From: vivian wiley <vivwiley@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 15:42:35 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: New:  Isolation (1/1)
Source: xff


Title: Isolation
Author: Vivian Wiley
Email:  vivwiley@yahoo.com

Rating: R
Spoilers:  SR 819, Brand X
Category:  V, A

Summary:  Skinner must find the hope under the silence

Disclaimer:  These characters and situations belong to
Fox.  No infringement is intended, no profit will be 
made.

Author's warning:  I *made up* all the "science" in 
this piece. Suspension of disbelief is required....
you've been warned. Other notes at the end.

Feedback will be cherished.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The isolation ward hummed.

To be more precise, it hummed at two different and 
ever-so-slightly discordant pitches.  There was the 
soft low burr of the air filtering system that was 
jarred by the higher pitched whine-hum of the 
fluorescent lights.

It made Skinner's teeth hurt.

It was, perhaps, the case that his teeth hurt because
he had been grinding them - at least metaphorically - 
for the better part of the past 72 hours.  But they 
hurt nonetheless.

Damn Scully, his doctors, and every fucking scientist
who ever walked the earth.

He paused in his pacing--the tight, regimented steps 
back and forth across the linoleum--and growled 
briefly while he considered whether he was being fair.

He shrugged.  He really didn't care if he was being 
fair.  If those assholes at Morley hadn't started 
tinkering with the genetic structure of the tobacco 
he wouldn't be in this goddamn fix.

And Scully?  Well, as far as he was concerned she was
culpable too since it was she who had asked the 
question that had landed him in his current 
predicament.

"Sir?  Have you been smoking?"

The question had come out of the blue in the middle of
the hasty debrief she had been leading him through 
while they were waiting to see if the nicotine
treatment would work on Mulder.

He was slumped over in the uncomfortable plastic 
chairs in the corridor outside Mulder's room, and her
inquiry made him snap upright and respond sharply.

"NO!  I don't smoke," the 'anymore' left unsaid.

Her nose twitched.  "Odd, you just smell so strongly
of smoke."  

He thought that he stank of fear and exhaustion, but
decided there was some information that didn't need 
to be shared.

"Well, Weaver blew a lot of smoke at me while I was...
uh...negotiating with him."

She stiffened.  "Blew smoke...did you inhale it?"

In his tiredness, he resorted to juvenile evasions, 
instinctively knowing that something was beginning to
happen, even if he couldn't quite see its shape.  "I 
did not inhale." Even to his own ears the Bill Clinton
impression sounded lame.

She simply stared back at him.

"I don't know, Scully.  I may have inhaled some of 
it...we were in the same room, and I was trying to 
move toward him slowly."

He watched the blood drain from her face and wondered 
what it was, exactly, he had just said.

It was nearly the last coherent thought he had for 
the next 4 hours.  Because his words were still 
echoing in the corridor when Scully was on her feet 
shouting for a doctor, "stat!" and then he was being
hustled down a hallway to the isolation wing.

He was stripped, de-con showered, and tossed into an
isolation room nearly before he'd had time to ask, 
"Why?"

When he finally had a chance to ask, he was sorry he 
had.

Scully explained - remarkably calmly, he thought in 
retrospect - that so far as she could determine, 
Mulder had been infected with the  bugs in his lungs 
by Weaver's second-hand smoke.  The bugs' larvae 
carried into their new home on a deadly airborne 
vector.  So, Scully thought it best that Skinner spend
a few days in the very controlled climate of medical 
isolation while they ran a few tests and assured 
themselves that his lungs hadn't become the next
breeding ground of the mutant beetles.

It had given him a whole new set of nightmares.

In the grand scheme of things, three days was really
nothing.  Skinner was no stranger to prolonged 
hospital stays.  Nor to the insult of numerous 
casually cruel medical tests.  But somehow this felt
different.  He felt violated in ways that were 
difficult to explain.

Maybe it was the inherent indignity of the way he had
been manhandled into the ward.  For the first 24 hours
he'd been given nothing to wear but one of those 
stupid hospital gowns.  

When he'd utterly refused to get out of his bed the
second  afternoon on the grounds that he was an 
Assistant Director of the F. B. Fucking I. and he'd 
be damned if he'd violate local indecent exposure 
ordinances, Scully had taken pity on him and talked 
the hospital staff into giving him a pair of old 
surgical scrubs to wear.

It would have been more of a victory if she hadn't
been laughing her ass off at the time.  Of course, 
she didn't laugh at him to his face, but he knew.  
He would swear she was getting some perverse 
enjoyment out of the whole situation. 

