Away in a Tree Lot
by CathGerm
CathGerm@[i hate spam]aol.com
Obviously, leave out the [i hate spam] part
Rating: PG.  A little language
Story: Skinner/other
Summary:  Just trying to bring The Big Guy a little
Christmas cheer ...
Disclaimer:  Don't own 'em.  Move along.  Nothing to see
here.

	
She was lost.  Lost in a forest of dead trees.  The car
was somewhere behind her, that much she knew.  But the
swirl of noise, the overhead lights ... it was too much.

Buying a Christmas tree was not Katerine Sturhahn's
favorite thing in the world.  

Actually, buying *anything* was not her favorite thing in
the world.  She was of the breed of female who quickly grew
weak and cranky from too many minutes in the store, and she
had been known to ditch her mother and sisters-in-law at
malls and disappear into the nearest bookstore or coffee
shop.  Sitting alone with a strong cup of coffee watching
other women shop was far preferable to the act of shopping
itself.

The only reason she was there at the tree lot three weeks
before Christmas was to appease her family, to stem the
tide of worry that always rose in her parents come
holidays.  She was the only one of their brood alone. 
Thirty-nine and unmarried and childless.  Better they
should say thirty-nine and a Carmelite nun.  It might have
been easier for them.  German Catholics were bred to breed,
to bear many children and have large Christmas trees and
traditions up the yin-yang.  She was an anomaly.

She'd considered being a nun in her youth but didn't have
the stomach for it.  Ironic.  She had the stomach for
violent crimes in the DC Police VCU, but didn't have the
stomach for poverty, chastity, and obedience.

Poverty?  She wasn't poor.  She'd put in her time, and
between that and the money she brought in as a consultant
to the trade, she was paid well.  And the benefits couldn't
be beat.  

Obedience?  Please.  That had *always* been a problem.  At
least if you were to believe her grade school report cards.
Re-reading them recently, she'd found it amazing that she'd
not been brought up for insubordination in her adult life. 
She had certainly set the tone for it in grade school.  Her
current clean record had to do with her humor, she
believed.  If you said true and biting things with a self-
deprecating, ego-free laugh, you could just about get away
with murder.

Her problem in grade school had been nuns with no senses
of humor.  Now cops ... *they* knew black humor and
appreciated it.

Chastity.  Hm.  She was all that.  Three years since
Harmless Bob, as her brothers had called him.  Harmless Bob
had heard one too many tales of sliced and diced human
beings and had headed for the proverbial hills, almost
leaving little cartoon puffs behind him as he had fled.

After that she had taken to wearing her Social Pariah
badge with pride.  Almost 40.  No man in sight.  And she
could out-swear the most veteran cop on the force.

No wonder her family feared for her.

So she was succumbing and buying a tree, the first in at
least six years.  It would be a talisman.  She would put it
up and decorate it and would have the family over and it
would be a balm for them.  It would keep them placated and
at bay for the season.  Then she'd take it down the 26th
and life would be back to normal.

She turned and stood on her tiptoes, looking back through
the false forest and past the milling people to the parking
lot.  Beau was in the SUV.  He was a good dog and would
only bark if provoked.  And generally any human being of
the male persuasion provoked Beau by their mere existence. 
All that Kat needed to push her over the edge and send her
home treeless on this frosty night would be for the big
Golden Lab to make a holy racket and call attention to his
abandoned self.  

She came down on her heels.  Worry would get her nowhere. 
She needed a tree and needed it now.  No time for
cowardice.  No time to allow for too much thought.  



Determined, she turned and strode through the lot, looking
for something small and easy to maneuver, something that
she could handle up the three stories of stairs to her loft
without help, something that wouldn't overwhelm her small
shoebox of ornaments.  She slowed when the trail she'd been
following narrowed.  

At the end of that trail was a monster.

It was backlit by a lot light and appeared to be at least
twelve feet high.  Twelve feet high and a good six feet
wide at the base and it was perfect.  She was sure she
heard the voices of angels as she gazed at it, but then it
could have been the carolers back at the lot entrance.  

