Clean by Elizabeth Gerber

By Elizabeth Gerber

Rating: R
Pairing: M/Sk
Spoilers: SR-819, Biogenesis, 6th Extinction, Amor Fati
Warnings: m/m thoughts, language, some vile non-sexual bodily fluids
Archive: Basement, Waltertorture, Requited--yes.  Others please ask
first. Also available with a cover image at my website
http://Skinner.Mulder.com.
Feedback: If you please.
Notes: Many thanks are due to rac and m. butterfly for their speedy,
exhaustive betas.  My gratitude especially to rac for your input
along the way--I don't think this story would have gotten finished
without your encouragement.
Summary: Skinner needs to feel clean.
~~~~~~~~~
Watching him, watching  him in that room, in that small, horrible
room, in that tiny, sad gown, seeing that he was even more pathetic
than the gown, I didn't ever think I'd feel clean again. The weight
of my actions and my inactions weighed down my hands as I worked them
together, rubbing them in a futile attempt to make them clean. My
deceptions, self-preservational as they were, gummed up my eyes and
my throat such that I wanted to cough to get rid of the feeling.
I wanted to leave that hospital, wanted to leave and never come
back, invoke the chain of command, the official distance that I could
wield at will, do anything to avoid having to look at Fox Mulder
disintegrating in front of my eyes.  More than that, though, I wanted
to stay.  I had to stay, to save my soul.  To save Mulder.
When Scully left to seek answers on the coast of Africa, I realized
that I had an opportunity, a chance to seek absolution for the sins I
had committed against my friendship with Mulder.  And, yes, though
they have often thought me an enemy, I have always hoped I could
serve as a friend to both Mulder and Scully.
Scully is a good woman, a fine agent, and her current hard feelings
toward me are entirely justified.  She called me a liar; I am a liar,
but I try not to lie to myself.  While it is the truth that I
consider Mulder a good man and an excellent agent, it is also the
truth that he holds a string, the other end of which is tied around
things very deep inside of me.  My balls, my heart, my gut.
I've tried to deny his pull, his power over me, for years, but I
can't deny it in the end.  I...love Fox Mulder, and he rightfully
hates me for what I've done.  I think that the next time Krycek comes
knocking on my door with his demands and his gadget of death, I'll
tell him to do what he must.
Watching Mulder stumble around in a haze of pain and confusion hurts
more than the nanocytes did.  I had thought to compromise myself in
order to buy my life so that I could be around to help Mulder.  If I
had known what would come, if the gift of foresight had been mine, I
would have stopped this weeks ago.  Now all I can do is try to stop
it from getting any worse.
~~~
When they finally let me in to see him, my balls crawled up inside
me.  My heart wanted to stop.  Jesus Christ.  Whatever this was, it
went way beyond his mind. His body looked like it was being eaten up
from the inside: he was thinner--already, his skin pale and clammy-
looking, his eyes over-bright and at the same time frighteningly
dead.  I didn't think he could move, yet all the time he was
contained motion.  He could see me, I'm sure of that, but it seemed
as though he couldn't comprehend the sight of me, as thought he were
viewing me broken down into my particulate molecules.
Who could know what was seeing, when he was so incapable of
communication?  When he leapt at me, all silence and surprise, I was
glad at first.  I thought, if he can fight me, he can fight this. And
when he touched me, a thrill from the energy running through him
shook me, but suddenly it became too much.  The world started to turn
grey around the edges, and I had to scramble out from under him.
I felt his eyes lock onto the trickle of blood from my nose, and he
screamed--screamed like an animal in hopeless pain, a sound no human
being should be moved to make.  His scream pulled that string inside
me, lacerating me in a way only a whole, sane Mulder could heal. That
I was already bleeding felt true and right.
When I found the message he had left for me on a tag from one of
those hospital gowns, I felt even dirtier than I had before.  Tears
sprung into my eyes as though I had been punched in the face.  That
Mulder, a man who was usually attached to either a cell phone or a
lap top, a man who could infuriate me in beautiful English, should be
reduced to two words traced in blood was more wrong that I could hope
to communicate.
But he had asked, and I would help him if it killed me.  And I knew
there was an inside chance that it would.
~~~
The moments by his bedside took on a surrealistic quality at this
point.   Even now, I can see the white bed, his breaking-down body
ensconced in a regular hospital room.  His eloquent eyes, asking me
for everything.  Giving him my pen and my hand to write on.  He was
supposed to be violently psychotic, remember; he could have stuck
that pen through my hand.  The feeling of his chilled, bony fingers
on my skin, the slightly oily feeling he left on my fingers.
