Being inside a sleeping bag with Scully was a mixed blessing. First, there was nothing to do with his hands that wouldn't earn him disciplinary action in any court of law in America. Second...Well, first was bad enough. It was a tight fit in there for two people, even though they'd taken off their parkas and boots.

But he was Walter Skinner, and he was in charge of the situation, and keeping Scully and himself alive was his job. He fitted himself behind her, spoon style, and put his arm around her waist, his hand pressed against her midsection, neutral territory, although his hand was large and her midsection was small, and if she shifted north or south they were going to be in big trouble.

They lay together, their bodies tense, each of them afraid to move, but Skinner was all business, adjusting his position as if she wasn't a woman but a just a means of survival, and on a basic survival level, it worked. Where he was pressed against her, a blissful warmth flooded him, his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, all the way down to his feet, where his toes had been going disconcertingly numb.

The negative aspect of the basic survival level was that his basic reproductive organ enlarged painfully, and nudged at her back like a friendly dolphin.

If she felt it, she made no sign, but then, what sign could she make? Skinner closed his eyes, flushing, glad that at least she couldn't see his face. He thought that he could never go to sleep in this position, that the awkwardness and embarrassment of the situation would keep them up all night.

He said, "Are you okay?"

She made a small murmur of assent. "I'm fine. It really is a lot warmer."

"Can you sleep?"

"Yeah. I can sleep pretty much anywhere. Always could."

Surprisingly, he found himself nodding off almost immediately, lulled by the warmth and comfort of a human body next to his, something he hadn't experienced in a long time. The last woman he had been with had been a girl he picked up in a bar, a great lay who had unfortunately had turned out to be a whore sent to ruin his life...

Ah. There you go. The memory of that incident alleviated his erection at last. Slowly, he began to relax, as much as he could, into what he thought of as a sentinel's sleep, one eye open. Maybe one eye cracked...Anyway, a light sleep, where he was never fully unaware of his surroundings or the potential danger there.

God, her hair smelled nice. Women's hair did. Just a woman, just hair, just a nice scent. Shampoo, not nature. No reason to want to bury his nose in it like a dog and inhale so deeply that he'd breathe her into his very soul. He wanted to absorb her inside him, to feel their bones melting together, to internalize whatever was the very essence of Scully, and give her his strength in return. He wanted to make his reflection in her eyes mirror who he really was, the self that no one else knew, or would value if they did know. He wanted to conquer dragons and have her admire him for it. But because she lay stiff and resistant in his arms, because she watched him with suspicion and held back so much of the truth about herself, he knew that it was never going to happen, that her eyes would always harden against the unwelcome entry of his reflection, and because of these things he and Scully would always be worlds apart, and dragons would roam the face of the earth unchecked.

Still, it gave him enormous pleasure to know that his life was sustaining hers in the cold, cold world, and that when she had been in the worst trouble of her life, he'd been the one she'd turned to.

He could feel it the instant when she fell asleep. That tight two fisted grip she had on reality loosened, and then she let go of it altogether with a long soft sigh, after which she cuddled against him, welcoming the hand that drew her closer. Their breathing, their heartbeats, gradually found a common rhythm, and they slipped in and out of consciousness as comfortably and naturally as the rise and fall of tides.

Skinner dreamed of deadly dogs made of ice with glassy fangs that pressed their slobbering faces against the window, but couldn't come in. If Scully dreamed, he knew nothing of it; she never moved except now and again to shift her legs against his, causing a delicious agony in him that made him mildly surprised that steam wasn't rising from the sleeping bag.

And once, oddly, to grip his thumb with both hands and clutch it for a long time against her stomach, the way a falling person might grab on to a rope, or perhaps the way a desperate person might clutch at straws.

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

Scully woke in the night to see the candle had burned about halfway down, the shadows of the room had moved in closer. Skinner slept heavily behind her, one hand possessively cupping her breast.

She moved it down and he muttered a protest in his sleep and repositioned his arm so that it was at his side, lying in the narrow gap between them, his hand on her hip now, but the fingers loose and nerveless.

How long had it been since someone had held her in the night, and warmed the dark and alone places she'd only discovered these past six years, since one by one she had lost so many of those she loved so dearly in the wake of the Quest? Since it had cost her her dreams, her beliefs, her hopes for the future? It was a real enough quest, and one she could never turn away from now. Mulder's knowledge and hers made her responsible, the way her medical knowledge made her responsible when someone was injured. It was an accountability she had never flinched from, even when she'd been dying because of it, but it had sucked the life out of her even if it hadn't killed her outright,and she'd lost the ability to be comforted, to be warmed, to accept a man's strong arms holding her all night. Or maybe just forgotten it...