It was a noble fir, that much she knew, and she knew also
that noble plus twelve feet equals no presents for the
nephews and nieces.  It was immense and ridiculous and to
do it justice she'd have to spend a hundred dollars for
more ornaments and lights, and she suddenly wanted it more
than anything she'd wanted in a long, long time.

She walked forward and closed her eyes.  She was not a
sentimental person by nature, but the tree was a magnet,
and she felt herself pulled into its fragrant branches.  It
smelled of forest and promise and Christmases Past, and
enveloped in it, Kat sighed.

A distant, muffled bark brought her back to the present. 
Beau.  

Galvanized into action, she reached through the branches
for the trunk and her ungloved fingers searched for
purchase.  She found the trunk high and followed it down to
a height that made sense for lifting, and froze. 

There was something alive in there.  Something warm and
moving.

She yelped and jumped back.

She considered pulling her weapon, but it was back on the
floor of the SUV hidden under a magazine.  Then she
remembered where she was.  This wasn't some dope-pusher's
back alley.  It was a Christmas tree lot full of families
and small children.  There had to be an explanation that
didn't necessarily include something that might show up on
a police blotter.

She leaned forward and peered into the branches.

"Um.  Hello?"

The tree shook once and then stilled.

"Yes?" came a deep voice.

She was talking to a tree.  A tree with a deep voice that
did something strange to her toes.  This was ridiculous. 
She needed to claim this tree and head home.

"This tree?" she said into the black green of its
interior.  "It's mine."

A pause.

"Really," the tree replied.  It sounded autocratic and
slightly amused.

She threw a look around the near-empty end of the lot and
leaned as far into the fir as she dared.

"I need this tree," she hissed at the center of it.  "I
really need this tree."

She felt the presence opposite her move and heard the
shuffle of someone coming around the tree to her right. 
She took a deep breath and faced that direction, fists on
her hips, booted feet dug into the sawdust.  Her foe was
coming.  Her enemy.  She would have this tree, and nothing
short of Tiny Tim himself coming around the corner of it
would change her mind.

But it wasn't Tiny Tim.  It wasn't Tiny *anything.*  It
was big and male and as his long black coat caped around
his legs she couldn't get Darth Vader theme from Star Wars
out of her head.

He had a good four inches on her, and she was considered
tall.  Kat was strong and could take half the men on the
force in a game of one-on-one, but standing in front of
this man, she actually felt ... well ... *dainty* if that
was possible.

She noticed that he was bald, and she shivered for him. 
It was cold - snow cold - and she wanted to toss the ski
cap she'd jammed in her parka pocket at him so he could put
it on.  He was peering down at her through wirerims.  His
eyes were deep and root beer brown.

"Hi," she said, feeling the fight ooze out of her.

He nodded and jammed his hands in his pockets.  The smile
he gave her was polite and perfunctory, barely there.

"Hello," he said

His coat front was open and she noted the outfit.  It was
a Tired Old Corporate White Guy uniform, but an expensive
one, and he wore it well.  White shirt, dark gray suit, a
tie that worked.

He was married, she decided.  You couldn't look that put
together and not be.  There was some little Trophy Wife
behind this guy.  No doubt about it.  Gardner, her partner
on the force, couldn't wear a pair of socks the same color.
He wore red ties with maroon shirts and wife-beater t-
shirts underneath those.  He was single, and that's how
single men dressed in her part of the world.

And if there was a Trophy Wife, there were probably Trophy
Children running about.  Prep school brats.  Kids with
their own phone lines.  They were probably here on the lot
somewhere ...

She shook her head at herself and stepped forward.

"Look," she said in her best I'm-the-cop-in-charge-and-
here's-what-we're-gonna-do voice, "I've got to have this
tree.  That's the way it is.  I'm sorry, but there's plenty
of trees on the lot.  You're going to have to find another
one."

The little smile on his face that almost wasn't there got
bigger by a millimeter or so.  He nodded.

