Chapter 7-You Won’t Be Mine
“Take yourself out to the curb
Sit and wait;
A fool for life
It’s almost like a disease
I know soon you will be
Over the lies, you’ll be strong
You’ll be rich in love and you will carry on…”

He turned the key and the truck lurched to unhappy life with a grumble and a whine of protest.

He’d driven the Blazer hard, and he knew it, but as far as he was concerned, there wasn’t any choice. Even now, he wondered if he’d been followed. If there were more of them out there. He hadn’t seen anyone suspicious since he’d eluded his enemies back in that parking lot a million miles away (or so it felt). In fact, since he’d left the main roads and stuck to the secondary roads, he’d hardly seen anyone at all.

And now here he was, a blur of hours and miles later, just shy of the Canadian border, feeling achy and dirty and worn.  And he knew he had a while to go yet before he could rest. But as he shifted the truck into gear and tried to ignore the throbbing in his hurt arm, he glanced off into the distance at the mountains, now stained red with the last of the setting sun, and he felt something like hope warm in his heart.  Something told him that Mulder had made it at least this far. If he’d been a sentimentalist, he might have said he could feel; sense; taste the warm essence of his lover. Instead, he spat out the window, trying to rid his mouth of the sunflower seed taste, and wondered briefly if Mulder had left cologne in the glove box or something. What was it again that he wore? Something earthy and spicy that would have smelled like a car deodorizer on him, but on Mulder…

When he realized that none of this was bringing him closer to the spicy, earthy lover in question, he hit the gas with another groan of protest from both man and vehicle, and drove down the dirt track and across the border, avoiding the larger points of entry thanks to well marked maps and the stamina of the SUV.

He’d been driving on autopilot, and he knew it. Speeding and grinding gears and not stopping until the truck was gasping for fuel and the wound in his arm was crying for attention. Even then, it was just enough to fill up the gas tank, pay for it—scaring the bejeezus out of the clerk when he tossed crumpled bills at him, clapped a hand back over his bloody arm, and demand the restroom key.

Discovering a clean shallow wound didn’t ease the pain, but a few more painkillers at least kept the worst of it down to a dull throb. More coffee, to keep himself focused, and he entertained himself with imaginary Mulderlectures on everything from E.B.Es to his own personal hygiene.

At the last gas station, he’d spent long minutes consulting his map.  He had no intention of going through the customs point of entry if he could possibly avoid it, sure that ‘they’ would be monitoring them. 

It took too long for him to pick out what he hoped was a safe route, and he recognized that he was reaching the end of his figurative rope. He knew that somewhere else, men and women, children, hell, even house pets, were living their lives happily, working their jobs busily, eating and drinking and screwing, completely oblivious to one Walter Skinner and his desperate cross-country search for his lover; blissfully ignorant of aliens, X-Files and super soldiers. It wasn’t fair, and he ached with envy. And then, when he’d nearly decided to stop right where he was, to give it all up as a lost cause, he heard Mulder’s voice, clear as if the man was sitting right next to him:

“Come on, big guy, let’s dance.”

And he knew there’d been no going back after all.

As late evening dwindled down into the darkness of night, Skinner felt something in his ears pop as the altitude increased, and when he opened the truck’s windows, he felt a cool breeze coming off of the mountains. Both of these things simultaneously annoyed him and filled him with hope. Neither one washed away his fatigue; although the wind helped keep him awake, as did the loud rock music he found on the radio. 

The back roads he’d left behind were freeways to the ones he traveled now, and in places, he feared for the axles of his truck, but as each mile went by, he felt more and more hopeful that no one would be following. And when full darkness fell, and with it a light drizzling rain, he was even more pleased, knowing it would only hide his route further.

Driving through the night, he found his mind fragmenting, not in a collapsing way, but more in a multitasking way. He had concerns for his arm, which ached well beyond what was in essence just a flesh wound. (“Just a flesh wound,” Mulder jeered at him in his head in a bad Monty Python accent). He wondered if Mulder could have found the old place just from the memory of one talk a lifetime ago. He wondered if *he* could. He tried to remember if the generator worked last time he was there. He had a miserable thought of a pile of rubble and his lover lying dead in the middle of it, and banished it immediately with a warm memory of pet names shared. He thought if this ended well, he would let Mulder call him any damn thing he wanted. He tried to remember if there were any all night grocery stores in these mountains. He wondered if there were bears.

The first flush of dawn brought him, exhausted, to Banff. He drove through mist shrouded deserted streets, listening to an early morning gospel show—the only thing the radio would broadcast besides static--and peering into the gloom, looking for signs of life.

In the dark, the town took on a ghostly aura. He saw cars, but parked, not moving. He saw the flickering streetlamps, pale and indistinct as the rain faded and the day tried to take over in it’s place. He saw storefronts, some with lit signs, but none with more light inside. He wasn’t sure what time it was, although his body was telling him it was quitting time.

Brighter light to his left, a bank of sodium arc lights illuminating a large parking lot. A bright red sign proclaimed “Safeway”, which sounded good to him.

He brought the truck to a stuttering halt in a spot near the door of the large grocery store. He saw no signs of life within the glass walls of the supermarket, but assumed tiredly that they had to open sometime.

Scrubbing a hand over his face, he glanced at himself in the rear view mirror, and was almost shocked by his haggard appearance. Almost. He wished for a razor, a bath, hell, why not wish to be back home while he was at it, and the sound of his own tired laugh made him grimace.

He leaned back in the seat, thinking he would just close his eyes for a moment, and then get out and check the doors of the store, to find out what time they opened.

He was asleep an instant later.