one of the first people privy to his and Walter's relationship-he never did figure out if she's known before they told her.  He only knew that she was fiercely loyal to Walter, and had kept their secret, as well as scheduled who knew how many meetings, interviews and conferences for them both to help them meet up whenever possible.  She had been as good a friend to them both as Scully, and the thought that she might be dead or dying right along side her boss…

"Mulder, Kim Cooke did the shooting."

Mulder turned a frankly disbelieving eye on her. 

"No.  I refuse to believe that.  Kim wouldn't have-she couldn't-she…" He wound down like a broken toy under Scully's unflinching gaze.

"We have witnesses, Mulder, video footage, the works.  There's no doubt…" Her words trailed off, and she suddenly looked away from him, at their clasped hands, and squeezed them tightly.

"I don't understand, Scully.  Kim adored Walter.  She was so protective of him-of us…" his voice dropped to a whisper.  "Why would she do this?"

Scully sighed, causing Mulder to give her a sharp look.

"Is she here?  Is that why you had Byers down here?"

She nodded, looking into his face, then away again.

"There's something you're not telling me.  What is it?"

"Mulder, we are going to get to the bottom of this-I'm sure there must be a logical explanation for-"

"Dammit, Scully, just tell me!" he demanded harshly.

"Kim walked into the middle of a financial meeting in Walter's office this afternoon and emptied the clip of a 9mm Sig Sauer P228 into the room and most of the people there.  Her prime target seemed to be Walter himself, the other deaths and injuries came about as people tried to detain her or protect him.  Security got there as the last round was fired, and arrested her.  She was standing above Walter repeatedly firing the empty gun at him and muttering…"

"What did she say, Scully?" The scene as described by his partner in her most analytical tone left him sick with horror, but he had to know.

"According to security, she said "death to fags.""