Disclaimer: Everything related to SMK belongs to Warner Brothers and Shoot the Moon Enterprises, Ltd.

Author's Note: This is the first SMK fic I've written for a while, and while I am aware that it isn't a particularly good fic I hope that you enjoy it nonetheles; it's the obligatory Odds on a Dead Pigeon fic. Feedback and concrit is always welcome.

Skin Deep

By Laurie

For the third time that night he killed Amanda King.

That, perhaps, was too active a description; rather, he failed to save her.

He had become accustomed to saving her.

Lee unwrapped himself from the tangled sheets that were closed, shroud-like, around him, fighting his way free, kicking against the threads stretched taut until he could sit on the edge of the bed and shiver against the night air. The air itself felt warm and there was a thin sheen of sweat coating his body but still he shivered. He leant across, flicked on the lamp, needing more light, needing to flood the room with it, to banish the shadows that lurked in the corners and the fear they contained. The fear was always there, the light just helped him to pretend that it wasn't.

There was a coating in his mouth, thick, but he'd finished the water the last time he'd woken up with Amanda's blank gaze staring back at him. He stood up, padded through his silent apartment to the kitchen. The water was cold and he drank it greedily until it dribbled down his chin and he realised how hot his skin was. He could still see Amanda's face. Not Amanda's face, he told himself, Karen's. Karen was the one who fell, Karen was the one who was dead. Amanda was safe. It was Amanda. He was sure of that. He had made the right choice.

He was sure of that. Fairly sure.

Doubt, it was always the thing that crept in at 4- What time was it anyway? His eyes found the glare of the timer, watched as a 3 morphed to a 4. 4:14 a.m. Doubt and the fear played their duet, this was their hour.

He wondered what Amanda was doing but was confident that he could answer that: she would be at home, she would be in bed and asleep, maybe even one of her boys curled up beside her seeking her comfort after a nightmare. Bad dreams always called for solace.

It was Amanda who was safe. He needed her to be safe, just like he had needed her to know that he was there when he had found her unconscious on the floor. Why had he told her that? Why had that been so important? When had he started needing her to need him?

When he picked up his keys it was without really noticing it. When he gunned the car out of the garage and down the street it was with a vague half-thought of his destination. When he was halfway there the insanity of what he was doing began to sink in. He wondered what he would do when he got there. Bang on the door, wake the household, scare her mother silly and say, Hi Mrs West, is it okay if I come in and check that your daughter is really your daughter and not some hired killer with a pretty face and dead eyes?

But somehow the car went through the intersection without his making the turn that would take him back home.

It had been the eyes, he thought; he knew Amanda's eyes.

Her house was in darkness, white picket fence and the peaked porch picked out by the street-lamp. So, now what? What does the mighty Scarecrow do now that he's made his pilgrimage to her home, Our Lady of Suburbia? He could wait until they all woke and she sent her kids to school before getting herself ready for another day of her double life.

And not for the first time he wondered why he had to pick on her. So many people he could have chosen, but he had to pick her. It had had to be a woman, of course. A man would have punched him in the nose, tried to play the hero, got them both killed. Women were far more reasonable when it came to strangers making impossible requests.

She would be asleep. He could hardly climb the trellis and stare in through her bedroom window. Well, technically he could - he'd done that sort of thing many times before, but this would be different. And he drew the line at the perversions of the voyeur unless he was being paid.

Even so, he eased out of the car, closed the door silently, crossed the street and then across her lawn, skirting the edge of the house. He made a circuit of it, checking the windows were fastened and the back door locked and-

There was light, faint but there was light. One low and steady, the other flickering against the window. And Amanda, curled on the couch, cheek propped against her hand, watching television with the sound turned low. Her robe was pink, fluffy, it looked cosy and a little worn. And he watched for a while, watched the light flicker across her face, plunging it into shadow and then illumining it. In the harshness of the intermittent glare she looked radiant. Then her head turned, suddenly, and her eyes found him, the face in the window, and for a moment it seemed as though she couldn't quite work out what she was seeing. And then she still stared and he fought the impulse to run.

Amanda motioned to him - the kitchen, the back door, their usual rendezvous - and unfolded her slender frame. Standing up the robe was bulky and made her look like a marshmallow person. Francine would love it, he thought; Francine could go to hell.

