From:             <vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>
Date sent:        Thu, 22 Jan 1998 15:32:18 -0500
Subject:          The View From Adversity, 1/1


The View From Adversity (1/1)
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: PG
Category: V, A
Summary: Bill Scully clarifies his concerns about Mulder's
involvement with his sister.
Spoilers: Redux, Redux II, Pusher

Author's Note: I dislike the "official" Bill Scully, Jr. as much as the
next X-Phile. However, as with many of my stories, I was inspired by
the belief that there *must* be more to the characters than what can be
shown in the limited medium of television. Bill reminds me somewhat
of my own overprotective older brother. Also, I've given Scully a new
apartment because I believe she needs one. For the purpose of
storytelling, I have imposed my own take on the time frame for the
crisis of her cancer.

   A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
                            --Proverbs 17

Dana's apartment was on the southeastern corner of a brick pre-War co-
op building perched on a bluff above a branch of Rock Creek Park.
Two windows on the southern wall of the bedroom captured a view of
the gabled homes and overarching oaks of Macomb Street. On the
eastern wall, a pair of French doors leading to the tiny balcony framed a
vista of the woodland park. Dana had paid a premium on the purchase
price of the apartment for this panorama.

On Friday afternoon, Dana sat in the middle of her rumpled bed, towel-
drying her hair and gazing absently at the treetops through the French
doors opposite the bed. The filtered autumn sunshine backlit the deep
burgundy red of the maples, setting the leaves aglow. The color
reminded Dana of blood.

On Monday, she had nearly bled to death. The cancerous tumor in her
nasopharyngeal cavity had irritated the delicate tissues of her sinuses
and caused a series of nosebleeds over the course of her illness. The
massive nosebleed of Monday had heralded the cancer's coming
victory. After receiving many units of blood, Dana roused from a light
coma, but remained weak. As soon as the nurses told her where she
was and why, she knew that her time was short. Death had arrived, like
an early party guest, before she was ready to greet it.

Then, on Tuesday, Mulder had delivered the tiny bit of technology that
seemed to be the cure, or at least an element of it. The microscopic
implant had been placed just under the skin of her neck, and her
condition improved until imaging showed that the tumor had
disappeared. Dana had been discharged from the hospital on
Wednesday evening with a sober warning from her oncologist to rest
for a few weeks before returning to work. As she bid him goodbye,
she wondered if he had written the words "miraculously cured" in her
chart.

Dana sighed heavily and tossed the wet towel to the floor. The shower
had exhausted her. She felt sleep returning to her like a lost love, and
lowered her head to her pillow. Through the windows set in the wall to
the right of her bed she watched the tops of a stand of giant fir trees nod
and bow. Clutching a small rectangular pillow to her chest, Dana closed
her eyes. The image of the trees' bobbing heads against the November
sky remained with her like a photograph from childhood.

As her mind loosened its grip on consciousness, all her senses gloried
in the comforts of home. Under a down comforter, wrapped in finely
woven pure cotton sheets, upon an extra-firm mattress, surrounded by
the smells of clean laundry and lemon oil and reassured by the distant
sounds of her neighborhood--children returning from school, two dogs
barking at each other, fallen leaves crunching under the tires of passing
cars--Dana slept.

In the hospital, a nurse had taught her to hold the small white pillow to
her chest to ease the pressure on her shoulders and collar bones caused
by lying in bed. By the time she had been hospitalized, she was so thin
that her body had very little of its own cushioning. During her illness,
Dana's weight had plummeted due to the cancer's ravaging her body's
ability to reproduce healthy cells, and but also because of the depression
that grew with the tumor. She had often dreamed that she was
disappearing, like a voiceless shade, the color of her hair and eyes and
the density of her form gradually fading until she was nothing.

Sleeping in the golden afternoon light, Dana dreamed of Mulder. She
revisited an afternoon on the firing range when she had watched Mulder
unloading his clip on the Q target. In the dream, she saw him as he had
been nearly four years ago--younger and cockier, tall and lithe, he held
his body and his weapon as if nothing could hurt him. The resounding
vibration of his gunshots traveled through her dream to reality,
awakening her.

She rolled onto her back, wondering if the shots she had heard had been
real, and saw a man standing in the door to her bedroom, his features
indiscernible in the shadows of late day.

"Mulder?"

"It's Bill, Dana," came a familiar deep voice. "I knocked a few times,
but I guess you--well, obviously you were asleep. I used Mom's key."

He stepped out of the dim and smiled at her. His face was as familiar to
her as her own, and in fact bore many similar features to hers. The
heavy, square jaw, ruddy complexion, and cool, narrow eyes were
Bill's alone, but the auburn hair, Roman nose, high cheekbones, and
facile mouth marked them as siblings.

"I thought you were going home today," Dana said, reaching for his
hand.

"I was, but now that I see you, I'm not so sure I should go." Bill sat
gingerly on the edge of her bed and brushed a few strands of hair back
from her face. "You're still so weak, Dana. I'm really worried about
you."

"I'll be fine," she said, squeezing his hand. "I need a lot of rest, that's
all. Another week of this and I'll be as good as new."

"Yeah, well, just don't let that partner of yours try to talk you into going
back to work before you're ready," Bill said. He was no longer
smiling. "I wouldn't put it past him. He's a sly one."

Dana cocked an eyebrow, and the corner of her mouth twitched upward
into a half-smile.

"Sly Fox?"

"What kind of a name is that, anyway?" Bill asked. "Were his parents
hippies or something?"

"No, not at all. His Dad was State Department. Fox was, I think, a
surname from somewhere back in their lineage. But wherever it
originates, he doesn't like it."

