From: fialka@t-online.de (Fialka)
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 17:54:06 +0200
Subject: NEW: Soliloquy: Bill Scully (1/1) by Fialka
Source: xff


Title: Soliloquy: Bill Scully
Author: Fialka
Summary: Bill Scully has a story to tell Mulder.
Spoilers: post-Emily
Category: V, A
Archive: Gossamer and other auto-archives okay. Others please write. Do not
forward to ATXC, it's already been there.
Disclaimer: Don't own them, just borrowing, promise to put them back in a
reasonably unmutilated state.
Feedback: Yes. Feed me. <fialka@t-online.de>
More Candy: http://home.t-online.de/home/fialka/fiction
The Real Meal: The Annotated X-Files http://smart.issexy.com

Notes: This was something I tripped over while writing a longer casefile.
Everyone loves to diss poor Bill Jr. I thought there might be another side
to the story.

First Posting: 18 Sep 99. Thanks to Mandy, Obi-Wan of the All-Beta.

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SOLILOQUY: BILL SCULLY
by Fialka


You sorry bastard.

You took one of my sisters, then you almost took the other. Now she's
sitting on the couch, crying her heart out, and what do you do? You just
sit there, talking about nothing.

Oh, you say, but she's not crying. That's what I mean. You don't know her.
Dana doesn't cry with tears. She cries with silence. Mom knows that. Look
at her over there, fixing coffee for all of us. She's waiting. Waiting for
you to go, so Dana can drop the damn facade. We're all waiting for you to
go.

Everyone except Dana.

No, you don't know her. I did, until you got to her, changed her into a
stranger. Even Mom says something's happened, something's broken in her and
she won't stop running long enough to let us fix it.

Mom likes you, I don't know why, so it took her a long time to admit that.

I don't like you. But I can tell you what broke her. It was Melissa.

Yeah, you lost your sister, too. I know. Dana told me, back in the days
when she was still herself, when she still actually told me stuff. Well,
I'm sorry about that. Really, I am. I know how it feels, remember? But you
can't have mine, just because you lost yours.

Oh, yeah, she's mine. She was mine from the day she was born, like Charles
was Melissa's. My mother's way of dealing with the fact she only had two
hands, and three kids. Then four. She gave the little ones to us.

I took that seriously, you know. Dana and me both, we were serious kids.
Charlie and Melissa were the wild ones. They were the ones that could make
Dana laugh. Even when she was little, she didn't laugh a lot. You could get
her to laugh by tickling her, but then she'd be mad afterward, and even at
two, Dana's temper was something you didn't want to provoke.

I bet you don't make her laugh. She's got a laugh like a little kid. Did
you know that? It never grew up. Maybe because she never used it much. And
now, as far as I can tell, she doesn't laugh at all.

You should get Dana to show you her photo album. I know she's got one, Mom
made one for each of us when we graduated high school. Take a look at those
pictures some day. You see that boy dragging a baby around? That's me and
Dana. Yeah, I dragged her everywhere until she could walk, then she just
followed. You ever wonder why she can keep up with you on those short
little legs of hers? It's the years of following me around, knowing I'd
leave her behind the minute she acted like a baby, or couldn't keep up.

Yeah, she followed me everywhere, and sometimes I pretended that I hated
it, but I didn't. She was something, my little sister. I was proud of her.
She was as fierce as any of us boys, half our size but she could run us
down and punch our lights out. She did, you know, she beat up one of my
friends. I bet she never told you about that, either.

It was the year we moved to San Diego. Dana was five, and mad about not
being allowed into first grade because she wouldn't be six before December.
It was stupid, really, I mean she could already read. Anyway, she was
sitting on our front step when Missy and I came home, and of course we were
gloating about getting to go to school while she had to sit home like a
baby, and Dana was getting madder and madder. And my new friend Kevin that
lived across the street, he told her that her face was getting as red as
her hair. You just didn't say stuff like that to Dana on the best of days,
but on that day...well, she was just this bolt of fury. Kevin was twice her
size, easy, height and weight, but she just barrelled into him and knocked
him down and by the time Mom got out there she was sitting on his chest,
punching him in the face and demanding that he take it back. I tell you, he
had a lot of respect for her after that.

Yeah, you didn't know that about her, did you? You think she's this fragile
little thing, all fingernails and high heels. Well, she's small, but don't
let that fool you. She's tougher than any of us.

Tough, but she takes things hard. Really hard.

I can tell you a story about that, too. It was when I went off to college.
I left her home, my fierce little sister, all freckles and braids and
braces, and when I came back for Christmas the braces were gone, and so
were the braids, and she was gorgeous. Just gorgeous. You know the story.
The ugly duckling turns into a swan. God, that was Dana. Her hair got
darker and her eyes got bluer and she finally grew into her nose. She had
the same figure then as she has now, and that was new too, believe me.
What's more, she had no idea that anything had happened, except she finally
got those damn braces off. She wasn't Missy, always looking in the mirror,
fussing with hair and clothes and makeup. She was completely innocent, as
fresh and natural as it comes. And she had no idea, absolutely no idea how
powerful that was. She'd go walking out on the base and all the guys would
just have their mouths hanging open. She was hotter than hot, she was so
hot those stupid half-brained grunts didn't even dare whistle at her.

So I was home, and there was a guy I'd met, just out of Annapolis, all
puffed up in his white uniform. Oh yeah, he was good-looking. And he knew
it. He was one for the girls, always with a different one, and he liked
them young. I can't even remember his name now. Maybe I don't want to. But
we were hanging around, and there goes Dana, I guess on her way to have
lunch with Dad in the Officer's Mess. She liked to do that sometimes.

