Snip.html

Snip

By polyhymnia
polyhymnia999@hotmail.com

FEEDBACK: Anytime.
CATEGORY: YoungDanaFlashback!Fic Haircut!Fic

DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Gossamer, Ephemeral; anywhere else
please ask
RATING: PG-13 if your name is Tipper
SPOILER WARNING: Post-Ep all things

SUMMARY: Every day we begin anew...some days more than others.

DISCLAIMER: I hereby disclaim, disavow, disinherit, disinvest
and distance myself from any ownership of the characters in
this story. They are CC's, and my using them is a mark of my
admiration for him and for the actors who brought them to life,
nothing more. Raphaela is an angel in her own right and needs
no claiming or disclaiming.

*******************************************

"Snip" by polyhymnia

*******************************************

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife--chopping
off what's incomplete and saying: "Now, it's compete
because it's ended here."

--Frank Herbert's "Dune"

*******************************************

"Something a little less Special Agent-like, anyway..."

Raphaela chuckles behind me, her long red nails making a
pleasant gentle rasp against my scalp as she lifts my hair
gently. It's something all hairstylists do. Perhaps they
teach them in aesthetician school, or maybe it's something that
marks their vocation. It reminds the client in a simple
gesture that hair grows from the inside out, and that it's the
most common primary identifier in describing another human.
Choose wisely, for this is real. And choose again, and again.

"Something sexy." Raphaela replies, as if in agreement. She
sees my eyebrow rise in the mirror and her dark eyes widen
innocently. She always scolds me about being so proper, which
would be annoying, but from Raphaela it brings back vague
memories of sassing back Sister Paul just to hear her fond
recriminations. "What? I'm wrong?"

"Well. I'm no Charlie's Angel. But not this plain cut
anymore. Something that looks more like the real me."

"Oh, Dana, Dana, that's the sexiest of all, don't you know?"

I give up. Raphaela's relationship with my wayward, frizzy
hair verges on the divine--save once when I insisted on a thick
fringe of bangs against her advice. "As long as it takes less
than ten minutes in the morning, then okay."

"Okay. Come on, little one." She leads me to the row of
gleaming white basins at the back, and as I lean into the neck
rest, she whips a plastic cape over me. I hear, and then feel,
the warm spray move over my forehead and close my eyes. We
don't talk during this stage. We never have.

*******************************************

I think:

Cutting hair is just the removal of dead protein that serves no
purpose once it grows beyond the point of holding in the warmth
and scent of the body. But I believe--I have seen, in my work,
in my own body--that each experience is imprinted in the
journal of the flesh, and so each act of cutting hair is also a
small release.

I relish that thought for a moment. Pathologists often use
hair samples for identification, and can form a stunning array
of conclusions from deeper analysis. Dietary habits. Evidence
of medications taken long ago. Pregnancies. Moments of shock
or trauma, allergic reactions or illnesses. I like the idea of
trimming away old memories to let the space be filled with new
ones. It's all there on the floor of beauty salons the world
over. No wonder nuns and widows in history have shaved their
heads. Total renunciation.

It's been a tempting thought at times, but I'm here for an
equally heartfelt but less etheric motive. I miss feeling like
a woman. Submerged beneath the navy suits and plain haircut
breathes Dana, that freckled girl who could hang upside down
from the highest bar in the playground without flinching, and
whose heart later got her into more trouble than anyone ever
knew.

So today is about releasing and moving forward. Such a simple,
ordinary thing for a woman, a new haircut. But it means so
much more.

It means there is a benevolent future to look forward to.

Why this desire to bring Dana out of hiding, when the past ten
years have been marked by a thickening of the Agent Scully
shell, like rings around the sturdy willow heart that used to
be mine? Looking back, the steps along the way were so
obvious.

But looking back is what I do in life and in work: trace back
from the evidence, the progression of actions that led to the
present moment. Had I seen that each step would eventually
make sense, I might have lingered more often to enjoy them, but
they came to me as pain and fear and I kept running away.

