Chapter 14: Captain Wedderburn

“Is there popcorn?” Mulder asked.

“No,” said Doggett.

“Maybe,” Scully said with a saucy grin. “But no butter.”

“Uck!” Mulder stuck his tongue out at her.

“Mulder…” Skinner gave him a warning growl.

Mulder pouted briefly, and then pulled Skinner closer to himself. The two men were seated on the couch, and Mulder had his arm around Skinner, his fingers stroking absently over one big shoulder.

Scully looked comfortable and content in the rocking chair in the corner. She was wearing an old t-shirt of Skinner’s, coupled with the slacks she had worn the day before, and one bare foot brushed the floor, making the rocker sway a bit, while the other foot was tucked neatly under her.

Doggett had promised to go back to Banff with her later today to retrieve her things from the hotel room there. Given the circumstances, Scully had thought the hotel to be a perfect ‘safe house’ for Skinner while they figured out their next move. But Skinner had flat out refused. He was home now, and home was where he intended to stay. If ‘they’ wanted him bad enough, they were going to have to come and get him. Scully had tried appealing to his common sense, suggesting that whomever was doing this might know exactly where he was now, and that an unknown location might be better for them; she had expected Mulder to back her up if for no other reason than Skinner’s safety. But he had simply shook his head, hugged his lover and told her it was Skinner’s call.

And then John had shown up, and now they were moving forward, whether she liked it or not.

As Doggett pushed a videotape into the player under the television, Scully took a moment to admire his slim figure; well-defined back muscles showing under his black t-shirt, and good legs clad in tight denim. He looked great dressed down, she thought, and she wished he’d do it more often.

Dragging her glance away from Doggett, she caught Mulder watching her with a knowing smile. She blushed, and the cat jumped into her lap, while Doggett settled at her feet, leaning on her legs while he fiddled with the tracking on the remote control.

“Is it dirty movies?” Mulder asked with a leer.

“Not hardly,” replied Doggett, rolling his eyes, “although this might getcha excited.” He pressed play on the remote, and started doing a voice over as the videotape unwound on the screen.

“So the guys said you thought the DOD might be hanging onto a few souvenirs for old time’s sake, like they did with Scully—“as he spoke, he cupped her knee with one big hand and she gave him a grateful smile. “Between us, we figured out how to get a handsome fella like me in and out unnoticed.” He grinned and paused the tape in the machine, freezing the image of himself reaching for a box on one of the shelves in the DOD storage facility. He then let the tape play out frame-by-frame, and continued:

“So, I found exactly what I thought we were lookin’ for…at least, that’s how it seemed.”

The TV version of John Doggett tucked the box under his arm, grinned at the camera and left the room.

“You’re a natural,” Scully said with a smile.

“So you found that PDA?” Mulder exclaimed. “Then why are we sitting here watching home movies when we could be out back applying a liberal dose of sledgehammer to the thing?” He started to rise, and Skinner put a restraining hand on his arm.

Doggett paused the video again and also rose; Scully let him. He found his kit by the door and pulled a small rectangular-shaped package out of it. He tossed it to Mulder, who caught it easily and tore open the paper it was wrapped in like a five year old on Christmas morning.

“Wha-fuck?” He pressed a button on the device, and tinny though very cheery music poured out of the tiny speakers built into the thing.

“Gameboy?” Skinner gave Doggett a confused frown.

“Advance, in fact, according to Lord Manhammer. Top of the line.”

“Walter,” Mulder teased, “You never told me you were a video game geek.” He tossed the Gameboy onto the coffee table none too gently.

“Shut it, Mulder,” Skinner’s voice was somehow too gruff—Mulder’s teasing didn’t seem to warrant such a rough response. Mulder looked wounded and Scully looked suspicious.

Skinner looked at Doggett.

Doggett re-crossed the room to stand next to Scully. He picked up the remote again, this time rewinding the tape, and resumed his narration.

