Title:          The Gods Themselves
Author:         Justin Glasser
E-mail Address: Feedback happily read and
                answered at my sister's e-mail---
                Julan777@aol.com
                (Thanks again, Jules.)
Archive:        Yes to Ephemeral, Gossamer, and basically anyone else as long
as you ask (or tell me).
Rating:         G
Category:        V/A, Post-ep
Spoilers:       SR819
Keywords:       Skinner angst
Summary:        Skinner makes a decision.

Disclaimer: No permission has been granted, no
money has been made, no infringement is intended.

Dedication: This one is for someone who will never see it-the man who taught me
Tennyson.

Author's Notes:  When I was busy getting spoiled for Season Six, I mistakenly
thought that he plot of SR819 went with the title "Tithonus."  This story is
born from that confusion.

The Gods Themselves
By Justin Glasser
***

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far off, on the dark earth, be true?
"The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."

"Tithonus"  Alfred Lord Tennyson

***

The difference between being scared and being afraid is that you can do
something about being scared.

In Vietnam, Walter Skinner saw his friends die quickly, blown to pieces by
landmines.  He saw men die slowly, bleeding out thick red pools on the damp
ground.  He even saw the corpse of a soldier strangled by a water snake when he
fell asleep on watch, and Skinner was scared every minute of his three year
tour.  But all it took was seeing Dana Scully lean over his bed with worry on
her face to make him understand afraid.  Scared and afraid are different:
Mulder and Scully taught him that.

He sits at this moment in the driver's seat of his car, having been back on the
job for a little more than a week after a mysterious illness.  Mulder and
Scully have done their best to provide him with answers about the cause of said
illness-about how Walter Skinner became infected with technology which
supposedly does not exist and for which there is no remedy.  Although he is
touched by their temerity on his behalf (more touched than he can ever possibly
express, more touched than he has been, perhaps, by any other human action in
these last lonely years) he has ordered them to quit following up on the slim
leads they have.  He has put an end to the investigation.  He knows Mulder and
Scully do not understand.

When he heard from Scully that she thought he might have been poisoned, Walter
Skinner was scared.  From the familiar sweat and leather of the boxing ring, he
had taken a detour into a world murky with uncertainty.  His response was
simple.  "If this man poisoned me, I'm going to put a gun to his head, find out
why, and ask him how he's going to make me well," he told them.  It was his
standard fear response: take action, demand answers.

He has all the answers he needs now, in the form of the man who has just left
his back seat.  Krycek, a man whose very name suggests evil and treachery, a
man who holds Walter Skinner's future in the palm of his hand.  A man who, for
some unfathomable reason, has saved his life not once in the last two weeks,
but twice.  Skinner does not know why, and is not sure he wants to.

He has tried to walk a fine line between protecting Mulder and Scully and
maintaining his objectivity about their work.  His balancing act has earned
Walter Skinner nothing but the brief press of Scully's lips against his and
Mulder's compassionate gaze.  Mulder had been there on that first cloudy night,
had seen Skinner collapsed and rumpled on the leather couch in the office.
Mulder had been  prepared to have a chuckle at his former boss's  expense.
"You sleeping one off?" he had asked, and although Skinner wasn't looking at
him he could hear the smile in the words.

Resting his head against the steering wheel, Skinner remembered Mulder's smile,
Mulder's barely concealed amusement, Mulder's growing concern for him.
Whatever Mulder had seen in Skinner's face had worried him enough to cause him
to take action.

Whatever he saw made him call Scully.

Before she got there Mulder had crouched beside the leather sofa, one hand
tented against the leather to keep his balance.

"How do you feel?" he had asked.

"Like I just got punched in the head, Agent Mulder," Skinner had murmured from
beneath his arm.  He could hear Mulder's light breathing.

"I'll leave you alone then," Mulder had said, and then he patted Skinner's  rib
cage, right over what Skinner had believed was just a bruise, but which had
felt, suddenly, like his whole side was on fire, scalding his lungs with pain.

"Muh-"Skinner gasped, jerking away from his agent.

"Sir?"  Mulder cried.  He had almost tipped over, pulling his hand back as if
Skinner's fire had scalded him, too.

"It's . . . it's . . . I'm fine," Skinner had breathed.  "A bruise."

"A bruise."  Mulder had leaned in again.  "You practically screamed."

"A bruise, Mulder."  Skinner had lifted the edge of his dress shirt exposing
the purple flesh to his agent.

Skinner has touched Agent Mulder before.  He's held Mulder down, held him back,
even held him up once or twice, but until that moment, aside from the
formalities of office handshakes, Agent Mulder had never touched back.  Skinner
felt his fingers skim the bruise lightly, once, as if he couldn't believe what
he was seeing.  Later, when Scully touched the same spot, Skinner flinched with
the memory.

Alone, in his car, pretending that he is fine, just as he has pretended every
day since he discovered that his blood was not his own, Skinner realizes that
he didn't deserve either of them.  That he doesn't.

They scare him-Mulder's headstrong leaps into the unknown and Scully's
unflagging devotion to him, if not to his cause.  They leap without looking,
and more often than not they don't fall.  Sometimes--like that time when
everyone all thought Mulder was dead and Scully collapsed, worn away by cancer
and misery-Skinner has even been the one to catch them.  Not often enough.

Too often, Skinner thinks, he has stood back, giving them enough rope to hang
themselves.  Suddenly, he no longer has that choice.  He has chosen by trying
not to choose, forcing Krycek to force his hand.  He wasn't surprised by the
voice in the backseat of the car.  His is the voice of Skinner's conscience,
telling him what he already knew: the center cannot hold.

Mulder thinks this is about him.  He's mistaken.  It's about Walter Sergei
Skinner.  It's about choices that he should have made long ago, and about the
difference between being scared and being afraid.  Being scared is not about
outside, but inside, Skinner understands.  It's something you feel for
yourself.  Being afraid is something you feel for others.

Just last week, Walter Skinner died.  He's not scared of dying.

He knows that his fate lies in the hands of Alex Krycek, and that does not
scare him either.

He knows that if he continues to support the work going on in the X-files, the
work Mulder and Scully are doing not so clandestinely in between their
background checks and fertilizer cases, he may well be risking his own life.
Skinner knows that if he continues to stand as a wall between his former agents
and the powers that work against them, powers that reside not only outside, but
within now, within his own blood, he will certainly be punished.  What has been
done to him has already been done, and cannot be undone.  He is not scared of
that, either.  He has nothing to be scared of, not anymore, not now that he has
made his choice.

But for the first time, Skinner is afraid.  He's not afraid of acting, not
afraid of suffering for Mulder and Scully, not afraid even of dying for them,
if the circumstances warrant it.  He's not afraid of doing what he thinks is
right, even if it means that Mulder and Scully will think he is the worst kind
of Judas.  It doesn't matter what they think of his decisions, as long as he
knows he is acting in their best interests.  He is not afraid of their
disapproval although he knows it will leave him more alone than he has ever
been.  What frightens him is something more horrible than simple loneliness.

Walter Skinner is afraid he might not be enough.

***end***