Chapter 8: Crutch
“Man I feel like hell so come on over
Be a love machine and I could be your friend
Ain’t no shame
Feel strong for one another
Make a real true colour come end to end…”

“Hey! Hey, wake up!”

The voice was reedy and annoying. 

“Mulder?” Skinner tried to turn away, got caught up in something, and opened his eyes with a groan. 

“What are you? Lost? Homeless or something?”

It wasn’t Mulder. Skinner readjusted his glasses, which had slipped nearly off and focused through a sweaty headache on a Japanese man reaching through the open driver’s side window and shaking his shoulder.

“Oh, hell,” he groaned.

“Nope; Alberta,” the man quipped sarcastically. He glanced at the front of the truck then back at Skinner. “You’re a long way from home, buddy.”

It took Skinner a moment to realize that the man had read his licence plate—stolen or not, it was still out of province.

“You have no idea…” Skinner replied, grating the words out, his throat dry, his tongue thick.

“Anyway,” he man said, “the boss says you can’t stay here—it looks bad, you know?”

The last of his post-sleep fog lifted, and Skinner realized that it was daylight, warm, and the man shaking him awake and looking alternately amused and aggravated was wearing a grocer’s apron.

“I came to—to buy—uh—stuff…” he explained, feeling foolish.

“Yeah, right.” Now the man was giving him a critical ‘are you drunk?’ look.

“No. Really.” Skinner unhooked his seatbelt and worked the door lock. He didn’t bother to warn the grocery clerk, just opened the door, and only a frog-like hop to one side saved the clerk from getting knocked on his ass.

“Hey, watch it! That shit’s not funny.”

“I didn’t mean it to be.” Skinner’s voice was gruff and humourless, despite the fact that, as the scene played out, he knew his lover would have been laughing himself to tears over the utter ridiculousness of the situation.

He spared not another glance at the clerk, simply walked towards the store. He could feel the joints in his knees and ankles crackling unhappily, and he vowed he would not spend another night sleeping in the cab of his truck, even if he lived to be a hundred, and the only other option was sleeping with Melvin Frohike.

He found a cart outside the door and took it inside with him, then came to a halt. He stared, bemused, as other shoppers found all that they needed up and down the brightly lit aisles, and wondered briefly just what the hell he was doing. He didn’t even know if Mulder was alive. Didn’t know if he was going to find the man at the end of this strange journey. Didn’t even care to venture a guess as to the condition of a cabin he hadn’t seen in more than thirty years. So what was he doing in a grocery store?

“Hey, we all gotta eat, right?” his voice was low, but loud enough to garner him a look from an old woman pushing her cart full of cookies and cat food past him.

Once again relying on his instincts, which had served him well so far, he set off down the dry goods aisle…

Too much time and money later, he was slamming the back of the truck shut after loading in the last bag of groceries.

He’d gone heavy on non-perishables, and spent an inordinate amount of time in the health and beauty aisle, stocking up on everything from painkillers and bandages to vitamins and cough syrup.  Walter Skinner was nothing if not a good Eagle Scout.

He wasn’t sure what to expect, but he wanted to be prepared for any potentiality. His mind skittered nervously around a dead Mulder picture in his head, and he mentally shied away from it with a wince.

“One last go for daddy, okay?” He adopted a wheedling tone and even patted the dash as he sat down and turned the key in the ignition. Gears ground and nothing else happened.

He slammed a hand down on the steering wheel. “Come on, you fucker! I haven’t got time for this shit!” His voice was low but fierce.

The truck started at once, apparently preferring the direct approach.

He made his way out of town.

Pushing the truck higher and higher into the mountains, he dug into the one bag he’d kept in the front with him. He found bottled water, which he used to wash down the two Slim Jims and small tub of blueberries he was calling breakfast.

The sun was at it’s zenith when he reached Bow Falls, and even with the windows open and the air conditioner cranked on high, he felt warm and sweaty, and it became apparent that his last shower had been some days ago. He remembered running water in the old cabin back in the day, but now, he wasn’t sure if—

He slammed on the brakes and the truck stalled, throwing him forward, then lurching him back as the seat belt held tight.

His eyes were wide and frightened as he clawed off the belt and scrambled out of the truck. He stumbled, caught himself and ran to the car parked haphazardly in the visitor parking spaces below the Falls.