Soon after, then, lifting him into the wheelchair Kritchgau had
brought.  The silken coolness of his thighs which the brief gown
failed to cover.  How exposed and vulnerable he looked in that chair.
The breath-stopping, instant-ulcer-inducing horror of injecting him
with fuck knows what.   The calm, the thank-God awareness that arose
in his eyes...and then the death knell of his warning.
I've lost my nerve for that renegade cloak and dagger shit.  My
heart beat threateningly in my chest as I bluffed my way past Fowley
by pulling rank.   I was plunged down into horror once again with the
realization that Mulder could read minds.   He shouldn't have been
allowed to see into mine, into the dark murkiness, into the filthy
wrongness of the things I've done.
But he knew.  In such clinical terms  he acknowledged that I'd been
compromised.  He took my shame and placed it out in the light.  He
knew, he knew what I was afraid of.  He knew, and however much I
searched, I couldn't find the hate in his eyes.   He didn't need me,
but I understood that.  I understand the vagaries of usefulness.  I
took a deep breath and released it,  felt it making me lighter,
cleaner-felt it pulling a layer of dirt from me.
~~~
A line from Walt Whitman comes to my mind, sizzling through with an
image of Mulder's face, drawn and intense.  "To gather the minds of
men out of their brains as you encounter them-to gather the love out
of their hearts."  I took a literature class in probably 1973, and
something about Whitman's poetry latched into my twenty-one-year-old
brain.  It was dark at times, without being hopeless.   It
communicated confidence, fearlessness in solitude.  I was alone a lot
then-couldn't deal with people terribly well.  I got over that
introversion by the time I graduated, but in many ways, I've returned
to that state now.  However I have a hope inside me, a yearning for
something bright and pure.
In any case, that line comes back to me now as I consider my
blindness to the potential impact of Mulder's new abilities.  I
feared that he would see the thoughts in my mind, and he did-
revealing me in his light.  But I never thought, never considered
that he might see into my heart as well.  If I had known, I might
have been able to hide it from him, but as it was, I never had a
chance.
Kritchgau left us alone in the hospital room while he went to
smuggle in the television monitors and testing equipment.  Mulder's
eyes were crackling with the awareness the Phenytoin granted him, his
body a clumsy avatar for the spirit inside him.  I wanted to inch
away from him, and at the same time I wanted to make him lay back,
wash his face, pull up his blanket.  I couldn't do those things, but
I could look at him and feel the yearning welling up behind my eyes.
To his sensitized mind, I must have been shouting.
"I wish I'd known."  I heard him say the words with a kind of
wistful sadness, but I had no idea what he was talking about.  "I
wish I'd known you felt that way before it was all too late.  Before
this all went to hell."
"Mulder, what the fuck are you talking about?  Too late for what?"
"Too late to realize that the person I've been wanting all this time
wanted me the same way.  Too late for any possibility of life and
love."
I responded ridiculously.  "Love?"   Once again, in the light of his
knowledge, all my fears were pointless.   He loved me.  He wanted me.
"No, Mulder, it's not too late.  It doesn't-"
"I think it's a little beyond that, for me."  He laughed sickly and
gestured at his wasted body in the hospital gown.  "It's too bad.  I
think...I think it could have been nice.  To have a home.  To have a
future.  With you.  I never thought that anyone would want to love me
with no strings attached."
His voice trailed off, and I feared that he was slipping back into
his uncommunicative nowhere land.  I walked over to him and placed a
hand on his shoulder.  He turned toward me, and I saw that he was
aware.  I saw something in his eyes that I had never detected in
Mulder before-I saw fear.  He knew the possibilities of where he was
heading.  He knew that it looked damn bad.
With him living in a world where random thoughts and feelings
constantly bombarded him, I wanted to surround him in something that
might not hurt him to hear.  Slipping my arm around his shoulders, I
perched on the bed next to him and shared with him the images I had
teased myself with for years.  Visions of him reading on the couch in
my apartment, the two of us making dinner in my small kitchen,
sitting in the moonlight in each other's arms, our legs entwined in
the twisted sheets of my over-large bed.   Kissing his neck, his
chest, his chest slick with sweat, running my hands down his slim
hips, pushing that silky hair out of his eyes.
Mulder relaxed fractionally, leaning against me, accepting what I
could give him until Kritchgau returned with his tests.
~~~
I was beginning to feel better then, not exactly pristine, but then
it had been a long time since I'd had that luxury.   I felt like I
had a prayer of one day being able to look Mulder or Scully in the
eye without needing to look away.  I should have known that it
wouldn't be as simple as thinking some happy thoughts in Mulder's
general direction.