It had felt good to lose his temper, though.  And, 
the scrubs did have the virtue of allowing him to 
get out of his bed and pace.

He understood, of course, that under the buried 
laughter, Scully was deeply concerned about him.
On a subterranean level he realized that her stringent
insistence on the comprehensive tests, and the 
prolonged isolation were not simply her reaction to
a perceived public health threat.  Rather, he had the
distinct impression that she was worried about him, 
as a colleague and a friend.

It did not, however, do much to make him feel more 
charitably disposed toward her in the short run.

He saw her at regular intervals throughout the 
relentlessly boring days.  He wondered if she were 
wearing a groove or a trail in the hallways between
the ward where Mulder was recuperating and his 
isolation ward.  He could picture her moving through
the halls of the hospital--her steps precise, sure, 
and focused as she strode unscathed through the sea 
of doctors, nurses and attendants.  He was reminded 
once more that she was an important ally to have on
one's side.

She offered very little news of Mulder's progress 
beyond vague generalities: "his numbers looked better
this morning," "he's holding his own."  It was unlike
her to be so imprecise, and he finally decided that 
Mulder's recovery was both slower and more painful
than she was willing to discuss.  Particularly with 
him, as he might have to undergo precisely the same
therapy.

She was probably trying to spare him bad dreams, 
which was kind, but a waste of time.

He had long ago learned to scream silently in his 
sleep.  It was one of his myriad traits that had 
disturbed and ultimately driven away Sharon.  It was
not a conscious thing for Skinner, this nighttime 
suppression of sound.  He'd always supposed he had 
learned to do it during his long recovery period 
after Vietnam.  He figured his basic need to scream
wouldn't go away, so he had unconsciously learned to
scream in a way that wouldn't trigger a nurse waking 
him up in the middle of the night.

He screamed for different reasons now.

The parallels of the bugs--the ones that Krycek 
controlled--in his blood and the bugs that were 
possibly growing in his lungs didn't even bear 
discussing aloud.  His subconscious was doing a fine
job of creating lurid and scarring scenarios each 
night. On the first afternoon on the isolation ward,
he briefly entertained a fantasy that the two would 
stage a war across his body and simply cancel each 
other out.  He could almost see the surreal 
microscopic battle between the organic mutant beetles
and the nightmarish high-tech bugs squaring off for 
control of his body or the right to finally kill him.
It was plausible in a way that only made sense in the
twilight zone that had become his life. But he 
dismissed the thought almost as soon as it was formed.

So he was left to wait.  And pace.

He'd tried to convince Scully to let him have a laptop
and do the case wrap-up work while he was waiting. His
arguments that the larvae would gestate just as well 
with or without him writing reports fell on deaf ears.
He had forgotten, temporarily, how stubborn she could
be.  It was a trait, no doubt, that served her well 
in working with Mulder, but it was also extremely 
annoying in these circumstances.

He needed distraction.  He finally cajoled a nurse 
into bringing him some reading material, but the 
selection of "literary classics," and out-of-date 
waiting room magazines that she brought him failed
to capture his attention for more than 15 minutes 
at a time.

Skinner felt his long-cultivated patience raveling a
bit more with each passing hour.  

He was hard-pressed to explain exactly what it was he
was waiting for, other than definitive word that he 
was infected, or would be allowed to go home.  But 
he could definitely feel himself waiting for 
something. Something vaguely threatening, but 
necessary.  He hated that sort of ambiguity.

This afternoon, his pacing was interrupted by 
Scully's quiet knock that preceded a brief pause 
while she waited for his "come in," before she 
entered.  It was a polite fiction on her part that he
had some control over his privacy and might actually
refuse a visitor.

She was carrying something rectangular and dark.  

"Finally decided to let me do some work?"

"Sir?"  Her confusion seemed genuine.

"I see you brought me a laptop."  He nodded toward 
her hands. 

She looked down at her hands, almost as through she
were surprised to find herself carrying something.  
Then she smiled and grimaced slightly.

"Uh...no laptop, sir.  It's an old Scrabble game.  
I thought you might like to play?"

He just stared at her for a long moment.  "Scrabble?"
He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
She seemed to be waiting for him to say something 
else.  "Who were you proposing I play with? You?"  
It struck him, a half-second later, that the 
incredulity in his voice was probably undiplomatic.

