Maggie's Tale
by MystPhile
Website: http://members.xoom.com/MystPhile/
AND http://galias.webprovider.com/mystphile.htm
Rating: Sorta MSR, PG-13
Summary: Maggie (Daniel's daughter in all things) reveals what young Dana
Scully was like. Also includes the missing Maggie/Scully conversation.
Comments: I loved seeing this episode from a third person's perspective! I
*also* loved hearing about the past from Maggie, learning about Scully as
a med student and an idol, and then.. :-) Scully is characterized excellently
through this character! MystPhile does 'all things' post eps really well!
(see "Speak to Me").
Title: Maggie's Tale
Author: MystPhile@aol.com
Distribution: Gossamer, Ephemeral,
Spooky, Xemplary, yes.
Others, please inform.
SUMMARY: Maggie (Daniel's daughter
in all things) reveals what
young Dana Scully was like. Also includes the missing Maggie/Scully
conversation.
Category: V, Post-ep
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: all things
Disclaimer: Property of 1013
Feedback: Welcome at MystPhile@aol.com
NOTE: This is an unusual story for me. If you read it, I'd like to
know what you think.
WEBPAGE: Thanks to Beaker: http://members.xoom.com/MystPhile/
And many thanks to Galia: http://galias.webprovider.com/mystphile.htm
And at Xemplary
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Most sixteen year olds are oblivious
to anything not directly
in front of their noses. Our hormones blind us at that age, them
and our natural selfishness as we take center stage in our
version of the universe. But I think I must have been a
particularly dense case.
Before "it" happened, I
loved being sixteen. It was all so totally
absorbing---wondering if Joe Wentworth was going to ask me out
again, considering how far we would go, thinking that if I
married him, some fine day, I wouldn't even have to change my
initials. Chattering with my friends, being a part of the right
crowd, in my case, the artistes, the ones who wore scruffy
clothes, uncombed hair, and boots, always boots. I don't think
I even owned a skirt that year.
I was president of the film club,
my big love in life (after Joe
Wentworth). I thought Bogie was the coolest guy who'd ever
walked this earth. I even sneaked unfiltered cigarettes and let
them hang from my lower lip, frantically chewing gum before
entering the house, where I knew my dad would kill me if he
caught a whiff.
No, that's wishful thinking, one of
the ideas I'm finally
letting go. Let's face it. I could have walked into that house
nude, with Joe Wentworth attached to my left tit, and Dad would
have said, "How's it going, Mag," as he trotted out of the house
to his latest emergency. I doubt he knew that I was president
of the film club or that I was practicing a whole hell of a lot
that year to perform Mozart's clarinet concerto with the
orchestra. He wouldn't have known that I had three poems
published in the literary magazine, or that in an effort to
appear well-rounded for the college admissions process, I had
taken up both track and field hockey. I'd even joined the
fucking chess club and fed the hungry in my four spare minutes a
week.
I was, of course, also involved in
keeping my grades up and
scheduling a sufficient number of AP courses to impress the
college admissions officers. No wonder, in retrospect, my life
fell apart before I realized it was in danger. I was blind and
Dad was treacherous.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dana looked like an angel then. Oddly,
she was one of the few
of Dad's protégées who took an interest in me. No. It is not
odd. I must get realistic about this, take off the blinders and
face facts. And the fact is that most of the students he
brought home could read him damned well---well enough to know
that they would succeed by adoring and impressing him, kissing
his ass with sufficient fervor, not by faking an interest in his
ill-groomed, surly daughter. But Dana was different.
She still looks good, I have to admit.
But then----her face was
smooth and freshly pressed, her skin so smooth and satiny, you
wanted to reach out and touch it to see if it were silk. Her
eyes were the brightest blue I have ever seen. No sky could
rival the warmth of the genuine interest that shone there. Her
hair was long and flaming, cascading over her shoulders like an
unruly waterfall. I think when she had time, she straightened
it, but med students don't have much time, so she went natural.
Like me, she didn't pay much attention to her clothes, either.
Just made sure she was wearing good, comfortable shoes. Nothing
would have dimmed her beauty anyway---without makeup or
elaborate grooming, even in scrubs, she was the most beautiful
woman I had ever seen.