"Okay," he said.  He glanced up at the tree and something
passed over his face as he did so.  It was there - a
shadow, a deep regret - and then gone in a second, replaced
so efficiently with an emotionless mask that Kat was sure
that he must practice the move in front of a mirror.  As he
turned to leave she noted that although his face was adept
at covering its missteps, the rest of his body was not
quite as obedient: His broad shoulders held a slight droop,
and as he took a step away from her something tugged at her
heart. 

"Wait," she heard herself say.

He turned, hands still pocketed, face still carved in
granite.  She took a step towards him.

"Look," she said shrugging and bringing a nervous hand up
to put a brown curl behind her ear.  "I was kidding.  About
the tree.  I ... uh ..."  She looked at the fir beside them
and then down at her booted feet and shook her head.  "I'm
here under duress," she admitted into the fur around the
neck of her parka.  She laughed at herself and looked back
up at him.  Curiosity had softened his features.  She
realized she was babbling.

She never babbled.

"Under duress," Kat said.  "Under duress and under false
pretenses."  She put her hands back on her hips and pointed
her chin at the tree.  "I don't need this.  You probably
have kids who would just love to open gifts under a tree
like this."  She smiled and shook her head.  "I'm just
trying to keep a couple of worried parents at bay.  Trying
to keep them from thinking that I'm a curmudgeon."

There was a long silence, and the condensation puffs from
her last statement dissipated in the cold air between them.  

She was used to silences.  She'd learned to use them
effectively when interviewing witnesses and interrogating
perps.  She had learned how to outlast almost everyone. 
She gauged the depths of his eyes as she waited, and she
wondered what he was waiting for.  His face revealed
little, but to a practiced professional like Kat, he
appeared to be weighing something and coming to a decision,
and as she thought about that and wondered what it was that
he might be deciding, she felt her body flush.  

It started with her toes and moved up her torso, and she
wondered again if she was perimenopausal at nearly forty,
but then it lingered, the heat, lingered around her groin
and she felt her face flush, felt her cheeks begin to burn.
Time to turn away.  Time to run to the car and get into it,
treeless, and accept Beau's eager licks and wonder just
what the hell that standoff by the big tree had been; and
she just might wait there to see who walked out of the dead
forest with him, to see who would have her hand tucked in
the crook of his elbow, to see what children would spill
around the hem of his cape.

"Are you?" he said.

She was lost.  "What?"

"Are you a curmudgeon?"  The near-smile appeared again,
and this time it almost reached his eyes.

She felt a relieved grin split her face.  "Oh.  Only when
necessary," she said.  She saw the possibility of another
silent moment on the horizon and decided to press on. 
"Seriously," she said.  "The tree.  It's yours."  

He pulled his hands from his pockets and held them up in
surrender.  It looked awkward on him, as if he used
gestures of submission only in the rarest of circumstances.

"No.  Absolutely not," he said, as animated as she'd heard
him so far.  "I'm here on a whim.  Totally on a whim.  I
don't know what I was thinking."  They moved apart as a
mother and father and gaggle of kids pressed their way
between them, their excited shouts snapping in the cold
air.  They smelled of peppermint and hot chocolate and Kat
watched them snake out of sight on the twisting paths.  The
stranger beside her watched as well.  He swallowed and
looked back at her, his eyes bright as diamonds.

"I'll bet I haven't had a Christmas tree in six years," he
said after another brief pause.  "I never ...  it was just
... there was a lot ..."  He struggled with his
explanation, and she was dismayed when his big hands went
back into his pockets.  He was shutting down.  "I worked
late tonight," he said in a monotone as he stared
sightlessly just beyond her left shoulder.  He looked
confused, out of his element.  "I drove by.  Something ...
"  His blank gaze went back to the tree.

She was a second away from reaching a hand out to touch
his arm when, model of efficiency, all of his parts snapped
back into place and he took a step away from her and lunged
into the heart of the tree.  His voice, emanating from the
greenery, carried a no-nonsense gruffness.

"Not enough help on this lot, I noticed," he said, and he
gave a soft grunt as he lifted the noble fir and marched
for the checkout, Kat trotting behind him.  His strides
were long and she found herself breathless by the time they
got to the hut where the cashier, sporting mittens too
bulky to make change, huddled under the weight of a parka
and an unzipped sleeping bag.  Kat's teeth chattered as she
watched a pre-teen with a yardstick measure her prize.  