She looked up again to meet his eyes.  "Well, yes. 
But maybe it wasn't a very good idea.  I just know 
you've been a bit...bored in here."

"I appreciate the thought, Agent Scully, but I'm not
sure this is quite what the doctor ordered."  He 
hoped the mild joke would make up for his earlier 
lack of tact.

She shrugged.  "I guess not." A brief pause during 
which he could hear her shifting mental gears.  
"How are you doing, Sir?"

"I rather imagine that you're going to tell me.  The 
last tissue biopsy they took should have showed at 
least the beginning stages of the larvae if they were
 going to develop, right?"

She nodded slightly.  "Yes.  So far as the 
entomologists have been able to determine, 72 hours 
is probably the outside time for the eggs to lie 
dormant before active development would begin. The 
good news is that so far your lung tissue seems to
be completely clear. But, since we're dealing with 
an unknown species here..." her voice trailed off 
and she looked down at the floor for a moment.

Skinner was acutely aware of the hum of the lights,
the sound of their breaths drawing in and out, the 
whir of the ceiling vents.  

He sighed, the sound shockingly loud in the room.  
"So how much longer will I be under house arrest?"  
He could learn resignation. He could, he could.  
He had before.

"My recommendation, and the other doctors and the 
science team concurs, is another 72 hours. That would
put you, we think, completely in the clear, based on 
what we've determined from the others who died and 
what the entomologists have learned."

"Another three damn days?!"  Her almost-imperceptible
flinch was the only indication he had that he'd 
shouted.

She never broke her steady gaze with him, although
her eyebrow raised slightly.  "Yes. Another three 
damn days." 

She seemed to relent about something.  "Besides, sir,
this may be a blessing in disguise."

He wasn't sure how to react to Pollyanna Scully.

"Why?  Because it's allowing me to catch up on my 
beauty sleep?"  He knew that she knew about the 
night terrors.

"No.  Because while we are collecting all these...
samples from you, we're, well a couple of us, are 
getting a chance to look for...other things, and to
 consider options."

He could feel the damn things chittering along his 
veins.

"There aren't any options for that, Scully.  I'm sure
they made sure of that."  He was pleased at how 
dispassionate he managed to sound.

"I wouldn't be too sure.  It's a rapidly developing 
field, and there are literally daily developments."

"I think we're still years away from what they--" he 
stopped abruptly aware that he was about to betray 
that he knew more about the things in his veins than 
he should.  Krycek, in his periodic appearances to 
torment Skinner had let drop a few tidbits about the
technology.  Not enough to be useful, but enough to 
convince him that the technology was based on nothing
that any mainstream scientist would recognize.

Scully narrowed her eyes at his silence that lingered
as he struggled to find something to say.

Finally she said, "Well, I don't have any answers for
you yet, but I think we're getting some useful 
data." He had the sense that she was mildly 
disappointed in him.

He wanted to express the tired gratitude he felt, but
it was drowning in his sense of inevitable failure.  
His sense that the shadows would always be two steps 
ahead of them.  It was important, though, that he try
to let Scully know how much he valued her attempt to 
help him.  

"Thank you, Scully."  He didn't want to sound 
dismissive.  "I...I appreciate it."

"Of course, sir.  You know I can't promise anything 
here. We're really still trying to figure out what 
we're dealing with."

"I know.  But I do appreciate it."

She nodded and turned to leave. Half-way to the door,
she stopped and turned back.  "Do you need anything?"

"Something to keep my mind occupied."

"I thought Nurse Johnson brought you some reading
material."

"It's not quite doing the trick.  I'd rather work."

"I know--but you know that we can't bring your files 
in to this non-secure facility."

He decided to let the excuse pass. "Yeah, I know."

She left him alone to pace.  Left him alone with 
sudden visions of freedom, of a future that didn't 
include an invisible leash that tethered him to pain
and control.  

It was heady. He found himself staring out the window,
but he wasn't seeing the newly budding trees.  
Revenge, uncovering the truth, undeniable action 
against the shadows, being able to fully and publicly 
back Mulder and Scully: those vistas suddenly 
stretched out before him.   

The first thing he would do is hunt down Krycek and 
kill him. He found himself sneering at his reflection.
The niceties of a righteous shoot were not a 
consideration.  He would hunt down the son-of-a-bitch 
and kill him.  And he would enjoy it.

Then he would go after the smoker.  CGB Spender, or 
who ever the hell he was.  

It was an appealing future.  Grimly sweet, but he 
understood that it was not the one he was destined 
for. He took a deep breath; rolled his head left to
right, unsurprised to feel the tightness across his 
shoulders. 

