It was hard to tell exactly when the storm turned, but sometime during the early afternoon the interior of the shack began to lighten. There was no cessation in the constant whispering sound of snow, certainly no rise in the temperature-- if anything, it got colder as the ceiling of clouds lifted--but something in the air changed, something that said the weather was turning.

Scully couldn't stay out long. She thought she wanted to be alone to cry, but once outside, the sudden slap of the cold air seemed to fortify her. She leaned against the side of the house, her arms wrapped around herself, and watched her frigid breath take shape in the air, After a few minutes she knew she would have to go back in and face him. How, she couldn't imagine. Back in there with S kinner, his hands on her under her jacket, she had been so aroused that it had almost been too late to stop. And he knew it. He had to have known it; she'd kissed him like some hormone crazed teenager. It had to be the most humiliating moment of her life.

She thought back over all she and Mulder had been through. No... Eddie Van Blundht; that had been the lowest note in her litany of humiliations. Even worse than Ed, or that small town sheriff... Each time she let a man get close to her even in terms of proximity, she ended up beaten senseless, drugged, humiliated-- and now her boss, Skinner, for Gods sake, had kissed her, and felt her up, not because he wasn't an honorable man, a gentleman, but because she had practically begged for it--

She closed her eyes and rocked herself, groaning a breath of white smoke as she pushed her back against the wall of the house as hard as she could. Mulder would never, ever, ever let her hear the end of this if he found out. He would laugh his ass off, then tease her, then smirk at Skinner, and she would just have to bite the bullet one more time, keep a straight face while he had that...that expression he wore. Once again he would display that maddening freedom of feeling, of decision making with his own best interests always taking priority, that she had always so admired, even envied, in him. Mulder wore his passion on his sleeve in bright colors for all the world to see, while even under her dark somber clothes Scully wore plain white underwear most of the time.

How the hell was she going to go back in there and face him again? Skinner had always treated her with respect, no matter what else he'd said or done. Even last night, in the sleeping bag together, he'd downplayed any sexual connotations, , and now, now he would never look at her the same way again. She hadn't realized how much that image he had of her meant to her until now that it was gone. Tears came to her eyes, but she blinked them back.

Damn him! He'd just been trying to call her bluff, just been trying to piss her off, and she'd kissed him like...like...like...

She banged the back of her head against the house a couple of times, feverish with self loathing. Where the hell had all those erotic feelings come from? She'd held everything in check for so long, been so collected, so cool, so in control of the situation, until she felt his mouth on hers, and then because it was so unexpected, because she'd been shutting her eyes t o all the sexual possibilities of their situation, it caught her totally off guard, and all resolve collapsed, all anger turned to uncontrollable need; now how could she ever look at him again, or think of him without remembering how he'd made her feel?

A sudden thought occurred to her. Oh, no. Oh, no.

Scully hid her face in her hands, horrified by the flash of insight. The real reason she was so upset with him was because he'd made her lose control, because the worst thing she could imagine in the world was losing control of her feelings, and that was exactly why she had been so angry with Skinner in the first place. All the time she'd been accusing him of being a control freak it was because she saw in him what she hated so much in herself.

Oh, God.

Her teeth were chattering so hard she was afraid she'd chip them; on a purely biological basis, she had to go back inside. Dragging her new self knowledge like a bowling ball chained to her ego, she crawled back over the window sill.

Skinner was sitting by the fire, staring into it, his expression so full of misery that when she first looked at him she forgot everything else but a stab of compassion and shame. He must have been so disappointed in her.

She cleared her throat and he looked at her quickly. "Pretty cold out there," she said.

"I think we can keep the fire going until the storm passes."

"It's not snowing so much now," she offered, coming to sit on the floor beside him.

He looked at her with eyes that couldn't shutter out the pain. "Scully..."