At one point, he began to get more agitated.   "There's something
you don't know about Krycek.  You're not just his tool you're
his...experiment.  The nanocytes are his, created by someone he owns.
They're his edge; they're the reason the Consortium has left him
alive.  You're the first one he's let live with them inside for any
length of time.  Usually he kills them after, after a few days.
You're his ticket, Skinner."
Then he drifted off again, staring at nothing, or the ceiling tiles,
or the air currents-I don't know.  I stayed with him, trying to
protect him for a few hours, but Fowley came back, glaring at me with
her lynx eyes, accusing me of things she was far more guilty of than
I.
Finally, the drug, our goddamn trump card, proved too much for
Mulder.  Either Kritchgau hit him with far too much, or we'd done it
too many times, or maybe Mulder's body was just weakening beyond the
point of being able to handle the jolt to his system.   No matter, he
was seizing, writhing on the bed, and the whole miasma of dirt and
guilt that I had begun to shed settled right back onto me again.
White-clad arms pushed me out of Mulder's room and warned me off, as
through I were an errant child.
Seeing no point in grappling with the hospital personnel, I returned
to my office at the Hoover to try to regain some sense of control
over Bureau matters, even if control over Mulder's situation was
beyond me.  I am not accustomed to feeling a driving need to explain
myself, to defend myself. Demanding explanations from my agents,
seeking the flaws in a narrative, driving the offense-these things
are familiar to me.  Of course I had barely finished my coffee when
Scully appeared in her safari clothes and in full pit-bull mode.
I tried to take a firm stance, but before I knew it, I was offering
explanations.  How long ago was it that Mulder was lost in the
Triangle?  I remember that Scully was wild; I was calm-the way it
should be.  Now here she was assuring me that Mulder was not dying,
that he was very much alive, that she would be able to help him.  But
then she hadn't actually seen him since his first day in the
hospital, when he was still capable of pacing the room like a caged
animal.
~~~
Then the man who couldn't even sit up in bed on his own was gone
from the hospital.  Checked out by his mother, of all things!  The
mother he'd cried over when she lay ill and dying, but who hadn't
deigned to visit Mulder after any of his many injuries.  I knew of
Mulder's doubts about his mother's allegiances, perhaps even his own
parentage, so I was certainly suspicious of who had truly been behind
Mulder's relocation.
I couldn't share my suspicions with Scully, couldn't put her into
more danger than she would find on her own.  I knew that I had to
find Mulder myself, using my ever-wonderful unofficial channels.  I
tried to side-step Scully's demands and exclamations.  In the end,
though, I had no choice but to reveal to her that I was compromised.
The look on her face made me feel like I was a member of a species
less than human, and a bad-smelling one at that.
Turning away from her,  I headed for my office and began making
phone calls.  I called the man I had used in the past to reach the
smoking bastard, saying the proper words to communicate my desire for
a meeting.  I had no way of knowing when or if the call would prove
fruitful, so I had to move on to more indirect routes.
I called Mulder's three geek friends.  They may not look like much,
but they know what they're doing.  Their knowledge had helped save
Mulder's life before, and I hoped they would come through again.  I'm
aware that they're uncomfortable working with me, a Fed they don't
perceive as being too clearly on their side.  I understand their need
for caution because, honestly, I'm surprised they haven't been
terminally silenced already.
I could tell right away that Frohike was spooked.  "There's
something dark going down, man.  He's gone beyond where we can trace
him.  I'll have my eye on the radar, Skinner; I'll call you if I pick
anything up."
Frohike passed the phone to Byers.  "Mr. Skinner, I wish we had more
information to give you.  If you have any, say, unofficial government
contacts, I suggest you try to reach them.  They may be able to
assist you where we can't."
I was about to hang up when Langly came on the line.  "Just get him
back, Skinner.  Dude owes me a drink."  I wondered if Mulder had any
clue how many people truly cared about him.
~~~
Just as I was hanging up, Krycek pushed his way into my office.  I
heard Kim's indignant exclamations, but I told her it was fine.  I
asked her to let no one disturb us, particularly Agent Scully, and I
shut the door, sealing us in.  The man standing on the other side of
my desk was pure fury, scarcely pent-up.
"Skinner, I'm going to make one thing very cl-"
The phone rang, cutting off his hissed warning.  Scully, on my
direct line of course, calling about some book.  I couldn't
understand what she was talking about, my attention drawn by the man
in my office, my nerves straining.	I reminded her, quietly, of the
reason I had asked her not to involve me, but she continued, talking
about books and myths and plagues.  Krycek was glaring at me, the
Palm Pilot in his hand, feigning an absent-minded interest in it. Not
knowing what else to do, what else I could possibly say that wouldn't
make things worse, I hung up on Scully.