And the nicest, of the older women
I knew. Dad's other med
students treated me like wallpaper. Mom, of course, took a keen
interest in me, all too keen and judgmental, I thought, in those
days. Same thing with my relatives. But Dana actually noticed
me and appeared to have a genuine interest. Instead of fawning
over Dad when she came to dinner at our house, she asked if she
could see my room. She asked about the posters on my wall,
noticed all the shots from old films. I opened up to her, told
her how I really wanted to become a film maker, despite
everyone's expectation that I would automatically go on to med
school.
She nodded when I explained. "My
family really wanted this for
me," she said. "I know exactly what you're saying."
"And you're happy that you went ahead with this career?"
She thought for a moment, her beautiful
face serene. "So far,"
she said, but her voice seemed to lack conviction. I took away
the impression (if I could spare enough attention to anyone else
in those days) that she was not as ecstatic as the others,
gathered downstairs at Dad's feet, licking away. Her face
reminded me of Ingrid Bergman's at the end of Casablanca---so
sober, so beautiful, so to-die-for. I remember thinking that if
I were so inclined, I would fall for her right then and there.
I don't know why I thought (if I was thinking at all) that my
Dad would be any different.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I was very slow on the uptake. Dana
showed up more and more
frequently at our dinner table, even after graduation. She was
invariably beautiful and charming and often I was content just
to watch the play of expression across her face. I had a crush.
One night, as she came back into the room after taking a phone
call, I was astounded to see Dad leap up and rush over to seat
her. I shot a glance at Mom. She looked pale and shaken.
Later, I asked Mom if she was okay.
This, I now understand, was
a major move on my part since I'm convinced that it would have
taken an earthquake to draw my attention away from myself in
those days. Poor Mom could have staggered around the house with
an arrow sticking out of her boob without my noticing. So, she
must have looked really, really bad. She didn't answer my question.
I guess she wasn't okay at all.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dana appeared no more. I did not lay
eyes on her for over ten
years. That meal was the last time I remember dining with my
family in the normal way, when I could shovel in my food and
push back my greasy hair with no thought of tensions eddying
around our table. The atmosphere in our house grew so tense
that even I noticed it. Mom grew thin and somber. Dad was
absent virtually all the time. Sometimes I wondered if he was
living with us at all. Then, he wasn't.
By the time I was seventeen, he had
moved out, and I felt
abandoned. I don't know why, really, when he'd never been there
anyway, in the conventional sense. Hell, I doubt he could tell
you my birthday without prompting. But at least, before, he was
always rushing out of the house to go save someone's life, a man
with a noble calling. The house had been so full of adoring
students and colleagues that I had bought into that image---he
was the Healer. If he didn't know what instrument I played
or that I'd scored a goal or written a poem, at least it was
because someone else's life depended on it.
Now came the dark time.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Why did he leave, I asked my skeletal mother, involved in
selling the house and pinning a grotesque smile on her face for
her friends, who'd always expected Dad to move on, it seems.
Important medical men did not make it a habit to keep their
tired old wives; they tended to trade up. No one had told me
or, apparently, Mom.
She busied herself putting china away,
her face averted.
"Through the years," she said, "he's become infatuated with
his
students from time to time. They're young and they treat him
like a god. Usually," she sighed, "it blows over. This time
he's decided that. . . that he really wants to be free."
"Which one is it?" I held
my breath. I felt like hiding under
the table.
She turned to face me. "You know."
Of course I knew. She's the one that
I would have left my
family for as well. I would have followed her anywhere. She
was, as they used to say about fairy princesses, as beautiful
as she was good. Her goodness, now, was in question. In my
mind, she became the quintessential Homewrecker, the thief who
had stolen my (already absent) father from his household. The
woman who had shrunk my mother to Concentration Camp-victim
weight, who had etched dark circles beneath her eyes, which
often swam with involuntary tears. The princess had stolen
Mom's confidence and buoyancy along with her husband.
And she stole my youth, my innocence.
Never again would I fully trust. I
have not been able to be
close to anyone for ten years now. I was robbed.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Drab years passed, my bitterness never
glowing less brightly.