"Sir," she interrupted, putting her fingers on his sleeve, away from his body, "Listen. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for everything. I...I just can't remember what happened to me. Back in Georgetown, I was getting dizzy spells, and I went to a doctor on a visit to my brother's, a specialist, and he gave me a series of tests and that's how I know the tumor is in remission. His name is Jerald Ambrose. I've got his number at home. You can contact him when we get back and see my test results. He said the dizzy spells might be because I had low blood pressure, but my department physical showed I was in good health. But I got sleepy a lot, and slept sometimes in the afternoons and all night. Now I'm thinking I must have been drugged even then. I woke up in that motel room and I couldn't remember anything. Nothing. So I tried to call Mulder but his phone just rang and rang, and then I called the Gunmen, trying to find him. It was Byers who answered, who told me what happened, who figured out where I was, and who suggested I contact you." She paused for a breath. "I think I remember that backpack being in my room. I think I heard people making love in the other room. Maybe Dave was her lover, maybe her partner. I swear I don't know. I know how lame it all sounds but I just can't remember. And I don't expect you to believe me. How could I expect you to believe me? I know it was unreasonable, but it just...it hurt me and it frightened me, and I thought if I couldn't convince you, how the hell could I ever convince anyone of the truth?"

He said, "Well, now that I've had some time to think of it, I can see some big holes in logic if someone is trying to blame you for these things. For instance, you were with me almost every minute night before last, and hardly had time to sneak out and stuff a full grown man into the trunk of the car, much less cut the brake linings just enough so that the fluid would leak out on our ascent up that road. And even if you'd done those things, you wouldn't have arranged to be in the car when it went over the cliff. I've got to pretty much rule out the partner theory, too, since whoever was shooting at us from that hill seems to have wanted you dead more than me."

"I don't know. Was she shooting to kill us or just to scare us away from the car so she could get the money?"

Skinner raised his fingers to the thin red welt on his neck where the bullet had grazed him. "My bet is on shooting to kill."

"Someone must have been passing themself off as me, and trying to discredit me, and that's not the worst of it..."

"What?" he prompted gently. "What's the worst of it, Scully?"

She couldn't meet his eyes, but stared at his sleeve as she spoke. "You're having trouble believing someone is running around here who looks just like me and trying to kill us. I know that this ‘someone' exists because I saw her that night in the motel room. She pointed a gun at me. She called you names, she called me names. She hit you with that chair. But she didn't kill me. I threw a lamp at her and she ran away. Why go through all this, Skinner? Why would she want to discredit me, make it look like I had shot Mulder and stolen money and fled the country? What sense does that make? I mean, what could she hope to gain from it?"

"To discredit the X-files, maybe?"

Scully's voice held more resignation than bitterness. "I'm not the X-Files. It's Mulder. He'd just get a new partner and go on. They've never seen me as much of a threat except that hurting me would piss off Mulder."

"Maybe..."

She waited, but he was silent. She said, "Maybe what?" He looked into her face. "Scully, I was once approached with an offer I couldn't refuse. A kind of blackmail. I went along with it...I could have lost everything. But it was just a way of getting a hold over me so that I was just as dirty as the Cigarette Smoking Man, in my own way. Most of what they've done to me has been an attempt to discredit me, one way or another. Maybe they knew you wouldn't go along with it like the rest of us."

Scully said spontaneously, "Oh, no, sir. Not you."

He gave her a strange look, half gratitude, half denial. "Maybe they were trying to get at Mulder through you, and set up the whole elaborate ruse to make it look like your thinking had deteriorated to the point of insanity, and that would be their excuse in getting rid of Mulder."

"Then why wasn't Mulder killed? What a perfect opportunity for his enemies to take him out and get off scot free, with me taking the blame for it."

Skinner's shoulders moved up and down briefly. "I've wondered that myself. I saw the tape, and it really did look like..." "Like what?"

The fire crackled noisily, and Skinner fed it some more pieces of wood. "It looked like Mulder was about to hit you. But...Mulder would never hit...YOU."

"Not and live, no."

"No, Scully..." He was looking at her with revelation in his eyes. "He said, ‘what have you done--' and then we couldn't make out the words. What if he was saying, ‘What have you done with Scully?'"

Her fingers gripped his wrist in excitement. "You do believe me, then?"

"That's not the point. It--"

"That IS the point?"

He shook his head ruefully. "No, Scully. The point is, I don't care anymore. I can't get my hands on the facts, I can't make sense of your story or the story the evidence is trying to tell us, of the money or the dead body in the car or whoever it was that broke a chair over my head the other night. But it just doesn't matter right now. I'm on your side.

