"Agent Mulder." Skinner opens the door, finding an obviously belligerent agent outside his apartment. "I suppose I should be more used to your unexpected visits by now."
Mulder ignores the flippancy in his superior's voice. It had taken no small amount of angst to get him this far. And he needed to know. "Why did you?"
"Why did I what?" Skinner frowns.
"Ask the Cancer Man for a cure. You warned me against that course of action. Very persuasively, too. Then you went and took it. Sir, I want to know why."
Of all the questions to ask ...
"Agent Mulder …"
"You're a man with great integrity. And great pride in your integrity. Yet you went to him and asked him for help. Working with the Cancer Man and taking your marching orders from him must have destroyed a lot of what you hold dear."
"Agent Mulder, I suggest ..."
"Or have you been working with him from the beginning? Was the deal for Scully's cure just one incident in a long and mutually beneficial relationship? Is that why you were so quick to run to him for the cure?" Mulder drives his point relentlessly.
A nerve in Skinner's cheek jumps. "I suggest you leave now, Agent Mulder."
"How can you work for a man like that?" Mulder shouts, refusing to let go of the answer he came looking for. "Knowing what you know, how could you? If you weren't working with him all along, how and why would you go to him?"
"Was I supposed to watch her die?" Skinner roars, finally goaded into responding. "What would you have me do, Mulder? Have Scully die so my hands could stay clean?"
"You said I'm not to pursue his help and then you went to him! Why, sir? Why?"
"He could help, he was the only one who could and I had to go to him!"
"Why would you do that, if you didn't already know he'd help you? If you weren't already working for him?"
Skinner glares at Mulder. "You should know where my allegiances lie, Agent Mulder. Better than most, you should know. And if you have any doubt, you could have raised the issue with the joint FBI panel where you decided to accuse Section Chief Blevins of being a traitor."
"You know Blevins is dirty," Mulder shoots back. "But you're not as clean as you'd like to think, sir. And you're not as clean as I'd like to think, either."
"Fuck off out of my home, Mulder," Skinner's voice is cold, as devoid of emotion as usual. "You've no idea what you're talking about."
Skinner turns away and goes to sit down on his couch, picking up the discarded paperback. Mulder remains rooted, thrown by Skinner's sudden explosion of rage and subsequent display of disinterest. As he stares at the back of Skinner's head, another fragment of another conversation stirs in his memory. Some phrase that puts everything in a different light altogether. What if ... He half-shakes his head, but the thought refuses to budge. It would make sense if …
"Where's your wife, sir?" Mulder asks, walking towards Skinner.
"Texas with her boyfriend." Skinner shows no interest in the jarring change of topic.
Mulder perches on the coffee table and stares at the A.D. "You're surprisingly liberal about that."
"I've had little say in her personal life since the divorce."
"When did that happen?"
Skinner glares at him briefly. "You remember that night you brought Krychek over for safe custody?"
"And you punched him and chained him to the balcony railing, sure."
Skinner sounds disinterested in his own question. "And nobody wondered where my wife was at the time?"
"Well, trying to save the world tends to get into the way of being curious." Mulder nods to himself, satisfied. He finally knew why Skinner went to Cancer Man and the answer wasn't, as he had feared, a mutual scratching of backs which would lead to a stabbing of backs.
"Now that we've established that," Skinner replies, turning a page, "you're more than welcome to leave."
"That night I came here, when I found you've been working with the Cancer Man to hide a postal worker's death," Mulder says slowly, not looking away from Skinner, "you said I'm in a unique position to understand. To understand what, exactly?"
"I'm sure I told you to leave," Skinner replies, not lifting his eyes from his book.
"Your motives? Is that what I'm supposed to understand? How you could destroy yourself and your integrity to find a cure for Scully? Is that what I'm uniquely positioned to understand?"
"Clearly I underestimated you," Skinner grumbles. "You don't understand. Anything."
"I think I'm beginning to. You took this difficult course of action because letting Scully die was even more difficult. As much as you couldn't stand to lose your integrity, you can't stand to lose Scully," Mulder surmises.
Skinner stares at a blank spot on the wall, somewhere behind Mulder's left ear. Of course, he had to find himself being analysed by one of the best profilers in the Bureau.
"So when it came to losing her or losing yourself, you chose ..."
"I chose a cure," Skinner says, still refusing eye contact. "I'd still choose a cure."
"Because it's a cure for Scully. And keeping Scully alive trumps anything you'd have to do for the Cancer Man. And that's what I'm uniquely positioned to understand, because you think I'm in love with ..."
Skinner interrupts him forcefully. "Agent Mulder, the Bureau has strict policies on inter-office relationships. Don't tell me anything I'd need to act on."
"Screw the policies. You don't want to hear anything that would suggest a relationship between Scully and myself because you're in love with her."
"When you're done speculating, let the door hit you on the way out."
"It fits. It's the only theory that does. You're so in love with her that you did the unthinkable to keep her alive. And you're so sure that she's in love with me that you don't want anybody to know why you've been working with the Cancer Man. You don't want to lose face. And you don't want there to be a suggestion around the water cooler that Scully is sleeping her way to the top."
Skinner's mind grasps for a straw. You're so sure … His voice is neutral when he asks, "Are you claiming your relationship with Agent Scully is purely platonic?"
Mulder grins. "I love her, sir, more than the office gossip would suggest. She's my partner, my best friend. Of course I love the hell out of her. But not, to apply the schoolyard paradigm, in that way. If I did, we wouldn't be able to work together."
Skinner puts his book down next to him. "And Agent Scully?"
"Scully alone knows what's on her mind. We both know better than to decide for her," Mulder shrugs. He looks at the A.D. "You've pulled me out of the fire so many times, I owe you some advice in return. Tell her."
"Tell her what, exactly?"
"How you feel."
"I'm her superior officer, Agent Mulder, there's no way I could broach the topic without it being sexual harassment."
"You'd find a way," Mulder replies. "Don't let Bureau policies stop you from living the life you want. With the person you want."