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