The suited stranger stood holding the tree: silent, a
sentry to her purchase, a soldier at her service, and she
knew that he must be freezing, and as she bent to the task
of check-writing she realized that her cheeks were hot and
likely glowing cherry red, and her stomach folded in on
itself and her head held a private little dance with
sugarplums and dark shapes that she didn't recognize but
didn't fear.

The preteen and cashier were only too happy to hand the
task of tree-roping over to the man who had wrangled it,
and they gave Kat a rope and the cashier flashed them a
wide and grateful smile and added a wink.

"You two enjoy that now," she said in an unidentifiable
twang.  "And you all have a Merry Christmas." 

"You bet," Kat said over her shoulder as she headed for
the far side of the parking lot where she'd left the car. 
She gave an apologetic grimace to the man who walked beside
her.  "You don't have to do this," she said.  "Really.  I
can wait for help."

"No problem," he said, and he stumbled slightly on the icy
ground.

Her hands went for the tree trunk.  "Here, at least let me-"

"I can do it."

"Hey.  I can at least-"

But he was off, headed for the SUV which had become their
obvious target.



Beau would go berserk.  A strange place, a strange man ...
she braced for the cacophony of barking that she knew would
begin as soon as he came into view.  He was nearly at the
SUV.  She skidded to a stop at the vehicle just in time to
see Beau stand up in the back, stretch, and turn his black
eyes to the window.  

"I'm sorry about this," she said, automatically beginning
her Berserk Dog Litany.  "He's a good dog.   He really is. 
He's just not good with ..."  Her voice fell away in the
cold and still air.

Inside the SUV, Beau's stare was curious and relaxed. 
Amazed, she looked out of the corner of her eyes at the
stranger beside her.  He smiled and put a finger on the
window.  On the inside Beau leaned into the glass and
sniffed, his breath frosting the window between them.  The
big man beside her chuckled deep in his chest and spread
his hand wide so that Beau could check out the whole package.

Kat was mesmerized by the sight: her big dog mollified,
the big man beside her with the tree in one hand, his other
hand on the window; and the cold must have made her shiver,
that was it: the cold; and she stared at that hand, that
hand that Beau was now attempting to lick through thick
glass, and she felt her face flush again and that hand on
her cheek, her neck, her breasts; on the curve of her
waist, at the top of her thigh ...

"On top or inside?"

"Huh?" she breathed.

"Looks like there's room inside with the seats down if you
leave the back window open.  Or would you prefer that we
tie it on the roof?"

"The roof," she managed to answer, and she knew that she
sounded like a automaton or a fake voice from a
synthesizer, but she couldn't get enough breath in her to
give her voice any energy.  The wind had been knocked out
of her.  He nodded and pointed her to the other side of the
SUV.  

She welcomed the trip there.  It would give her a chance
to collect herself.

She heard a grunt and the tree rose from the other side
and came to rest on the roof.  Kat couldn't believe that
he'd managed it himself.  It was a big tree.  

He stood on the running board on his side and tied the
rope to the ski rack and tossed it to her.  They worked in
wordless perfection, back and forth, sewing the tree onto
the roof, and Beau remained quiet inside, watching them.

She felt the snow coming before she saw it, felt something
white and benevolent above her head and she looked up past
the lot lights and saw it coming and smiled.  She brought
her smile down to eye level and looked across the roof at
her companion.  He smiled back, teeth showing this time,
and a big snowflake fell past his face and down towards his
hand, towards his finger, and it landed on his ring, on his
gold band.

He watched it with her as it fell, and he watched it hit
his ring and he looked up at Kat.  She swallowed and jumped
down from the running board.  Beau's muzzle was pressed up
to the glass, and it must have been her imagination: he
looked at her just like her mother would when she'd come in
the door of the house for Thanksgiving, alone.  She
swallowed convulsively again.  She was not a weeper by
nature, but this night in this cold tree lot she was amazed
to find herself on the verge of tears.  