I didn't stop running until my legs gave out beneath me in a
tiny Buddhist shrine in Chinatown, smelling of incense and dust
and age, and was shown the heart of an old lover. At last I
understood that his heart was my heart, because they had
touched, and I could no longer run from that. Daniel's illness
was also Dana's locked-away pain of years past, as was the joy
and pain of every person I had ever let into my heart. It was
time to look back along the path and revisit each turning point
and stumbling block, to let them go and move on.

Begin with the present moment...

10:00 am. Raphaela's salon, not far from HQ. The storm-beaten
air outside is now lazy and replete, slightly damp, and mild.
I was supposed to be at work an hour ago but I left a message
assuring Mulder I'd turn up for our meeting with Skinner at
eleven-thirty.

I am wearing a navy suit and pumps, my standard workweek
armour, but my hands don't want to stay still. A scalpel would
calm them instantly but there is none nearby.

Some hours ago I left Mulder alone in his apartment, in bed,
and slipped out to drive in the storm. I could have gone to
him instead, could have been with him even now, having decided
to stay in bed until we had to leave for our meeting. I chose
to leave. One last ritual remained.

The waking of Dana.

Meeting Mulder on the street yesterday felt like the curtain
closing on a strange and disturbing scene of my life, from
which I arose changed. What did Dana want, in that moment? To
spend some time with her best friend, just being best friends.
So she invited him, and he accepted.

It was so simple. I tried to explain everything to him, but
there were so many stories that could not be told in one night.
But now, there is time. Time to tell and listen to all the
stories and take each other through all of those winding paths
that brought us to his couch with our feet up, mugs of tea
steaming on our laps.

As Mulder and I talked last night it seemed the words did not
come from us but through us, as if we were merely the
instruments through which sound emerged to blend in the air of
its own will. We knew the script so well that forethought was
hardly required, even in our disagreements. We simply enjoyed
the interplay of our voices as they merged. And finally as the
warm layers of semi-consciousness pulled me under, I heard the
sounds his voice made, playing in the space between us: "A lot,
a lot, a lot..."

*******************************************

His shoulder was warm and solid, and then I was on the bridge
of a huge grey Navy ship that was docked at the end of a long
pier, pressing my cheek against my father's scratchy woollen
side as he spoke with his First Mate.

*******************************************

"You're quiet, Starbuck." he commented at length, looking down
at me. I shrugged inside my thick tweed winter coat and
grinned up at him. How to explain the thrill, the sense of
rightness and satisfaction at the vastness of the sea, the
endless bulk of the ship, and the consoles, instruments, maps
and charts on the bridge that only unravelled a fraction of the
mystery?

"I like it here."

My father grinned back at me, and I knew he understood. He
tugged one ginger pigtail to make me scowl at him, and then we
laughed together. Laughed as we recognized the hold that the
sea had over both of us. Laughed, knowing that it was easy to
laugh at the sea while we were tied up at dock.

In the rolling white squall of an uncertain storm, even taking
a moment to smile can be fatal.

I am my father's daughter, beyond a doubt.

"Show me how this works." I demanded.

"What, all of it?" Ahab pretended to look shocked and doubtful.

"All of it."

"You're after my job, aren't you?"

"Daddy!"

A few chuckles from the sailors around us were hastily covered
with coughs and grins, and Ahab laughed the deep belly laugh
that I tried to tease out of him once a day.

"Come on, Star. Look, this one tells you the direction you're
going in. Now, a long time ago, we didn't have these. Ships
used to have big touchstones suspended from the ceiling of the
bridge, that always pointed north..."

*******************************************

Mulder murmured something then about the lateness of the hour,
and I shifted against him. I think I nodded. I'm not sure.
It was Mom's voice I heard then, quiet in the night as she
stood in my bedroom doorway.

*******************************************

"Dana Kate, it's after two. What are you doing?"

I looked up from a dog-eared P.D. James with a guilty shudder
and bit my lip, expecting the usual lecture on decent sleeping
hours. Magellan the Golden Retriever scrambled off the white
duvet and made for the hallway. Mom had been more snappish
than usual, during this tour of duty of Ahab's, and we kids had
a pact to make life as easy for her as possible. Getting to
bed on time and keeping the dog out of the upstairs bedrooms
was part of the deal.