'Lee,' she said, when they faced each other, her voice soft, 'what are you doing here?'

'I...'

'Are you okay?' She took a step forward and he took one back, instinctive, retreating, backing into the darkness where she couldn't see his face.

'I'm fine.'

She frowned and didn't say that she didn't believe him. 'Has something happened? I can't really leave right now- I mean, I could, anyone can just leave if they have to, but I can't really go anywhere in the middle of the night, I have to get the boys to school in the morning and-'

'Amanda-'

She stopped and looked at him and he sighed slightly.

'You don't have to go anywhere, there isn't a job, I just- Are you all right?'

She wrapped her arms around herself, leant against the door-frame; she had pinned her hair back from her face and it improved the no-style style it had while she was trying to grow out the curls that had been cut too short. It looked better like that, Lee decided, more the way it had before.

'Oh, I'm okay. I guess.'

'You're up late.' That's what years of training and the honing of instincts would do: perfect the ability to state the damn obvious.

'I couldn't sleep,' she said. 'It's funny, there's a film on now, a spy film- I guess that should be agent film' -she smiled wryly at her own joke- 'and there's an agent that everyone thinks has been turned, that he's a double-agent, but it turns out that there's two of them, him and a ringer. That's funny.'

'Yes,' he said, but it wasn't.

'Yeah. I got to thinking... You knew it was me. You knew that.' She nodded, confirming it. 'And I can't help thinking ... well, I can't help wonder if I'd know. If it was you, I mean. If there were two of you...'

The night had got colder, somewhere between his waking up and arriving here. He could feel the snap of it and his skin had started to tighten against it. They spoke quietly, leaning into each other without thinking of it.

'Of course you'd know me.' He managed a smile, one that had more confidence than he felt. 'Lee Stetson, the one and only.'

Her lips quirked, one side lifting before falling again. 'I hope so.'

'Look, if it makes you feel any better we could have a code. If you're in doubt you could ask me if I like bowling and I'll say yes, I do.'

Laughter broke the stillness before she muffled it. 'You hate bowling.'

'Exactly.' He smiled. 'And a fake me would know that, so they'd expect the answer to that question to be no. See? Only you and I would expect the opposite. It's a bluff.'

'Isn't that a double-bluff?'

'Maybe. Either way, it works.'

'Okay, I can see that.' Amanda pulled the robe closer, the collar already crossed high across her throat. 'I would invite you in, but-'

'It's fine.' It came out gruff, harder than he'd intended; and she seemed to flinch against the sound, brace herself. Damn. How was it that he always managed to hurt her? 'You should get some sleep.' He made sure that he kept his voice gentle.

Amanda rested her head against the frame. 'I suppose so; but I'd have to be getting up soon away. And I may as well watch the end of the movie.'

'I can tell you how it ends-'

'You've seen it?'

'No, I don't have to: the bad guy gets caught, probably killed, and the hero gets cleared and probably gets the girl. Is there a girl?'

She nodded.

'There always is. That's how it ends. That's how they all end.'

One corner of her mouth curled up and stayed that way. 'It would be nice if it was really like that.'

'Some of it is sometimes.'

'I know, I just meant- I-' She stopped and shrugged slightly and in the dim light it looked as though there was more colour in her face. 'It's never as easy as in the movies, is it?'

'No. That's why they call it fiction, I guess.'

She yawned suddenly, smothering it in her hands and her dark eyes shimmered at him guiltily. 'Sorry.'

'You should try to get a little sleep,' he said and started to ease back into the shadows. They were no longer as dense as they had been; the sky was starting to lighten.

'Lee...'

He half-turned and she still stood, still wrapped in her own embrace and her head still tilted to one side. 'Thanks.'

'No problem,' he whispered back, not sure why she was thanking him and not asking.

When he got back home his sheets were still in a hopeless tangle; he tore the bed to pieces and remade it. It was barely worth the attempt at sleep but suddenly his eyes were heavy and there was a wonderful deep stillness that he was ready to fall into. And just as he was slipping into it he thought that Karen would never have been able to carry it off for very long because when he thought about it, Amanda and Karen had looked nothing alike.

Fin