"The Trainer," Vignette based on "Being Crazy"

Name: Branwell

E-Mail: COMBS-BACHMANN@WORLDNET.ATT.NET

Please forward to XFF, Gossamer, and ATXC

Date Finished: December 29, 1998

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Chris Carter, the actors who portray them, and
Ten Thirteen productions created and own the characters
you recognize. My writing is for fun, not money.

Category: V and A, for a Vignette with Angst. I have
a really tough time with this labeling, so let me know how to
improve it if I'm misleading people.

Archiving permission: Anyone may feel free to archive this.
Just keep my name with it.

Time: Set between "The End" and "The X-Files Fight the
Future"

Spoilers: Season Three, especially "Paper Clip"

Summary: Bill Scully thinks about his relationship with his
sisters and how he affected their lives. I wanted to explore
his thoughts, but I thought it slowed the narrative too much
to leave it in the story. It was originally in the middle of
Chapter 37, More Choices.

      "It was me that helped make her so tough you know."

      Mulder was prepared to concede that point. He was just the
person who had benefited from and reinforced that characteristic.

      Bill had gone into a brown study. Mulder permitted silence
rather than goading Bill on to inflict more misery on both of them
with his narrative. A brief pause would make no difference now

      Bill was remembering an incident from close to thirty years ago.
He had been eleven, almost twelve. During that period life in the
Scully household had alternated between chaos, when his father was
absent, and order, when he was present. During the absences, fighting
with each other was an ingrained habit among the children. They hit,
kicked and pinched when within reach of each other as spontaneously as
they sneezed in a cloud of dust. Their mother had given up refereeing
long ago. If no one had to go to the doctor, they could pretty well
get away with it. Universal guilt led to one ironclad rule: No
tattling. The level of violence was usually contained, but once in a
while someone got carried away.

      From the perspective of an adult, Bill realized that the day he
remembered had been unusually bad for him. His father had discovered
his bike outside when he left for work that morning. Two weeks
grounded with extra yard work was the automatic penalty. On the way to
school that day he had been jumped on by "Beefy" Bonaducci, and gotten
his shirt pocket torn in the fight. His Mom would lay into him about
that, since he would have to tell her that it was an accident. Unless
he wanted Beefy's big brothers to show him what suffering really was.
The English test he got back had a great big  'D' at the top. When he
returned home that afternoon he didn't have any good feelings to pass
on to his unlucky brother and sisters.

      He punched Charlie around until he cried and kept pulling
Missy's hair until she raked him with her nails. It was Dana who made
the most satisfactory target. She wouldn't fight him like a girl. He
outweighed her by twenty pounds, and had five inches in height on her.
He could always count on a definitive victory, but he could never make
her cry.

      That day he decided that instead of fighting he would make her
cry. It took him only a few minutes to get her pinned. He proceeded to
administer an Indian burn that flushed her face with the sting. When
she still wouldn't cry, he lost his usual restraint, and sense of
self-preservation. He kept on trying for another fifteen minutes, up
and down her arms, while she stubbornly glared at him and bit her
lips. What was he going to do? It was a point of honor now. Just when
he thought his hands were too tired to wring her small limbs one more
time, he heard his mother's footsteps approaching. This was the
equivalent of the king ending the combat. Honor was satisfied. He took
off out the other door to the room, while Dana tried to give the
impression of someone looking for a lost item on the floor.

      One way or another, Bill blew off the rest of the steam he
needed to vent that day. The next day while they were getting ready
for school he heard Dana and Missy in their room. They were arguing.

      "You should tell, Dana. He really hurt you. He deserves to be
punished."

      He peeked into their room with a sinking feeling in the pit of
his stomach. Dana was wearing a sleeveless cotton T-shirt. Bill was
horrified to see dark purple bruises all over her arms. It looked as
though she had been beaten. She was removing a long-sleeved shirt from
a hanger.

      "I don't want him to think I'm a sissy," she replied fiercely.
"I'm a not a sissy. Only sissies cry and tell on each other."

      He had walked away shaking in his shoes. If his father saw those
bruises on Dana, it wouldn't be grounding or yard work. It would be a
session in the bedroom with his father and his father's belt. He was
at her mercy. Over the next week she managed to keep her arms covered
until the bruises faded enough to be explained as the result of
falling off a swing. What surprised him most was that she didn't taunt
him with her generosity, or exact retribution. The incident didn't
stop him from fighting with all of them as usual, but he stayed well
within their mutually understood limits. It was only after he grew up
that he could appreciate the irony. If another youth had inflicted
such bruises on Dana he would have exacted nothing less than two black
eyes and a cut lip in reparation.

      Several years later the two wiry, boisterous girl-children he
had grown up with so intimately had disappeared into mysterious,
withdrawn women. Sometimes he thought it had happened overnight. One
day they were admiring and copying his batting swing, the next day
they were whispering about important female secrets. His exploits and
interests were suddenly boring, immature and yucky. That wasn't so bad
though. His feelings about girls were changing too. Sometimes he felt
some very confusing things about his sisters and their budding
figures.

      What hurt was seeing the lives they led when they left the
shelter of the Scully home. He and Charlie embraced the structure and
balance of the Navy. Their lives were well-organized and reflected the
kind of self-respect a person needed in a world without built-in
values. Melissa had gone totally wild, travelling from place to place,
undoubtedly shacking up whenever she felt the urge. It bothered him
even more when he thought that she might hook up with some jokers just
for their shacks. It wasn't right that men were taking advantage of
his sister. Why did she let them? Why didn't she make something of
herself? Instead she devoted herself to fuzzy thinking and feel-good
philosophies.

      Dana had gone in the opposite direction. She always had been
reserved, disciplined and hard working, on top of being the smartest
of them all. Naturally she went to med school. But the success was
deceptive. She had no balance in her life either. With her it was
work, work, work. No dalliances, not even many dates. His father was
surprised, but he was not, when she took her medical degree to the
FBI. She had gotten bored, and looked to her work for excitement. She
got excitement all right. And a lot of horror. And she got taken
advantage of by a man who didn't even want her as a woman. All he
wanted was every ounce of her energy, her last drop of blood and her
last breath in service to his personal crusade to prove that aliens
had abducted his sister. Now Bill wasn't so sure he had grasped that
relationship in its entirety. Still, he was sure it had done no good
for Dana.

      Sometimes he searched his conscience. Was he an innocent
bystander in his sisters' lives? Did he have something to do with the
paths they chose?

      Yesterday he had seen that fiercely determined and independent
little sister of long ago peering out at him through the grown woman's
face. A short time later Dana was gone, following her big sister into
the unknown. There was no transformation this time---it was a complete
disappearing act. Had her fate been written already when they had
their contest of wills in that shabby old living room?

end.