It was like an angry furnace I kept stoked as I made my way through
life. It kept me going, kept me tough, kept me impervious to
more pain. It was my protective shield.
I was somewhat surprised that the
Great Romance did not develop.
The times I saw Dad through those years, after he relocated to
the Northern Virginia-DC area, he gave no sign of being in
contact with Dana. Often, he had an even younger girl on his
arm, the adoring eyes focused on him rather than on his bitter
daughter. I realized I was not attractive in either looks or
personality, but I also had no desire to make myself attractive.
That might, well, *attract* someone, and I didn't want to be
drawn in and take a chance on being hurt. It was as though I'd
already filled my pain quota for life.
His leaving did relieve me of the
necessity of arguing my way
out of med school applications. Instead, I did what I wanted,
which was to attend film school at NYU and become a maker of
obscure independent films. I may not be a household name, but
at least, I get to be in control---I call the shots, give the
orders, and tell people when to come and when to go. Suits me
fine.
Mom moved to New York along with me
but was smart enough to have
me to dinner once a week and make a life for herself. Within
four years she remarried, a stockbroker who is also out of the
house at all hours. Once again, she gives the most splendid
dinner parties.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I don't know why I hopped a plane
when Dad got the chest pains.
Guess somewhere deep down I was flattered to be listed as next
of kin. I didn't feel any actual kinship until I arrived and
saw him lying there, old and tired, the charisma and authority
leeched away.
And then I heard her name. Nemesis. Dana Scully. Shit.
I behaved badly, of course, reverting
to my sixteen-year-old
self. She was the one who stole my daddy. But little things
kept coming out, adding up, shifting the picture. She said
she'd left to keep from making my life hell. Did this mean that
when he left home, he did *not* go to her? He walked out at the
mere prospect, or hope?
She had changed too. As I said, he
looked old and powerless,
even a bit pathetic, demanding that I call a woman he hadn't
seen for ten years. Still, he was puffed up at the prospect of
having an interesting medical condition and being able to lord
it over the other doctors and run his own treatment. His
arrogance had never truly deserted him. But Dana was really,
really different.
When she was young, no one had ever
looked as glowing as she
had. Now she looked tired, and her manner had hardened. Even
her voice had lost its lively hum; she sounded exhausted. I
accused her of being too rational, of always thinking she knew
the answers, but I don't think that was accurate. Rather, she
looked as if she would willingly *pay* for some answers out of her
desperate need to know. Know what? The important things in her
life, I guess.
I made a lot of accusations during
those days. I'd been caught
in the past for ten long years and it certainly seemed a lot
easier to yell at the woman who'd attracted Dad than to yell at
the Great Man himself. If I yelled at him, he might never love
me! Always, I wanted his love. Always, I felt I could never be
good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, anything enough, to
deserve his attention, let alone his love. He had snowed me as
he had snowed the world, always cold and safe behind his medical
barrier. Until his heart betrayed him. Why not? His heart had
certainly betrayed me.
Dana turned out to be more open than
I thought. Imagine, one of
Dad's students importing a healer. Cool. I decided she was
worth talking to, at that point. I had taken her to my room,
back in the old days, and opened my heart to her. My heart had
now been locked for so long that the key was rusty, but her
gesture---bringing a healer who Dad, if he'd been awake, would
have struck down in his tracks--- intrigued me. I invited her
back to my room.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
"I don't know what we have to
say to each other, Maggie," she
said. "I never meant to hurt you. I tried my damnedest to avoid it.
Yet, here you are and I'm responsible. I accept that responsibility.
I'm sorry for . . . for all of it." She waved her hand vaguely.
"But there's no way I can undo it at this point." Her face was
calm as she leaned back in the armchair in my room and sipped a
diet Coke. The healing seemed to have done *her* some good, at
least. She was much more serene now than in the past day or
two. Or maybe it was because Hurricane Maggie had subsided.
"My life stopped at sixteen,"
I told her. "I was never able to
forgive, forget. . . go on." I paused. "I adored you, back
then."
"And you thought I betrayed you,"
she finished. "Yet, it wasn't
till I talked to your dad in the hospital that I even knew that
he'd left you and Barbara. I walked away to prevent that
happening, but as it turns out, it didn't save you any pain at
all."