There was, he knew, only one future for him at this
point.  A future controlled by those other forces.  
He sighed - something that seemed to be happening 
all too frequently these days.  He watched the late
afternoon shadows deepen and then steal across the 
lawn, until the dark owned all the grounds. It 
surprised him that he was still capable of feeling 
disappointment.

Nights were hard.  The hum of the fluorescent lights
was lessened, but the ventilation system droned 
relentlessly on, and there wasn't even the muted 
noises of the choreographed anarchy of hospital life
filtering through to him.  There was only the hum of
the fans, the beating of his heart, the rasp of the 
air in his lungs.

And then, tonight, just as he was finally dropping 
off into elusive sleep, there was a voice.

"Make her stop or I will."

Instinctively at the sound of that voice, he 
stiffened.  Braced for pain, the mindless arc of 
agony that would begin in his center and radiate 
out through his limbs and digits.

But nothing.  Just the voice from the shadows.  A 
slight awareness of someone else in the room.  
Krycek's stillness was astonishing.  He was a part 
of the shadow, indistinguishable from the grey and 
ambiguity of the corners.

Skinner wondered if he was only dreaming.  "What?" 
His voice soft--a test against the darkness.

"You heard me.  Make her stop, or I will.  And I am
not, as you know, choosy about my methods."

He waited to see if there would be more, or if Krycek
had said everything he had come to say.

Krycek's chuckle invariably made his skin crawl. "You 
know, I have been curious about one or two of the...
possibilities that her chip offers.  She always seems
so...inviolate."

Skinner found himself on his feet and starting for 
the shadow before he had time to think. He had made it
half-way to the corner before the first wave of pain 
hit.

Fuck.

It was always a shock--a lesson newly learned in agony
and humiliation. There was no control, no rationality,
nothing but the pain overtaking his body.  Nothing but
the sensations that had no name, merely shades of 
agonizing orange-grey-olive pain.

It ended after a time.  He never knew how long the 
attacks lasted.  They simply started and finally 
stopped.  

He lay gasping on the floor.  

"You're such a creature of habit, Skinner.  What 
exactly were you planning to do?  Defend her honor
with a manly display of violence?"  Some days it was 
hard to know which was worse--the pain or the mockery.

He considered a response, but ultimately decided that
nothing he could say wouldn't be purely juvenile.

The shadow that held Krycek gave an exasperated grunt.
"Look--just do it.  Stop her, I will.  There is no 
room for argument on this. Get her to stop the damn 
experiments on your blood."  He muttered something 
Skinner couldn't quite hear, and then it seemed the 
shadow grew less substantial.

He waited a long time after the footsteps receded 
before he got up from the floor.

He did not sleep that night, thinking about the 
conversation he would have to have with Scully the
next morning.  Trying to anticipate her arguments so
that he could counter them.  Knowing that he would 
probably have to resort to ordering her, as her 
superior officer, to stand down from the experiments
she was conducting.  

He despised being backed into one more corner.  Hated
like hell that he would once more be forced to appear
weak and waffling to Scully.  She didn't deserve 
that.  She was doing what she perceived to be right--
both as an agent and a scientist.  She would be 
resentful and suspicious.  

It occurred to Skinner that maybe this was at least 
half of Krycek's goal--to continue to drive a wedge 
between the Assistant Director and his agents. To keep
the unit unstable, less effective at working together
because the players ultimately wouldn't trust each 
other.

But he understood that he had no choice. He would not
sacrifice Scully.  So he would have to get her to 
stop, regardless of what it cost them all.  

It was a good thing, he thought, that he had so long 
ago come to terms with living in shadow.  In being a
part of the dark.  There is a certain cruel mercy in
knowing your exact place in the world.  In the 
knowledge that you have no hope of being saved. 

Just before first light he fell into a light doze, 
and as he was slipping under the currents of sleep, 
he suddenly thought he understood, through the haze
of half-dream, what Krycek had muttered just before
leaving. It seemed to Skinner that the words had been,
"Too close, she's too fucking close."

It changed nothing. He would still have to get Scully
to stop her experiments.  For now.

But he could feel the leash loosening.

END

Thank you so much for reading this.  I hope you 
enjoyed it.  My deep thanks to the Unsung Editor, 
who gave me both the confidence and technical 
assistance to post this.

Feedback would be welcomed with open arms and a 
grateful heart.

vivwiley@yahoo.com