Spoilers: various, up to Gethsemane.
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Excerpts from the journal of Walter S. Skinner
I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. Hard. With an anvil.
I think I managed to hide it from Dana. She knows something that I don't,
and maybe if I hadn't hidden my shock she would have told me. But if I'd
let go of my control for a second I would have been clinging to her for
dear
life, in the busy hallway outside Fox's apartment. I can't afford to draw
any more attention to us right now. There's too much shit hitting the
fan
as it is.
Fox is dead. Suicide never seemed like his style, but then, perhaps I
didn't know him as well as I thought. Perhaps his brilliance and his humor
and his strangeness were all to cover his ass. I wonder how he got past
the
psych exams--but he did know how they worked, what they were looking for.
Still. If he killed himself, I'll go fuck a sheep. I can't believe that
of
him.
I want to get drunk. Very, very drunk, and I want to go to Dana and beg
her
to sleep with me, to let me lose myself and my pain in her body. God.
She'd slap me if she knew I thought these things. She'd slap me again
if
she knew what I thought about Fox.
Fox had the most fuckable mouth in creation. Completely wasted on a
heterosexual man.
I wish I could have both of them. But Dana is dying, and Fox is dead,
and
there is nothing I can do but wait for the forensics on Fox's body.
I fell in love with him when he protected me during that little
murdered-hooker fiasco. He was loyal to me when I needed loyalty the most.
I wondered then if he loved me. I watched him so closely after that--how
could I have missed his world falling apart? If it did. Which it may have,
or it may not have.
I've been in love with her since before my marriage started to fall apart.
It's impossible to work closely with her and not love her. She is thinner
now, shadowed with pain, trying so hard to keep going.
I should have said something a long time ago, to both of them. But he
loved
her, and how she felt she kept secret, and I'm their direct superior.
It
would have meant heads on a platter and careers in the toilet if I'd said
anything. Or, God forbid, drawn any more attention to them.
Drawing attention. That's what they do. We do. Fox and Dana, the
prettiest pair in the goddamn FBI, and the most unorthodox, and the best.
Bar none, the best. Or they were the best. There's only one of them now,
and she is dying. Even when she looks healthy, she's dying. Her skin gets
more translucent every day, her face gets thinner, her bones surface in
her
body, carving planes where there were curves.
My mind is running in circles. Every time I close my eyes, Fox is kissing
me. Which he never did in life. And then the sight of his body, that
faceless bloody head. Dana is hiding something, and she doesn't trust
me.
I want to get drunk. I want to fuck Fox. I want to fuck Dana. I want
someone to hold at night.
I want to kill that smoking bastard, preferably by shoving a fistful of
lit
cigarettes down his throat.
I want to know what the fuck is going on. A flood is coming. I can feel
it
in Dana's silence and Fox's death. I'm tired and angry and in pain, and
I
don't know if I can hold back the waters alone. But I'm willing to try.
Hard work is a substitute for love. If I can't have them, I can run myself
into the ground.
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