“So there I am, all ready to savor victory, haul my lady back home from the wilds of Canada, and call it a day. Then it turns out, I got bupkus.”

“Is that even a word?” Mulder asked smartly.

Doggett ignored him. “Anyway, point is, the fanboys and I were kind of at a loss then, as to—“

“So why are you here?” Skinner demanded in the same harsh tone he’d used with Mulder.

“I’m gettin’ to that, sir,” Doggett shot back, finding his own inner surly marine voice. “So Langly figures that while we’re all trying to think what to do next, he’ll hack back into the DOD mainframe, get me outta their data base, and then get me right offa their radar—he’s got some program where he can loop video image over existing images, you know, make it look like no one had ever been there.”

Mulder nodded his understanding, Skinner looked impatient. Doggett paused the tape that had been rewinding while he spoke. “And that’s when he found this—seems he went too far back in their recordings or something. Dumb luck, really, but lucky for us.”

The same storage area that Doggett had been taped in showed on the screen, this time empty.

“This was two weeks ago,” Doggett told them.

“I don’t see anything,” Mulder complained as both he and Skinner leaned forward eagerly.

“Wait for it,” said Doggett.

“What the hell?”

“Who is that?”

As they watched, a woman in a severe man-cut suit and skirt entered the warehouse. She had a large satchel hanging over one arm, and as she approached the same place Doggett had been, she opened the flap on the bag, and pulled something out of it.

Mulder wondered if he should go try and find his glasses. He couldn’t see clearly what the item was, nor could he make out the woman’s features.

As they watched, the woman stopped at the same shelf and pulled down the same box. A furtive glance around, and then she was pulling something out of the box and replacing it with the item in her hands.

She put everything back on the shelf as it was, and moved back to the door. Another suspicious look around the room, and then a quick glance directly at the security camera.

Doggett froze the picture.

This time he pulled a file folder out of his kit and handed it to Skinner.

“Old girlfriend?” he asked.

Skinner opened the file and stared down at the grainy, blown-up screen capture of the woman in the video.

He knew he should know her.

She looked teasingly familiar, and he glared at the picture, trying to bring up a name to go with the blonde hair and blue eyes.

Mulder squirmed beside him, trying to see over his shoulder. Even Scully was leaning forward now, also trying to get a glimpse of the picture.

The name stubbornly refused to come, even as he felt something throb in his forehead that made him feel vaguely sick and dizzy.

“Walter?” Mulder’s voice sounded far away and—

“Sir?” Doggett’s voice came from underwater.

Skinner jumped to his feet with an angry inarticulate growl, knocked the file folder to the floor and stomped out of the room.

The picture slid from the folder and fell to the floor; Mulder and Scully reached for it at the same time, but Mulder got there first. It took only seconds for him to look at the picture and realize exactly whom he was seeing.

“Oh, shit…”

“Who is she?” Doggett demanded, both pleased and frightened that both men seemed to recognize the woman.

“She looks so familiar,” Scully murmured, staring hard at the picture in Mulder’s hands.

“You met her once,” Mulder told her. Scully frowned at him.

“Right before Walter and I went back to Oregon,” he continued. Scully gave him a startled look as his words flung her unhappily back to the past, and she could hear her own voice from a life time ago, muttering, “I won’t let you go alone.”

“Dana?” She realized it was Doggett speaking. “Are you--?”

He was cut off by the sound of glass breaking in the kitchen.

“Damn,” Mulder leapt to his feet and ran to the other room.

“I don’t remember her name,” Scully told Doggett, “but she was with Alex Krycek.”

***

Mulder pushed open the kitchen door and had to duck as a coffee cup nearly took off his head.

“Walter, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

Skinner turned on him, all savage rage and fury.

“Who is she? Who the fuck is she?!”

