Mulder put his face in his hands and shook
his head. "Jeffrey Spender. I don't get it."
Skinner took a careful breath. He didn't
want to elaborate, not right now. Mulder would force him to, though,
he was certain.
This wasn't right.
"He can provide physical evidence of the kind
of torture these people have perpetrated. The scars he has. . ."
Mulder looked up. The shrewdness of
his look startled Skinner, and for a moment he felt like Mulder could read
his mind. "Can he prove how he got the way you say he is? Does
he have medical records that say he was tortured by government forces trying
to turn him into an alien hybrid?"
"Of course he doesn't, Mulder. But he'll
testify to that effect."
Mulder waved it off, that calm, sardonic smile
again curving his mouth. "It doesn't matter. Bring him on.
Maybe if we bury them in unsubstantiated evidence, it'll start to feel
substantiated." He delicately rubbed his forehead, scratching the
wound there. "But you have to tell me one thing first."
Skinner braced himself. "What's that?"
"You explained to me how it happens Spender's
not dead in spite of a gun shot point-blank into his face. You haven't
explained exactly how you and Scully discovered this."
"I told you. He came to us."
"Why?"
It was Skinner's turn to put his face in his
hands. He didn't know what to say. He was shit for a lawyer,
and at this moment he felt like he was shit for a friend, as well.
He looked at Mulder's patient face. "This is not stuff you need to
hear from me. You need to hear it from Scully."
Mulder's eyes narrowed. Skinner knew
that look. It was the look Mulder got when he put two and two together
and got seventeen and somehow it was the right answer. He had made
the leap, somehow. "It's about William."
Skinner said nothing.
"Nobody's said anything to me about William.
Not even Scully." Mulder's voice was measured and even. But
Skinner knew him too well to interpret that as calm. "Something's
happened to William."
Gritting his teeth, Skinner said, "You need
to talk to Scully."
Mulder shook his head, once. "Is he
alive?"
"He's alive."
"Then what happened?"
"I said you need to talk to Scully."
But Mulder was shaking his head again, the
look in his eyes strange and distant. "No. I think I need to
hear it from anybody but Scully."
Skinner leaned back in his chair. Mulder
looked up, directly at him, with that look, that look he'd had when Scully
had been in the hospital dying of cancer. It hurt just to see it,
that awful, unguarded, inconsolable pain.
He knew. How did he know?
"Spender came after him." Skinner began,
not sure why he spoke at all. "He had some crazy idea he could do
something to William to make him be . . . something other than what he
was. To change him."
Mulder's mouth had tightened. He nodded
stiffly, carefully.
Skinner went on. "It wasn't the first
time someone came after William. Scully was afraid for herself, for
her mother, for me, for Doggett, for Reyes, but most of all for William."
Mulder's gaze swept up toward the ceiling.
He blinked a few times, then said through thinned lips, in a carefully
controlled voice, "She gave him up."
How the hell did he do that? The intuitive
leaps had always floored Skinner. But in this case he was grateful.
It saved him having to say the words. Instead, as Mulder's head turned,
as his eyes met Skinner's again, Skinner only nodded.
Mulder looked away. Skinner looked at
the table, unsure what else to say. Maybe he should just say nothing
at all. But then Mulder made a noise, and Skinner looked up.
Mulder had his lower lip between his teeth,
and the pain in his eyes had overflowed onto his face, the tears gleaming
in the dim light.
"Mulder--" Skinner ventured.
Mulder shook his head. He closed his
eyes, gathered himself with a visible effort. Leaning forward over
the table, he covered his face with his hands.
Skinner just sat there looking at the table.
He didn't know what else to do. The room was silent for some time,
except for Mulder's odd, jerky breathing as he brought himself back under
control.
Finally he lowered his hands and looked up
at Skinner. His red-rimmed eyes held no emotion any more. "What
else can you tell me?"
"Not a lot. Reyes handled most of it
with her. I do know they made sure all the adoption records were
sealed, then they hacked into the system and destroyed them. She
wanted to do everything in her power to make him disappear." Mulder
nodded. His blank expression made Skinner nervous. "Mulder,
you can't hold this against her."
"No," said Mulder firmly. "I don't.
She did the right thing. He's just a baby. Two, maybe three
records to destroy and he'll be damn near impossible to trace."
Skinner nodded. "They took care of all
of it." He paused, looking at Mulder, trying to read the tight, sealed-off
expression. "Are you okay?"
Mulder didn't answer. He was staring
at the table. Suddenly he said, in a pale voice, "She's so much stronger
than I am."
"What do you mean?"
"I never could have done it. I would
have died to keep him safe, but I never would have even considered giving
him up, because it would have devastated her. But she did it herself.
Devastated herself. To protect him. How could she have done
that?"
The emotion was far too thick in here, and
Skinner had never been comfortable with emotion. But he'd held Scully
when they'd found Mulder dead, let her soak his shirt with her tears.
Looking at Mulder now, he realized he'd grown to love them both, in his
own, fumbling, inadequate way. So he said, carefully, "The same way
she let you go."
Mulder looked up. His mouth moved oddly,
as if trying to smile, but he made that strange noise again. Skinner
wondered if he would have just broken down and cried, if he'd been alone.
Or with anyone but Skinner. "It was my crusade, but she's lost the
most. It's not right."
Skinner could say nothing to that. He
tapped his fingers on the manila folder holding the information on Jeffrey
Spender. "I think we're done here."
"Yeah." Mulder's voice was choked and
breathy. Skinner picked up the folder and left the room.
END.