That's all that matters. I know I made an ass of myself and I'm sorry. Extenuating circumstances, my ego, whatever caused it. I know I keep acting like your enemy. But before God, Scully, I am not."

"Thank you," she said softly. "It means a lot to hear you say that. But it's still not enough. I just want you to believe me."

He looked into her eyes. Scully felt a rush of sensation, imagined his hands on her breasts again, and felt the color rising in her face. She bent her head and closed her eyes to hide it. Please, God, make me a better person than this...

They were silent again. The snow had hushed itself, and the room was even lighter now, but colder, too. There was a creaking sound as if something was moving around on the wooden roof. Scully looked up, startled. "What is that?"

"Snowdrift. Enough of it piles up and then it slides down under its own weight."

Skinner got up and stretched, and Scully looked at him despite her better intentions. He was a magnificently built man, those wide shoulders and tapered hips and that perfect ass. Scully! s he chided herself, and then thought stubbornly, well, it IS.

She knew she was Eve in the garden now; having tasted of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, she was going to have t o bear the awful burden of sexual awareness from now on.

He looked down at her. "Scully, it occurs to me that maybe the reason we can't make sense of this situation is because there isn't any sense to be made of it."

"I don't understand."

"Well, look. Whoever shot Mulder obviously didn't have a plan. Maybe it was someone trying to pass herself off as you and he caught on and confronted her. Then why didn't she shoot him and kill him? She had the gun, she had the opportunity, she had you tucked away as the culprit, drugged up so you wouldn't remember what happened. She knew you couldn't defend yourself with witnesses or even a clear memory of where you'd been or what you'd been doing." He looked thoughtful. "She fired the gun three times and only really hit him once, and didn't do so much damage with that shot. On the tape it looked like she just panicked."

"So she didn't want to kill him."

"If she wanted to simply take over your life, then why keep you alive? Why not kill you and just assume your life? Why go to all this elaborate ruse of discrediting you first?"

Scully rubbed her temples wearily. "I don't know. It just goes round and round and I can't seem to get a grip on it."

He crouched in front of her. "Maybe that's because there's no grip to get. I saw those x-rays. Or whatever they were. I saw the circles drawn that indicated the cancer was spreading at a rapid rate and they told me the frontal lobes and the temporal lobes were both involved."

"So you think this clone person might be going insane?"

"Well...it's the only thing that makes sense of so many things that DON'T make sense. Someone going crazy might start a half dozen brilliant plans and then be unable to see them through, or start some complicated scheme and then get lost herself in its complications."

There was something overhead that groaned again, and Scully twitched, rolling her eyes up, her nerves still raw. "You don't think the roof will collapse, do you?"

"No, it's too steeply pitched, designed for that. The snow will slide off. The worst that could happen is one of those trees might lose a limb or something, but we're safe in here even if that happens."

"I don't feel safe," she said, without thinking first, and saw the impact in his eyes. He stood up again.

"Well, you are," he told her. "Safe as houses, as the saying goes."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

He waved a hand at her. "Don't. If we keep apologizing to each other we're never going to be able to talk about anything else."

"The storm is breaking up," she told him, hoping to change the subject. "I could feel it when I was outside. The weather is finally starting to change for the better"

He half smiled down at her. "I feel it, too," he said.

**************

They boiled water, made stew for lunch, and watched the shadows falling across the room until it was time to light the last candle. They didn't have much to say to each other, each one thinking the exact same thing, the cold, the sleeping bag; Skinner kept stoking the fire, trying to make it warmer in the room, trying to avoid the inevitable. It stopped snowing altogether at about four in the afternoon, but then it was too late to try to l eave the shack; the dark could catch them out there with the unseen enemy who might or might not still be looking for them.

With the onset of evening they were both increasingly nervous, moving further apart instead of closer together, and still the darkness crept into the room, and the cold, and the wind began to rise, fluttering the velvet curtain and blowing out the fire a couple of times.

When their breath became white frost in the air, when they finally had to let the fire go out and close the door, Skinner finally said, "Scully...it's dropping below freezing in here."

She nodded, keeping her chin down as if trying to hide the shuddering of her body. She took off her shoes slowly, as if dreading what was to come. Skinner felt sorry for her but he didn't know what to say.