The big man was coming.  She could hear his shoes
crunching on the icy gravel.  He peered around the back end
of the SUV.  She turned towards the front of the car and
coughed into her hands.  Beau stood, curious, as the man
crunched up behind her.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she lied, and as she blinked she could feel
the icy tears clinging to her eyelashes.  She rubbed her
face with her hands, turned to him and said, "Just cold."

He was staring at Beau again, a bemused look on his face.

"I always wanted a big dog like this.  My wife wanted a
lap dog."

She didn't want to know, but she had to ask.  "Have you
compromised?"

He put his finger to the window and Beau obliged with a
sniff.  "Yeah," he said, his voice rueful.  "We did.  We
compromised, but it was the worst kind: We did nothing."



He pulled his finger away from the window, looked at the
ground, and answered her unspoken question.

"She's uh ... she's no longer with me."

Her stomach did another painful fold.  His wife was no
longer with him, but he still had a ring on his finger. 
She expected to be put off by this, expected that her
internal warning sirens would go straight from Yellow to
Red Alert in a nanosecond.  Less murky and mysterious
things had caused her to keep interested men at bay in the
past, but she found herself nodding up at him as if wearing
a ring that indicated marriage to someone you were no long
with was an everyday occurrence and perfectly acceptable.  

Beau was being ignored, and he made that fact known by a
quick, short bark.  Kat went for the door handle.  Might as
well see if Beau's disposition would remain mellow when
foreign skin met fur.  She swung the door wide and watched
the face of her companion go gray.  He fell back a step and
struggled to pull his right hand from his pocket. 
Concerned, she looked into the back seat of the SUV.  

There was Beau, happy for the attention, tail wagging,
tongue lolling, and there beneath him in the back seat
footwell was her gun.  The magazine she'd tossed on it to
hide it had slipped off.  It was in its holster and the
safety was on, but the weapon was in plain view: menacing,
threatening, and she turned expecting to see the man
backpedaling to his car.  Harmless Bob all over again.

The big man's eyes were wide and his parted lips were
pale.  She sighed.

"Look.  I'm a cop," she said.  "I should be wearing it,
but..." she gave a half-hearted gesture towards the hubbub
behind them, " I figured in a tree lot, what the heck." 
She unceremoniously slammed the door on Beau and fumbled in
her pockets for her keys.  "I'm with the DC police force. 
Violent Crimes Unit."  She tried for an nonchalant parting
grin and shrug.  "I love what I do."  

The man appeared to relax.  He took a deep breath and
brought his right hand out from under his coat.  

"Sorry for the overreaction," he said.  "The gun came as a
surprise.  I wasn't thinking ..."  His voice faded away. 
He looked over her head and frowned towards the buildings
rimming the tree lot, and as she watched snowflakes pattern
his black coat, she knew he was coming to another decision.
He looked back down at her.  

"My job ..."  He paused, and Kat realized that  he was
putting on his game face.  She had one, too, a "no
bullshit" face she used in situations where she needed to
have the upper hand.  This was a man used to being in
control and being heard.  This was a CEO, a captain of
industry.  He spoke.

"I'm Assistant Director-"

 Kat thought, but she heard something
else.

"What?" she said, and she realized that this was at least
the third time that she must have appeared stone deaf.

"I'm Assistant Director of the FBI."

"Uh ... Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation?"

He nodded.

"Well holy shit."

He smiled and Beau gave another polite bark.  

She was pleasantly stunned.  This was not Harmless Bob
after all.  This man must have come up through the ranks of
the FBI.  Assistant Directors sat at desks and assigned
people to do things, but at one point in time he must have
been in the field, must have seen a dead body or two.  Of
course, VCU could be extraordinarily messy.  She wondered
if he could take the gory details of what she saw on a
daily basis.  She imagined that he was insulated from that
kind of thing in the high echelons of the FBI.

"Walter Skinner," he said as he extended his hand.

"Katerine Sturhahn.  Kat," she said as her hand was
swallowed by his warm one.  
she thought, and she wanted nothing more than to disappear
into the black folds of his coat and warm herself.

