From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2010 23:21:02 -0500 (CDT) Subject: I Must Down to the Seas Again by Maidenjedi Source: direct Reply To: maidenjedi@gmail.com Title: I Must Down to the Seas Again Author: Maidenjedi Pairing/Character: Bill Sr/Maggie Rating: PG 13 Spoilers: Beyond the Sea Summary: Bill Scully, Sr., and the loves of his life. NOTES: Title from "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield: http://www.bartleby.com/103/98.html I needed, for the sake of the story, to play a little with the timeline, so though I'm not sure it fits to have Bill Scully in Vietnam, it can fit with Maggie Scully's line about the Cuban blockade in "Beyond the Sea." XXXXXXXXXX He was never as good, on land. He knew it. Bill Scully was a sailor, had been since he'd glimpsed the ocean as a child and smelled the salt-heavy air. His childhood bedroom had been a museum for model ships. He'd joined the Navy before he had his first drink. He'd been on ships for the last six years, and sailors were supposed to have girls in every port, but he never had. Nothing could tie him to the land; he was a different person, a less confident version of himself, on soil. In his wildest dreams, he thought he could stay at sea forever, floating and fighting the waves and Neptune for his right to live on the water. In spite of all that, however, Margaret Edwards had captivated him, with her big eyes and kind heart, her petite figure and far-from-chaste kisses. He had to marry this girl. "Maggie. Mags. Marry me?" She giggled, she always did, at "Mags." And she blushed and was so beautiful, he thought maybe the sea would hold sway no longer. -- "I hate this war." "Me, too, baby. Me too." He whispered this into Maggie's hair, hoping no one but her might hear him. He was still in uniform, after all. He'd been away for a year, on a ship of course, fighting a war that left most men in his generation with a lasting blank stare and black moods. He was no different, just like them, and his was a most damaging sentence for fighting in that war. He wasn't out of the Navy, oh no, just chained to a desk for a bit (and he knew that "bit" was going to be his great trial; he already had visions of growing idle, fat, and dull). He tried not to think about his now-bum knee, and instead focused on holding his Mags, and looking around at their children, these little people he hardly recognized. Bill, Jr. was so tall he made his mother look like a child standing next to him. Charlie was the small one, the two of them uneven bookends. Both boys were eager to please, their faces full of questions. The girls were like their mother. All girls were like their mothers. Bill had a hard time looking at Melissa, tall like her brother and blossoming, the defiance that marked adolescence evident in her countenance and making him anxious to let her mother do the talking. Dana was still a child on the edges, but looked at him frankly, all her emotion at his return showing on her face - relief, wariness, confusion, joy. All four of them began speaking at once, anxious for their father's approval, desperate to know he was the man who'd left them. "Dad, I got all As this term!" "Dad, you have to come to Scouts now you're back." "Dad, I can read a whole book by myself!" "Dad, Mother says I can learn to drive this fall. Will you teach me, Dad?" They went home, Bill Scully and his family. He was not sure of them, of himself. He had to keep looking at Maggie, had to touch her. Once home, he did much more. He was assigned to a desk job at NAS Patuxent River, in Maryland. The family moved as far from sunny California as they could and every one of them moaned and complained. Melissa pitched the first fit she'd thrown since she was a small child. Maggie bore it all gracefully and was the only one not to curse her husband at any point in the move. The war ended, as tidily as those things did, which meant not well at all. Times were better, then worse, buffered by the comfort of family and the cold comfort of employment. Bill had to admit, he appreciated the time, finally, to get to know the kids. He was more than happy for the time with Maggie, whose arms were never cold. Yet, on a base meant for those who preferred the sky, it did not take long for Bill to regret the sea. -- He cheated on his wife in 1981. She never knew. Or, she never let him know that she knew. He always came back, after all. "What if I didn't come back?" There was no one around; he was on a bridge overlooking the Potomac River, after a rendezvous with Carla, the lieutenant who looked as good out of uniform as in. The lapping of the water in the chill winter made him think of the north Atlantic. He missed the danger and the thrill of the seas. He had gone looking for it in a woman who had not ever tied him down, settled him. And that was so unfair to Maggie, Bill choked on the thought. It didn't stop him, though, from going back to Carla, just a few more times. To see what he was missing, to see if there was something he could do to quell the desires in his heart. He should have known better. The last time, he came home late, after midnight. It