So Dana walks by and doesn't see a thing, but believe me, all the guys see
her. And this Annapolis guy, he asks me if I know her. I was trying to act
cool, so I just said yeah. He asked me to introduce him and I said, 'No
way. She's underage, man. She's barely fifteen years old.'

I can't remember his name, but I can remember what he said, word for word.
He said, 'So? In another society she'd be married with two kids by now.
That's the problem in our society, Bill. We keep our children children for
too long. We let the best years pass and say don't touch, they're too
young, but they're not too young. They're perfect. Women her age, they're
women, but they're innocent, still damp from childhood. They're poetry
incarnate, and it doesn't last. A year at the most, then somebody will fuck
her and the magic will be gone. She'll be just another pretty girl. Get
them while they're magic, Bill. They're gonna get fucked, so you might as
well be the one.'

Well, he got her. New Year's Eve, she and Missy went sneaking off to a
party and he got her. She was so smart, my sister, and so goddamn stupid.
Right on the base, right behind the officer's barracks, where anyone
walking past could see if they looked in the shadows. He's got her up
against the wall and he's got his hand up her skirt. You can see it on her
face, what he's doing, and she's loving it. Just loving it. Eyes closed,
that's why she didn't see me coming up. And then he did something she
didn't love, and when she pushed him away, he hit her. Right in the face.
Split her bottom lip wide open.

Yeah, I pulled them apart. Yeah, I did at least tell him she was my little
sister before I laid into him. I wanted him to know why I was kicking his
ass, that it wasn't some random bit of chivalry. I wanted him to know that
he had messed with someone I loved.

And Dana? Well, I told you she was tough. Before I got there she'd already
hit him back. Broke his nose so good he's gonna remember her for the rest
of his life. I brought her to the base hospital and they stitched up her
lip. Did it good. I bet you can't find the scar, even now, and I know
you're gonna look for it. My parents freaked when I brought her home,
stitches in her lip and covered with blood. I didn't tell them what had
happened and neither did she, at least I know she never told our father,
otherwise he'd have had that bastard court-martialed. No, she told them
she'd gotten drunk and tripped. She was a little drunk, that part was true.
The bastard had given her some scotch to loosen her up. And they smelled it
on her breath, so they believed her. Watched her like a hawk for years
after, but she never did anything like that again. At least not while she
was living in their house, and she lived there a long time, longer than she
should have. Whatever spirit of adventure was working in her that night,
that bastard knocked it right out of her.

That's what I mean about Dana taking things hard. It shouldn't have
mattered so much, but it did. He didn't get inside her, but that magic she
had, that innocent beauty, it was gone. And she never talked about it. She
didn't talk much at all for awhile, but Charlie and Melissa were so busy
raising hell that my parents never even noticed. They didn't hear Dana
crying in the silence. I was back at college most of that time, but thank
god Missy was still around. They got really close those last couple of
years before Missy finished high school and left home.

Then, when it came Dana's turn to go, she just didn't bother. She could
have gone to any school she wanted, but she picked a college nearby and
picked the hardest subjects and just studied her ass off. Didn't really go
to parties. Didn't date much. She had a couple of friends she hung around
with and I think for her, that was enough. She never had a lot of friends,
none of us did. We were so close in age and we moved around so much, we
just stuck together. And we stayed close, even when we grew up. Not like
when we were kids, no. We had our own lives, all over the place. But we
still talked. We used to, anyway. Dana used to call me two, three times a
week when she was at Quantico. She needed someone to tell her she could get
through it, and she couldn't ask Dad for support, he was so mad at her. Mom
and Missy were always there, sure, but they couldn't understand. They
hadn't been through it. So I'd tell her about Annapolis and by the time we
hung up, she'd be laughing, cause it was so damn similar. Dad had always
told her she wasn't cut out for the Navy, and here she was doing
practically the same training, and damn good at it. Maybe that's why she
joined the FBI to begin with, you know. Because she needed to prove to him
that she *was* cut out for it, and maybe that's why he was so pissed off. I
think he was mad at himself, because if he'd let her go into the Navy she
probably would have stayed a doctor. Instead what did she wind up doing?
Running around with you, chasing little green men. Getting beaten up and
taken away, and then you got Melissa shot. Thank god Dad wasn't around to
see that. It would have killed him right then and there. It damn near
killed Dana, she and Missy were so close. And you don't know her, so you
don't know how she changed after that. All those Sunday dinners she sat
through in silence. She was crying so hard she couldn't even talk.

And now there's this. This child, that's supposed to be hers. Now she's
sitting on the couch right next to you and she's crying and she's going to
go on crying and you can't help her if you don't shut up. See, I remember
you when she was dying. Always coming in and babbling conspiracies and
aliens. Talking, talking, talking. Never listening for the tears. She put
that thing inside her just to make you shut up.

You want to know why I'm telling you all this? Because you're like that
guy, but you don't know it. You dragged her into the shadows, into your
crazy little world and had your way with her. Yeah, I know you've never
touched her like that. But you took what was still innocent in her, and
beautiful, and you left her with nothing.

Nothing but you. You took her from us, now you better take care of her.

It's New Year's Eve tomorrow.

Do you know what Dana does on New Year's Eve? What she's done every New
Year's Eve since she was fifteen years old? She spends it with our mother.
Only you're taking her back east tonight, and Mom is staying here. Yeah,
Dana insisted on that. She says she wants to be alone.

No one wants to be alone on New Year's Eve, Mr Mulder.

I know my sister. She's going to call you tomorrow night, just to say
hello. And you better listen. You better listen to her silence. Because I
don't think she can cry any louder. And there's no one else to hear her any
more.

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