"Do you need any help getting this tree to wherever it is
you want it?" he asked nodding at the SUV roof after she
reluctantly pulled her hand from his.  She bit her lower
lip and frowned up at her prize.

She pictured the stairs and Beau making a nuisance of
himself while she pulled the tree up the three stories
behind her.  She envisioned the rickety tree holder that
she'd pulled from the back of the hall closet, the one
she'd left sitting in pieces on the living room floor.  She
saw herself in the field, chasing and felling a punk who
had run from her, taking him down and scraping and cutting
herself in the process, sitting on his back while she
cuffed him, and she pictured Gardner puffing up after the
fact.

"Do you need any help?"

"No.  I'm fine."

And she saw in her mind's eye her mom and dad coming to
the loft the time she'd decided that it was stupid to pay
someone to refinish the hardwood floors there, and she
remembered her father's grimace as he looked at the rented
and borrowed tools strewn throughout.

"Kat, I think you could use some help here."

"No, Dad.  I'm fine."

And even though she knew she couldn't get this tree alone
to where it needed to be without at least an hour of
frustration and exasperation, the need for her to declare
herself able to handle *everything* was so ingrained, so
webbed into her psyche that she nearly turned to Walter
Skinner and said:

"No thanks.  I'm fine."

But instead she turned to him and didn't say anything. 
Didn't say anything for a long time, just looked at him
hard and searched his face.  There was something amiss
here: a wedding ring that should not be on a finger but
was, an overreaction to a gun by a man who wore one.  This
was a man with secrets and regrets.  This was a man of
power who had fear, who was perhaps marked in some way. 
This was a man who hadn't had a Christmas tree for six years.

Of course, neither had she.

This was also a man who had calmed the Beau Beast, and how
he'd accomplished that she could not imagine.  This was a
man who was willing to sacrifice his need for this tree
when she said she'd needed it.  This was a gentleman - a
soldier at one time, she'd lay bet on it - whose voice had
curled her toes and whose mere presence had made her babble.

It was an enigma.  Every cop fiber of her being was
screaming that she should run as fast as she could in the
other direction, but the dark corners of her heart and soul
felt warm and safe for the first time in a long time.

Normally she'd chide herself for musings such as this. 
Normally she'd slap herself for losing all sense of
proportion.  He'd asked her if she needed help with her
tree, not whether she wanted to melt and mend his heart and
her own in the process.  

But she knew it was more than just an offer to haul a tree
up some stairs.  She knew it and he knew it.  If she
acquiesced and accepted this, doors would open in both of
their lives, for better or for worse.  Whatever she decided
here, she knew that it would not be easy.  No white-picket
fence happy endings, no sweet dreams of untested youth. 
They were both adults.  They both held jobs that rewarded a
kind of harsh pragmatism.  They were both alone on
Christmas Eve.

She'd seen all manner of evil in her years in the VCU. 
She'd seen good as well.  She'd learned to distinguish
these things quickly.

What she saw was good.  It just wasn't going to be easy.

She cleared her throat and spoke.  Her voice was clear and
sure.

"I could use some help," she said.  "I'm not far from
here, and I've got three stories worth of stairs to
negotiate."

He didn't say anything for a moment.  They stood facing
each other, her dog a silent witness.  Walter Skinner's
eyes searched hers.  He was weighing, mulling, considering -
just as she'd done - and then she heard his deep voice, and
it curled her toes again:

"I'd be happy to help.  I'll follow you."

She smiled.  "There's a Peppermint Schnapps in it for you
when we're done."

He smiled back.  "I'd like that."

He turned and strode towards his car and she watched him
leave.  She lifted her face to the falling snow.  Up there
above the clouds, the stars were moving.  The earth was
revolving.  Her feet were still rooted to the ground. 
Gravity kept her there.  The earth still orbited the sun. 
Beau was whining in the vehicle beside her.  She would go
back to work the day after Christmas.  She would still have
bad sinuses and her brothers would still tease her and she
still wouldn't want to spend any more time with her sisters-
in-law than she had in the past. 

But standing in a tree lot on Christmas Eve, she knew that
the course of her life had changed.

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