was over, they had known it before the evening began and it had been perfunctory and a little like clinging. Waiting for him in the kitchen was a little woman, all accusatory gaze and indignant tilt of the head. His Starbuck. "Why didn't you come home for dinner?" God, her voice was small. And he wasn't prepared for the demanding tone. When he'd seen her, he expected petulance, possibly anger. He'd expected Melissa would be the one to figure it out and confront him, of the two of them. He hadn't cared. Bill hadn't felt regret, or anything other than weariness, for so long. Until Dana spoke, he felt nothing. And then he felt everything. He did not cry in front of his daughter. He left that to her, until he could get away. And she forgave him, or so he thought (in truth it was years later, and he was gone by then). He made sure she got to bed, and then went to Maggie. What he wanted, really, was not another woman. He needed something different, a more substantial change. The next day, he chanced it and requested sea duty, command of a ship or something. To his shock, it was granted. Before two years were over, he was conducting war games as a ship captain. On the sea, once again. His marriage, it turned out, was never better. -- All fathers have ambitions for their children. Bill Scully, Jr., followed his father into the Navy, through the Academy. The proudest day of Bill, Sr.'s life was watching his eldest son's commissioning at Annapolis. Charlie, too, went to sea, in the Merchant Marine. Though not an officer, he was still doing something to serve his country. Bill's daughters, though. "Bill, you can't put these kinds of pressures on Dana. She has to figure things out for herself, she has to have the right to make her decisions." "I don't want to see her waste medical school, all that training! The F.B.I. is a foolish path for her." For a woman, the unspoken line. Dana was not the worst of the two, though. Melissa, now, there was a wayward daughter if ever there was one. Bill hadn't actually spoken to her for six months before she wrote to say she was in California and did not know when she might return. He'd stopped speaking to her after they fought over her rejecting Catholicism and running around with that good-for-nothing hippie. Who probably took liberties and drugs to boot. He and Maggie agreed on Melissa, at any rate. But not Dana, and when Maggie went to Dana's graduation from the F.B.I. Academy, Bill went into work. It was a long time before he could admit, and then only to his wife, that he was proud of his Starbuck, the brave little woman who just wanted earnestly to please him. -- He started having "episodes" about a year before the heart attack that would claim his life. Dizzy spells, he called them. Maggie fretted, Bill brushed it off, and that was that. But he sensed it. The way a seasoned sailor smells hurricanes, or knows how to tell the weather by sunrise and sunset. He could tell, he did not have much time, even though the actual thought never materialized. He finally retired, mostly at his doctor's insistence. He spoiled Maggie, taking her out and keeping her in the bedroom. They laughed and told stories, prayed together, spent time with their children. They went out on the boat they'd purchased when he got his last promotion. "Bill?" Maggie was sitting with her legs over his, and he was playing with her feet. "Yeah, Mags?" "Do you think we've been happy?" The boat rocked, and the sky was full of stars. His wife was with him, and while he did not feel well, he felt content. "Yes." -- Ashes spread over ocean, no one but family. He'd been very explicit. She had them play "Beyond the Sea," and told Dana the story, how it had been playing the first time he came home to her. She could wish that some things were different. She could have wanted a homebody, a landlubber. But God gave her Bill, with his yen for bluer oceans just over the horizon. And they had been happy, at last. Dana's face was stiff with the effort to hold back tears, and Maggie wished she could tell her exactly what Bill had always said about her. "She's going to be a great one, my Starbuck. She's got it in her to be so brave, to slay dragons if she chose. There are many kinds of dragons, I know." He was her father. It was understood. -- -- end A/N: Because I have not written a word in months, and this came out kind of hurried as though it might not be written otherwise, I'm putting it out there and letting it be. I had forgotten what an incredible hour of television "Beyond the Sea" really was. I think there is a lot of backstory to be explored there - I wish I had the guts to really tackle Bill Scully. It seems easier, almost, to talk about Mulder's mother than about Scully's father. But I thought I'd give it a go tonight. The other thing - I think of the Scully family, especially compared to the Mulder family, as having been very typically American, and a bit corny. But I did want, in writing about Bill tonight, to show that he wasn't so very different than Mulder's father in his way. Both, after all, served two mistresses. One was just better at it, in the end. maidenjedi@gmail.com