The first thing that had caught his eye had been the plates. The car was a rental, and from the U.S. Not necessarily all that odd—it was summer after all, and he was smack in the middle of one of Canada’s largest tourist attractions, but--

The angle of the car was wrong, too. Not within the lines painted on the asphault to designate space. Rather, the car looked like it had rolled into the space rather than been driven, and it appeared to have fallen asleep rather than parked, looking too tired to travel further. This too was not completely out of the ordinary, although it was odder than an out-of-country licence.

It was the bear that had caught Skinner’s eye and thrown him into a panic and out of the truck.

A chocolate brown teddy bear peered glassy eyed from the back window of the car, a horribly tacky red and green bow tie around it’s neck.

A spur-of-the-moment post-Christmas gift, and they’d laughed at it at the time; he’d been almost embarrassed by his own sentimentality; Mulder was amused that the tasteless Christmas coloured tie was simply shades of grey to him.

And then he’d taken the damned thing on a trip with him. Just a weekend workshop that he’d been asked to give a lecture at. Skinner had been unable to go with him—swamped with work as usual, but—

“If I have this guy with me, I’ll know you’re not far away,” Mulder had said then, almost defiantly, as if daring Skinner to make fun of him. Skinner had just nodded solemnly, letting Mulder have this sappy moment, knowing how few and far between they were.

Now Skinner felt tears threatening at this first real hard evidence that his cross country chase was not in vain.

He moved around to the driver’s side of the car, noticed a fine layer of dust on the vehicle, and wondered how far behind he was.

He was expecting to have to pick the lock, and was surprised to find it unnecessary. 

With a trembling hand, he yanked open the door.

The interior of the car smelled hot and musty with disuse, but beneath that he caught the faintest whiff of something else—spicy and earthy and—

“Aspen.” He didn’t notice that he was speaking aloud. “That’s the name of it—Aspen…”

A bag of sunflower seeds was spilled across the front seat, and blood was drying on the steering wheel in two hand-shaped smears.

A groan tumbled from Skinner’s mouth and he felt a jolt of bladder-loosening fear. He touched the steering wheel lightly, drew his hand back as though it were hot, and looked in the back seat instead.

A few minutes later he was back at the truck, struggling to hold onto several items in one hand while opening the back with the other.

Once the truck was open, he set the contents of the car into the back one by one, almost reverently.

Scully’s jacket was first, then Mulder’s the brown and black leather contrasting and complimenting one another. Then he laid a grey v-neck sweater over them. He looped the gold necklace twice around the teddy bear’s neck and placed two watches in it’s lap.

A shaky sigh, and he locked up the truck.

Moving once again on instinct, trying to think like his lover would (and ignore the visions of a wounded delirious Mulder wandering aimlessly through the woods), he began climbing towards the falls. He felt time slip—he remembered coming up here alone last time, so full of self doubt and despair that he’d thought himself lost forever. And Mulder had come for him…

“Get a little, give a little,” he muttered to himself. He wouldn’t let Mulder down.

The wound in his arm throbbed in time with his heart beat as he climbed the steps to the top of the falls.

Another of those queer déjà vu flashes hit him when he saw the large rock overlooking the falls, and he could almost see them—him and Mulder, sitting together there. Like ghosts…

The place was deserted, and aside from intermittent bird song and the annoying hum of insects, he heard nothing. Perhaps Mulder hadn’t come up here, but he felt strongly that he had, and if his lover had taught him nothing else, he’d at least learned from the man to trust his feelings.

Whether he’d been here or not, the fact was, he wasn’t here now, and that left him with one last hope—that Mulder had found the cabin buried in the forest further up the mountain. The one he’d told him about that day with the chipmunks…

Despite himself, Skinner found himself approaching the rock, his heart and lungs not-so-subtly reminding him that he wasn’t twenty anymore, and he’d do well to take a minute before heading back down to the parking lot.

The sun flashed off the side of the rock, and he remembered seeing initials carved there last time—some couple who had decided to declare their love in granite sometime between the time Skinner had first discovered this place after the war, and the last time, when he and Mulder had been here.  He gave the side of the rock a closer look, thinking only of seeing if more initials had been added. And then he was teary eyed again, and he wondered just when it was that he’d lost control of his emotions.  Deciding that it didn’t matter at this point, he brushed his fingers lightly over the recently carved addition.

Crying openly and not giving a damn, he found the sharp rock that had been used to carve those letters. He grasped it tightly, and dug into the face of the boulder.

When he was done, he dropped the stone, turned abruptly and made for the stairs, leaving behind a declaration, and a promise…