Say what you would of Skinner, he would protect her with his life. When that first shot came, he had flung his own body over hers. When the car was out of control, he could have jumped, but instead he'd come back inside to help her. There'd been no hesitation, and no expectations of gratitude afterwards. He took his duty seriously, and his honor meant as much to him as honor had meant to...Scully sighed, feeling his arm rise and fall on her waist as she did...as much to him as it had meant to her father.

A profound depression had begun to darken her spirit. Much as she had hoped to be able to confide in Skinner, something just wouldn't let her. He hadn't seen the nightmarish things in the snow she'd seen when she'd been dragged off to be digested by some hellspawn she still didn't completely understand; he hadn't seen his own image attack him with a gun. He'd never seen an actual morphing, never even met Eddie Van Blundht, although he'd read the report. But you had to be there to appreciate something like that. What did she have to verify her story? She didn't even have a story, for God's sake. Just random memories that had been flashing around all day. All Skinner had seen were fingerprints and facts, smoking guns and hard cash, and evidence that would certainly convince her she was guilty if she'd been in his place. With all the sane, logical evidence against her, how could he be expected to believe her?

Yet she bitterly resented the fact that he didn't. In such a confusing world of shifting realities, all they had to go on was faith, faith in each other. She resented him handling her like a package, like a duty he had shouldered for Kersh and now manfully refused to put down. She resented his bullying, the way he ...what was the word for it? Patronized her? No, not patronized... Tolerated? Led on? Was he being nice to her now because he thought that this would be the way to get her to tell him the whole story he thought she was withholding?

Under it all, she detected a current of pure unexplainable irritability; something about Skinner just plain pissed her off.

Who the hell had been shooting at them from that cliff? It could only be the woman who had burst into the room that night, the woman who had looked so much like her it could have been her twin. THAT had been a nasty shock. What did she want? The money? Why was she trying to ruin her life? And why had she shot Mulder?

Poor Mulder. He'd be worried sick about her. If only there was some way to get word to him. Where was her cell phone? Why couldn't she remember anything past that morning someone called to tell her Mulder was shot? And even that was a haze. It seemed like...maybe there'd been some missing time before that, too. Times when she had become so sleepy during the afternoons she'd gone home to take a nap and then...slept all the rest of that day, and all night. God, who knew what that morph/clone/twin thing had been up to during those naps, what crimes had been committed in her name?

The sad fact was that there was probably no way out of this mess, that her career was ended, both as a doctor and as a Federal agent. Very likely she and Mulder would never work on another case again, and that made her want to just curl up and cry.

So many nights had been spent like this, feeling sorry for herself to the point of tears, but then finding sleep as a respite, getting herself together to go into the office the next day, somehow going on with her life because that's what you did, what you were expected to do. Because Mulder was there, too, doing the same thing. But now that she thought of it, on any one of those dark and lonely nights, wouldn't it have been some sort of consolation to feel this warm heavy arm around her, to hear someone else breathing in the darkness, and to know that she wasn't so alone after all?

A terrible, secret thought came into her mind then, unbidden, though she'd tried hard to forget it. What an awful time to think of it now! She made a face and groaned at the memory, and Skinner moved his arm back around her and drew her closer against his chest in his sleep. This man was born to cuddle, she thought wryly. What a waste.

It had been after that incident where he'd been found with the dead prostitute. Scully had done the autopsy, examined the evidence. She had tried to remain professional when she was doing the ever-so-careful exam on the genitals, noting the minute evidence of latex, the redness, the swelling and other indications of recent sex. He'd used a condom. The condom itself had been entered as evidence, a smear of Skinner's sperm made for a DNA comparison. Bending over the microscope, she had heard the lab techs talking quietly in the other room, laughing about something, and one of them had said, "No kidding. The son of a bitch must be hung like a bull."

And God help her, she had been turned on. From out of nowhere, she, who had learned to suppress so much of that side of herself, ignored or denied those feelings so often, had stood there pretending to look down the tube of the microscope while her body burned with a slow heat that was both pleasurable and frustrating, but above all, shameful. Not just Catholic shameful, but for God's sake, this was a murder investigation. How utterly, terribly inappropriate to think of her boss, her starched, stern faced, ever so proper boss, bare chested and thrusting on top of a woman in bed...hung like a bull...

No. No. No. It was just the proximity of a large attractive male...like less than a millimeter away...and that curious little nudge she'd felt in the small of her back earlier, well, not so little ("hung like a bull") and the fear that was corroding her common sense, and the dire danger of their situation all combining to make her have these crazy thoughts. And the drugs, too. It might take several days to get them completely out of her system. Her mind still wasn't working as clearly as usual, her full self control hadn't been restored. She would be strong now, push these thoughts away, think instead of her mother, and how good it would be to spend a few days at home when all this was over...that is, if she got bail and had some time before the trial...

Tired as she was, it was still a long time before Scully could get to sleep again. She lay thinking dark thoughts in the darkening room, and when the morning came, the snowstorm continued unabated, and there was no light to break the gloom in her heart.

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Next: Chapter Eight:The Trap