Krycek leaned down toward me, his hands splayed on polished wood.
"You.  Don't. Go. Over. My. Head."
The words were spat out, his eyes very green, dangerously so.  I
replied blandly, "Excuse me?"
"Don't fuck with me, Skinner.  I know you called the Smoking Man.  I
can't let anyone else in on our little game, so you deal with me.  Or
I'll deal with you.  Understand?"
I jumped up and came around the desk, in his face as he'd been in
mine.  "Stop making threats, boy, and deal with me.  Go ahead.  If
you don't tell me where Mulder is, I'll snap your neck right now and
face  the consequences later."
"I don't think so."  He stared at me pointedly, waiting, and as he
did so I felt the first tightening, throbbing, swelling pain start in
my neck and my chest.  I saw the veins beginning to bulge on my hands
as they reached out for his neck.  Before I could touch him, he
planted a fist in my gut, and I doubled over, the air rushing out of
me.
Peripherally, I heard Kim protesting again, and the door opened.
Scully was in front of me, and Krycek was gone-I didn't know where. I
felt myself falling forward into Scully and, as the room turned
darkening shades of grey, I heard the words he'd whispered to me just
as he left.  "This is a warning."
~~~
I woke in the hospital, foggy and confused, half-expecting to find
that my arms really had been chopped off this time, to see Dr. Plant
smiling above me.  "Back with us again, Mr. Skinner?  How are you
feeling?"
"Like shit."  I'd spoken without thinking, but I realized that it
was all too true.  I still felt the horrible alien tightening from
the nanocytes, but I also felt ill-hot, nauseated.
I phased back into reality in the middle of Doctor Plant's sentence.
"...news and bad news for you, Mr. Skinner.  The progress of the
venal blockage seems to be slowing, though we haven't yet begun any
therapy to break down those carbon walls.  This is a good thing, but
I'm afraid that your temperature has been rising to match the slowing
of the nanocyte damage.  I can't say for certain that the two are
connected, but it seems likely that you're experiencing a negative
reaction beyond what we saw last time.  We'll begin thera..."
I must have faded out while he was talking because when I next woke,
an unfamiliar nurse and an orderly were holding my arms down to the
bed. I was certain that they were planning to cut off my arms.  I
believed that the nurse was holding a small silvery saw in her hand.
I bucked under the arms holding me and tried to scream, but nothing
much came out as I felt myself falling back into darkness again. Dr.
Plant explained to me later that they had found me thrashing around
and were afraid that I was going to hurt myself by pulling out the
IV.  At the time, though, I didn't understand; my fever must have
been very high.
The next time I surfaced, my temperature must have fallen because
things were much clearer.  I understood what was going on, and what
was going on was that I hurt.  Not in my arms or my neck, but lower,
a terrible burning, cramping pain in my midsection.  I felt as if I
had to urinate, but just couldn't.  I decided the catheter they had
inserted was stopping me, so I tried to remove it, but that hurt even
worse.
A  nurse came running into the room, trying to capture my hands, but
I tried to show her I was cogent and to explain what was wrong.  What
came out was, "Hurt...it hurts...can't...please...urinal."  She bent
to examine the catheter, and I heard a whispered "What?" followed by
her hands nimbly extricating the tubing from by body.
"Here you go, Mr. Skinner, try now."
I did, but it hurt like hell.  The whole action felt very wrong, but
my body insisted on moving something out of me.  I heard the nurse
gasp, and she must have pressed the call button because another nurse
arrived.  "Get Dr. Plant here stat.  He needs to see this."
"What..."  I wanted to know what the hell was going on with my body,
but I couldn't quite formulate the question.
"I'm not a doctor, but I would say this looks like, well, pus.  Dr.
Plant should be here soon."  I don't know how long I kept going
because shortly after she spoke the pain got worse again, and I was
very happy to pass out.
I woke up a little while later to Dr. Plant's gentle but insistent
jostling of my shoulder.  When I groaned and nodded at him to show I
was awake, he smiled at me.  "Though I'm sure that was an unpleasant
experience for you, Mr. Skinner, I would say we have some good news.
Your blood test results show an abnormally high level of white blood
cell activity along with a decreased number of those carbon links.