Finally she got into the sleeping bag and looked up at him with such worried, tormented eyes, he said, "Look, I can sleep out here. I'll be all right. I'm not tired anyway."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not. It's not snowing now and someone could possible find this place and I really should stand guard anyway."

"Skinner," she said softly. "It's all right. Really. I'll trust you, if you'll trust me."

The firelight in her eyes was his undoing. "Just for awhile," he said. "Just until we warm up a little."

*************************

Night and dark. The slow creeping groan of the snow as it slid closer and closer to the edge of the house, then sounds like footsteps that were clumps of snow falling from the angle of the roof to the side of the house. Skinner checked the door, checked the window, even went outside briefly, though it was so dark that with the candle he felt like a moving target.

He tried to kill time, hoping she would fall asleep. But the cold finally won out, and he pulled off his boots and parka and unzipped the bag, waking her briefly, and lay down behind her, and zipped himself in.

Night and dark. The flicker of the candle, and strange creaking sounds of the freeze outside, shifting, sliding, dripping, crackling. The roof groaning under its burden of snow.

She was shaking all over, from nerves or cold he couldn't tell and didn't want to know. Where their bodies touched, his chest to her back, his upper thighs to the backs of hers, the chill gradually dissipated. Still, they lay stiffly, afraid to touch anywhere except where was strictly necessary. But the cold was more intense than their embarrassment, and when Skinner felt the fine tremors of her shivering, he put his arm around her and drew her against him with a firm hand, making decisive movements, nothing slow or sensual about them. All business, no indication that anything had ever happened between them before this.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded, her hair tickling his chin. "It feels colder than it did last night, doesn't it?"

"It probably is. The cloud cover kept the temperature up a little, like a low ceiling in a room. Now it's clearing, and we'll probably get a really hard freeze."

"But we'll be able to get out of here tomorrow, won't we?"

"Yes. Definitely tomorrow, at first light."

It was a goal to be prayed for, just to make it until morning. It was heaven and hell to lie here beside her, knowing he might never hold her again like this...

Like tonguing a sore tooth, Skinner could not let go of one idea she'd put in his head earlier. He said, "So it was Byers who suggeseted that you call me?"

"I think so." He could feel her voice through her back, a pleasant vibration. "Maybe I suggested it to him. I told you, I don't remember."

Silence. Sleep retreating coyly. She said, "They never doubted my story, not once. They believed me right away."

"Yes," he said gently, "But Scully, aren't those the same three men who believe that Men in Black is a documentary?"

She gave a little laugh, and said, "You never stop surprising me, Skinner."

He chuckled, and they both relaxed a little. He moved his hand around, trying to find the valley between them without making it seem like he was patting her down for a weapon. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Just lie still," she said, as if soothing a child. "Go to sleep."

"Sorry."

"And quit apologizing."

"Sorr..." He chuckled again, and she stifled a giggle and said, "You know, this situation really is too ridiculous for words."

Skinner's left arm was going to sleep, and he tried to position it under his head, folded for a pillow, his cheek resting on the inside of his elbow. But what seemed to work the night before now cut off the circulation, or poked her. He unzipped the bag a little to see if he could move around without bumping into her each time.

Feeling the rush of cool air, Scully rolled over on her back and looked up at him, "What the hell are you doing?"

Skinner raised himself up on his elbow, reaching over her to zip the bag up again. He looked down into her drowsy eyes, the blue so clear he could even distinguish the color in the candlelight, when the rest of the room was in black and white. That was his undoing. He had never seen anything as beautiful as her face at that moment outlined by the soft spread of her hair, the darker color in her cheeks as she flushed when she saw him staring down at her, her mouth a little swollen as if he had already been kissing her for hours.

Skinner felt himself moving forward and tried to stop but the most he could do was constrain himself to kissing her lightly on her poor bruised cheek. He'd wanted to do that since it happened. Then to not kiss her again seemed like an unforgivable crime against nature; her mouth was shaped for it, so soft and yielding under his. To just let her lie there, disturbing but undisturbed, was impossible.

He brought his mouth down on hers gently. Once, twice. Her eyes blinked like a sleepy child's, the lashes fluttering down, and then with a small cry of desperation she pushed her arm from the bag and put it around his neck and pulled him down to her.