“Walter, come on—“ Mulder batted the next cup out of the air and it fell to the floor with a crash. He just had time to think ‘I loved that cup!’ and then he was racing across the room, tackling his enraged lover and shoving him hard against the counter. His hands clamped around Skinner’s wrists and it was like trying to hold onto a pair of boa constrictors, all muscle and evil intent. He had to lean all his weight forward until he and Skinner were chest to chest.

“Get the fuck off of me!” Skinner roared, struggling hugely.

“Calm down!” Mulder shouted back. “This isn’t helping!”

“Tell me who she is!” Skinner pushed and Mulder pushed right back, glaring at his lover fiercely, even as a part of his heart was breaking at this unrecognizable mass of rage that Skinner had become. He intensified his grip on the other man and shook him once, hard, slamming his back against the counter.

“Are we done?” he yelled, remembering a time that seemed millennia ago, when Skinner had done this exact same thing to him. Then, of course, unsavory types had been spiking his water with LSD, and he’d been out of his head. He supposed it was the same for Skinner now, and he remembered Scully’s warnings even as he yelled again. “Are we done?”

He expected Skinner to fight him. Some other part of him hoped Skinner would just give in, much as he had done in the past. What he hadn’t expected, at all, was for Skinner to suddenly shudder in his grip almost like he was having a seizure, and then fall forward so Mulder quickly had to change his grip on the man from one of restraint to one of support. Skinner had transformed into some kind of Skinner-puppet, and the powers that be had just cut his strings.

“Walter, what—“ The sudden shift caught Mulder completely off guard, and despite quick reflexes, he stumbled backwards as all of Skinner’s weight fell on him. He heard one broken sob tumble out of his lover and then crumpled under him and they fell to the floor together. Mulder gathered just enough wits about him to twist his legs so that he landed squarely on his ass with Skinner in his lap. The older man’s arms were around his neck, face buried in his shoulder, and he suddenly weighed about a thousand pounds.

Another shuddery, weeping sound, and Mulder didn’t care if his legs broke under the weight. He returned the embrace, feeling his own eyes watering at the completely unnatural sound of Walter Skinner bawling like a five year old whose puppy had just died. He ignored the ache of a bruised tailbone, the crackle of knees too old for playing on the floor, and his need to recapture some of the air that had been knocked out of him at impact, and instead took up a slow rocking motion, stroking Skinner’s broad back in what he hoped was some kind of soothing manner.

He started to whisper some sort of inane nonsense about how everything was going to be all right, about how it was okay, fine, nothing wrong, a-okay, and all you need is love, and then stopped before more than a couple of syllables could slip past his lips. That wasn’t going to solve anything, fix anything, make anything right.

As usual, it was the truth he turned to. The truth that his whole life was spent seeking was always where he ended up. It might have been amusingly ironic, had there been anything amusing about the situation at all.

The truth was, he loved Walter Skinner with all his heart. And the truth was, someone was trying to kill Walter Skinner, and kill him in a horrible and painful way.

“It’s Marita,” he whispered to his crying lover. “Marita Covarrubias. She was an informant of sorts. A spy of sorts. A bitch of big sorts.” He could hear the sobs tapering off slowly as his words penetrated the fog Skinner’s pain had put him in. “And she was Alex Krycek’s lover.”

Skinner lifted his head from Mulder’s shoulder and stared at him, glasses askew, eyes wide and red, cheeks tear streaked. Even at his lowest, Mulder had never seen him look this way—so young, so scared, so…defeated. It shook him more than he wanted to admit. More than he could admit. He knew no matter what happened next, he was going to have to be strong enough for the both of them.

“She must have either seen what happened, or found out somehow. About you…and me…and Alex.” Gently, he straightened Skinner’s glasses. “And now I guess she’s got her revenge on.”

“Fuck me…” Skinner put his head back down, and although no fresh weeping sounds came from him, no words did either. Mulder took up his rocking and stroking again, and when Scully timidly poked her head through the doorway, he shook his head at her and willed her away silently.

They stayed there a long time.

End 14/19