"Is he Jewish?" Bill asked.

Her smile faded.

"Somewhat," Dana replied.

Bill nodded once, his lips pressed together smugly.

"He's a loser, Dana. You realize that, don't you?"

Dana grunted as she scooted into a half-sitting, half-reclining position
against the collected pillows.

"He's not a loser, Bill," she said wearily. "He's his own man. He
lives by his own rules. Surely you have *some* respect for a man who
can sustain his quest for so many years."

"His quest? Give me a break." Bill exhaled a snort of disgust. "Ask
Assistant Director Skinner to reassign him, or you--whatever's best for
you. Skinner will know."

"Bill--"

"You know as well as I do that Mulder's been nothing but trouble from
the day you walked into his office," he continued. "The sooner you can
get free of him, the better."

With the nail of her index finger Dana scraped a few grains of sleep
from the spot where her nose merged with her ocular cavity.

"Lucky for you, Bill, I'm not up to arguing with you," she said. Her
measured speech pattern that divulged her weariness. "So I'll just tell
you: there is no way that I will voluntarily separate myself from Fox
Mulder. He's--"

"He's an ingrate, Dana!" Bill interjected. "A drain on the taxpayers. He
needs to open his own psychic hotline--1-800-SPOOKEE."

Dana almost laughed at that. Bill saw the amusement flit across her face
and threw up his hands in exasperation.

"If I'd known five years ago--if *Dad* had known, for God's sake--
what kind of a man they'd paired you with, I'd have called our
Congressman and raised holy hell."

"Oh, Bill," Dana sighed. "Can't you just let it go?"

Bill shook his head mournfully.

"Dana, let me ask you something," he said, softly now. "Do you love
this guy?"

Dana stared at him for a long moment, and then looked down at her
hands.

"Well then, has he ever told you that he loves you?" Bill pressed. "Has
he ever taken you out to dinner, bought you flowers, held your hand?
Has he? That's what you deserve, Dana. Those are the normal kinds of
things that a man does for the woman he loves--and you know it.
You're throwing your life away on this guy. He's not worthy of you."

She continued to study her hands as she spoke.

"It's not like that." Her voice had gone reedy and girlish, because she
was tired, and because she knew she had been caught. "Mulder's just
my partner. My friend. That's all."

Bill shifted on the bed. His canvas barn jacket rustled around him,
incongruous among the soft bedlinens.

"Look, Dana...I know he's the type that some women fall for--looks
like a starved puppy, all thin and delicate and dopey-eyed. But he's a
user. He'll drain you dry. Maybe he already has."

She peered at Bill, her face taut.

"What have you really got against Mulder?" she asked. "You blame him
for Missy? You shouldn't. Missy died in my place, and that's my
cross to bear--not Mulder's."

With those words, Bill bowed his head, and Dana covered her face with
her hands.

"Oh, Dana," he murmured, reaching for her. "Don't say that. Don't.
It's not your fault."

She wept a little into his shoulder, his jacket rough against her face. Bill
patted her back, his anger temporarily silenced.

"Do you remember," he began. "That summer in Charleston, when she
almost got arrested for protesting about the horses? What was she,
fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Fourteen, because I was ten," Dana said, her voice thick with tears.
"Yeah, I remember. The horses shouldn't be subjugated to pull
carriageloads of tourists who were celebrating a society that oppressed
women and minorities. That was during her political phase."

He chuckled quietly at the memory.

"Clinton closed the Charleston base, you know," Bill said.

"Yeah. I know."

Bill handed her a box of tissues from the bedside table. She delicately
blew her nose.

"What do you think she would say about you and Mulder?" Bill asked
gently.

Dana eased back into the pillows and wiped her face with her fingertips.

"I know exactly what she'd say," Dana replied. "She's tell me to follow
my heart. Believe me, I hear her saying that to me...often. When she
first met him, she didn't like Mulder either. But not for the reasons you
say. Later...later she understood. More than understood. She knew
things I never even told her."

"You do love him."

Dana shrugged. Then she summoned up a smile for him, although her
eyes still glimmered with tears.

"Tara's due in two weeks? Are you excited?"

"Pretty excited," Bill answered, grinning. "We picked out names.
Matthew if it's a boy, Mary is it's a girl. Pretty bland, huh?"

"No. They're good names. Mom said she thought about naming me
Mary."

"I remember. Mary Margaret the Second."

She could almost picture him as a six-year-old boy, sinewy and brash,
vetoing the name of his new sister.

Bill remembered his first sight of her, the size of an NFL regulation
football, pink and wrinkly. Piglet, he had called her.

When did they stop being the children of Bill and Maggie, Dana
wondered, and turn into grown-ups afflicted by crow's feet and
politics?

"I should go," he said. "My plane leaves at six."

Dana nodded and threw back the comforter.

"I'll walk you out."

She stood in her bare feet on the cold wood floor of the foyer and
stretched up to twine her arms around his neck. She hugged him, the
years when she rather have died than show her love for him now a
vague memory.

"Remember, Dana, I just want you to have the best," Bill said, kissing
her forehead.

Dana nodded somberly.

"I know."

When he had gone, Dana padded back to her bedroom, the hem of her
baggy flannel pajama pants dragging at her heels. She crawled into bed,
grabbed the small pillow, and again curled on her right side, thoughts of
Bill and Melissa and Mulder overmastered by her body's drive to
rebuild what had been destroyed by the cancer.

Beyond the eastern windows, the sky was darkening behind the fir
trees. As Dana slipped back into sleep, she wished she could glimpse a
view of the sunset in her dreams. Now all her prospects were of
dawn.

End The View From Adversity, 1/1