Everything that happened after that missed every textbook definition of lovemaking; they had waited so long, put it off past the point of common sense, that when the dam broke, there was no time to be skillful or patient about it.

She opened her mouth instantly and moved her lips against his, inviting his tongue. Skinner thrust it in her, moving a hand over her breasts roughly, possessively, with false bravado. He felt her curves, the stiff nipples under his palms, the elegant radius of her ribs. He felt the heat underneath her clothes, her heat, the heat that burned upwards for no one but him.

It was too cold, too cramped to unbutton her blouse or pull off his jeans. He had to unzip his pants and extract his cock carefully, pull down her sweatpants and the panties beneath just as far as her knees; she couldn't open her legs wide, but as he moved on top of her she spread them as far as she could and he cupped her groin and found the small ridge of flesh between her legs with his middle finger, wiggled it furiously until she tried to reach down under the blanket and find him to bring him inside her.

He found his own way, lifting his weight, repositioning it with care over the naked parts of her, so that his cock was like a pole vault, probing at her a little more roughly than he wanted, but it was hard to negotiate under the insulation, the clothes, the sheer weight of the cold itself.

Then...he was sliding down into her, pushing her lower lips apart, stretching her wide to accommodate all of his thick penis until she finally held the full length him in her snug clasp.

Skinner withdrew halfway and slid forward again. They both gave a little moan, their voices in ancient harmony, bass and tenor. He did it again, again. Scully moved her hips in small circles as he found his rhythm and began to fuck her harder, faster. Harder. Faster. She turned her face away, her eyes staring at nothing, wide, a lmost frightened, and he kissed the chilly skin of her throat. He managed to find her hand and hold it on the floor just above her head, and her fingers kneaded his restlessly as he bucked his hips up and down on top of her, driving his cock to force her open, pulling her thighs wider apart as she fought her own clothes in an instinctive need to wrap her legs around his waist so he could have full access. Skinner longed to reach under her and grasp her buttocks to control her position while he pistoned his cock deep into her, but he couldn't get his arms under her.

Scully whispered urgently, "Don't stop. Please, don't, don't stop."

He had no intention of stopping. He was screwing her and as far as he was concerned it would go on forever. The slide of skin on skin was generating so much heat that it blazed up his groin to his belly, his chest, his brain, and set his heart on fire. His penis felt impossibly huge as it pumped in and out at a furious rate, and Scully was groaning with pleasure and increasing need. The sounds she made encouraged him to heroic heights; he was master of the universe, god of worlds, he had chased this woman down, spread her legs and fucked her, and she was submitting to him with helpless pleasure. There was nothing else after that. If the devil had appeared at that moment with a contract to keep her, nothing in the world could have saved Skinner's soul. The sense of power was overwhelming, and he only saved himself from total madness by opening his eyes and looking down at her face.

She was looking up at him, her eyes just slits of liquid blue, her lips parted to how her teeth, her hair damp with sweat across her forehead...

"Skinner..." she moaned.

It was the voice of surrender, the come-cry of a woman who was about to sail beyond her control into some other world, and he heard himself saying her name in response, with the same falling away sound, the same surrender, the most vulnerable moment of human existence, when one joining ends and another begins.

Then she was struggling wildly and he was trying to hold her down with his thrusting as they both wrestled their way to a sudden soul shattering climax. She convulsed, clutching at him desperately, making sounds deep in her throat that kept him hard when he thought he was completely spent. He kept stroking into her, even after her shuddering slowed, even after he knew there was nothing left in him but hollowed out desire filling with tenderness. Even after he pulled out of her, he pushed his hand down between them and found her clitoris again, just to feel her whole body quiver and dance at the rolling of his fingertip. Make it last, make it last, because it may be the last chance you ever have to sleep with her like this, and she has to remember it, as you will, forever...

Slowly spiraling back to earth, she was still kissing his face, and he put his mouth on hers and kissed her one last time.

Then they moved apart as far as the sleeping bag would allow. The heat dissipated a little, but didn't leave a chill in its wake, trapped as it was between them. It was so comforting it was soporific, and within minutes they were both asleep.

***********************

Chapter 10