"It was ghastly." It felt
very strange to tell the truth after
so many years.
She bowed her head. The silence was
not tense. It stretched.
She truly did seem healed. All the pain and restlessness and
doubt I'd seen in her face earlier were gone. I think she could
have sat in that chair forever, her eyes focused upon eternity
like an Eastern statue.
"Dana?"
She looked up.
"Did you have an affair with
him?" I rushed on before she could
rebuff me. "I know it's none of my business, but it's something
I need to know. About him, really. Not you."
She studied her hands. Her voice was
soft, like melting
chocolate. "I thought I was in love with him," she murmured.
"A lot of the girls did. He was remarkable, so magnetic and
attractive. A hero." She sighed. "I also knew he was married
and I tried to keep a personal relationship from developing.
But he was warm. And so . . . interested. He'd ask about my
family, my dreams, my aspirations. It was so flattering that he
seemed to care about me, young, insignificant me, as a person."
I was pissed as I contemplated Dad
mining Dana's life for
intimate detail while "forgetting" to attend the musical I
directed. Fucking bastard, I thought. But she was continuing.
"He asked me out for meals. Offered
me rides. Asked to come up
for coffee when he dropped me at the apartment." She paused.
"I knew it was wrong. I knew about you and Barbara and I knew
that these gestures were crossing the line into . . . courtship,
or wooing. I couldn't rebuff someone that powerful in my life.
I could not bring myself to tell him this was all wrong."
She paused to sip, still staring into
the distance. "I just . .
. admired him so damned much, and he told me how brilliant I
was, what a grand career I could have, how many lives I could
save." She met my eyes. "Then, he shifted to the 'my wife
doesn't understand me' line, how he'd been meaning for years to
get a divorce and find someone more congenial. He said I was
that woman, the perfect woman for him. We'd practice medicine
together, save lives, talk every spare minute. He said he loved
me, that he would follow me to the ends of the earth. Our lives
would be full of healing and passion and excitement. He said he
wanted to be with me for all eternity. I considered his offer
very, very seriously."
She looked up. "I wanted to believe,"
she confessed. "But I
wasn't comfortable with breaking up a marriage. And of course I
thought of you. So, I decided, after a lot of agonizing
thought, that the best thing for me was to change fields. Which
I did. Which pissed him off inutterably, especially when I
decided to go to work for the FBI. He threw a tantrum fit for a
four year old. But I left anyway, despite his anger and
ridicule."
I glared at her. "You didn't answer my question."
She thought. "Affair? It depends
on your definition. Stolen
kisses, frantic gropings in hallways, stuff like that. One time
in bed. It . . . it brought me to my senses. That. . . it
wasn't me. I had to remove myself before I got lost."
"That's the truth?"
She nodded.
"Maybe I can put it to rest,"
I said. "I'd like it if he would
live---now. I'd like to get to know him as he really is, at
this moment, not the man I thought he was, either the saint or
the sinner." I sighed. "Do you think he can recover---or even
wake up?"
She gave a slight shrug. "It's really not in our hands."
"Are . . . are you," I paused,
"happy now? Did you put it all
behind you? Do you have someone?"
She met my eyes. Suddenly, the blue
of her youthful eyes shone
out at me and years fell away from her face. Her smile flashed,
and once again, she was fairy-princess beautiful.
"I'm happier than I knew,"
she said, leaning toward me. "Now
it's behind. Finally. I thought it wasn't, but it is. And,
yes, I have someone."
She set down her Coke and stopped
to hug me on her way out. "I
hope he comes back, Maggie," she said softly. "You want to talk
to him, this time. Open your heart. Life is short." The door
closed behind her and I wished with all my heart that I would
have a chance to know my dad as an adult. With my eyes open.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
The next day, my wish came true.
As Dana passed me on her way out,
I knew she was now
gone from my life, in all her forms. As Homewrecker, as
fairy princess, as my own adolescent crush, as the honest,
healing woman she had become. It was now time to
make an honest woman out of me.
End
Feedback most welcome at MystPhile@aol.com. Thanks for reading.