"I personally examined a sample of discharge you passed earlier, and
while I can't fully understand everything I see there, I feel that I
can say with certainty that your body is working very hard to expel
whatever foreign bodies have been making those walls in your
bloodstream.  The unfortunate side effect has been the high fever
that's been making you so uncomfortable.   This might continue for a
while, but you're a generally healthy man, Mr. Skinner.  I believe
you're strong enough to withstand the fever, and so we should be
looking at a full recovery."
I struggled to keep my mind clear and alert to hear every word he
said.  I knew it was terribly important, though I was having trouble
figuring just why-beyond the fact that I would get better, of course.
I felt sure that there was something else I needed to remember, but
then the doctor gave me a shot, and I was drifting off again.
~~~
The next time I came to, my fever must have been a degree lower
because I knew immediately what I had been trying to recall when Dr.
Plant was talking to me.  My body was fighting the nanocytes, my
immune system rejecting them.  That meant that Krycek's experiment
was a failure.  Repeated exposure to active nanocytes created an
immunity.  The perfect tool was imperfect.  The realization was both
the chink in Krycek's armor and the sword I could use to thrust in
him.
When the nurse came in to find me awake and relatively clear-headed,
she brought me some juice and chicken broth.  I was sipping from the
little foil-covered cup of grape juice when Krycek came to visit me.
He walked into the room dressed as usual in smugness and leather, but
covered his shock badly when he saw my less-than-dire condition.
"You're holding up well, Skinner."
"Better than you'll be."
He came close to the bed and peered closely at me.  "Excuse me?"
"Better than you'll be when your boss and his friends realize that
your little toy isn't worth shit."
He sputtered, disbelieving.  "What kind of a trick is this?"
"The human body has its own ways of ridding itself of intruders,
Krycek.  Go ahead, look at my chart.  Nanocyte activity down, fever
up, foreign bodies expelled.  Of course, they're not all gone yet,
but they will be.  I figure, as soon as I finish this juice, I'll be
making a few well-placed calls to trade this useful information for
Mulder's return."
"You bastard," he seethed.
"I can be two things in your life, Krycek; I can be the man who
takes you down, or I can be the man who lets you get away.  Which
would you prefer?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?  You want to deal?"  He seemed
confused, rocked from his base.  I loved it.
"One last deal.  First, you remove the rest of these fucking things
from my blood and give me the controller.  I want to know they're
gone for good, and they're no use to you now anyway.  Second, you
find out where your boss has Mulder and give Scully whatever she
needs to get to him while he's still in one piece."  I paused for a
moment, breathing, watching the small tremors running through Alex
Krycek's body.  "For my part, I don't tell anyone about the dismal
failure of your little techno-toy.  Which means that you get to live."
I knew what choice he would make.  He's a rat, and what rats do best
is survive at all costs.  After a long minute, he reached out and
tugged my hospital gown up several inches, placing the front edge of
the controller against my solar plexus.  I felt a strange drawing
sensation, followed by a burning that radiated inwards from all
points on my body to that spot on my chest.  I wanted to scream, but
I couldn't move.  After a moment, the worst of it ended, and I felt
the machine drop to my stomach with a light thud.  I heard his words,
"Scully will hear from me soon," and then he was gone.
The nurse came rushing in again, probably surprised to find me
worsened inexplicably.  I gestured to the object on my stomach.
"Sealed bag.  Safe. Now."  She followed my orders and then brought
the doctor.  Once I was able to help him understand what had
happened, to some degree, he gave me something for the pain, which
still burned though my limbs at intervals.
I let myself go to sleep knowing that Krycek, valuing his own life
as all vermin do, would fulfill his promise to help retrieve Mulder.
Once she had some good information, I knew Scully would be able to
pull him out.  She always had.
~~~
So I'll live.  Again.  At least this time I didn't have to die
first.  I've died enough times that I think the next one should be
for real.  Not that I want it to be soon.  Not now that Mulder's been
returned.  Scully came to tell me that she found him, using access
credentials mysteriously supplied to her.  She said he'd been
operated on, but that he was recovering physically and that the
strange neurological or psychological effects had vanished, leaving
Mulder with a blessed calm and quiet.
Apparently he's on another floor in this hospital, so I hope to see
him once I'm allowed out of this bed.  It shouldn't be long now-I'm
beginning to believe the nanocytes are really gone: the walls are
dissolving, my temperature is almost back to normal, and the pain is
thankfully gone.  I need to go talk to Mulder, as soon as he's
conscious and coherent.  I need to see if it's really too late, or if
there might be some extreme possibilities Mulder and I could explore
as a team.  I don't know what he's going to remember from when he was
ill, but I know I'll see it.  I'll see it in his eyes.  I'm finally
clean enough to meet his eyes, and to accept whatever I find there.
~~~
THE END