Mom looked drawn and tired as she knotted the belt of her robe
around her.

"Sorry, Mom." I reached up to take off my glasses, but she
spoke again.

"Never mind. Come downstairs, I'll make coffee. I can't sleep
either."

My mother's and my relationship changed that night, in the dark
hours before dawn, taking turns refilling each other's coffee
mugs as we sat in the kitchen in our dressing gowns. It was
our first real talk as women together.

"It's like he's got a drug in him. He tried staying home one
year--remember, Dana Kate, when you were about eleven?--and how
you had to repeat everything to him twice, because he wasn't
really here?"

"He taught me the stars that year. I remember that."

"Imagining himself back on ship."

"Maybe." I nodded slowly. Standing in the deserted field at
midnight with my father had seemed so much simpler than that,
as we stared up at Orion, the Great Bear, Cassiopeia, and Vega
of the Lyre.

"He needs me to be strong here while he's away, and I don't
mind it, really. I can hold things together. All the wives do
and we help each other. I just miss him so much--we're still
very much in love, you know--and if the worst ever happened..."
Her hands shook and she lifted her mug to hide it.

"Does it happen, Mom?" I asked quietly, feeling the sudden
vertigo of unlooked-for truth. "Do men get killed on routine
work?"

"Oh, yes. Not often, but it can happen. That's why the nights
are the worst. I mean--" she gave a self-derisive half-laugh,
"Statistics make sense in daylight. At night, only fear makes
sense. It's not just accidents either--the stress can be
terrible, too, and their poor hearts can get bad--" she broke
off.

I knew she felt she was responsible for all of the men under
Daddy's care as well as Daddy. His crew always called her
'Ma'am', as if they were calling her Mom. When they were in
port, she sewed their buttons back on and made them write
letters to their own mothers at the same kitchen table we
shared.

"Daddy takes care of them, too," I reminded her.

"Did you know our Billy wants to join up, too?"

"He didn't say when, specifically, but he always said he would.
He wants to go soon? What do you think?

"I have to admit, it's a life that would suit him, especially
while he's young and single. I couldn't hold him back. I'd be
proud of him and I'd miss him terribly when he was away. And
I'd be praying for him every day at sea. Just like I do for
your father."

"Me too, Mom."

"We can't ever tell them..."

"No, I know."

From that day, I was never again Dana Kate. I was Dana.

*******************************************

And Dana I remained for ten hectic years, through university,
heartbreaks and crises of religious and human faith. I was
downright belligerent at times, beyond the family-indulged
tomboy arrogance that had not yet begun to mellow. Free to fly
and fiercely independent, I could never escape the event
horizon of a good argument or an emotionally dangerous
relationship.

Having grown up largely as a boy, and having no interest in the
clothes or hobbies that other girls did, I assumed I would be
out of the running in the Aphrodite stakes. Who would be
interested in a short, argumentative girl Math nerd in glasses
who had no clue how to flirt or wield a mascara wand?

I was wrong. I hadn't reckoned that speaking to the boys with
the same hectoring affection as I did to my brothers,
ruthlessly correcting their homework, and whipping them at Pool
would cause my weekends to fill up so fast. It was fun. A lot
of fun, actually, and I began to understand Missy's rueful but
unrepentant weakness for men, but none of them held my
attention once they tried to be romantic.

I began to gather a stock of gentle let-down phrases.

It was not a lack of interest or passion that made me pause. I
loved them dearly, more than they knew. But I'd have crushed
them. I needed someone strong-minded and strong-hearted enough
to withstand and want every part of me and still have their own
life. Someone who didn't laugh about my earnest night prayers
or weekly phone calls home. Who wasn't daunted by my endless
questions and insistence on precision and perfection in my
classes. Or my on-again, off-again relationship with my own
femininity.

These were scarce in the Undergrad population.

I started idly wondering about a brainy and suave English TA of
mine, five years older than I. When he asked me frankly to be
his lover, like making a movie date, I was outclassed in a
storm of supposed sophisticated feminist maturity and sexual
discovery and convinced myself it was true modern love.

My toes still curl to think of my equally casual response:
"Sure, I'd like that." I walked back to his residence with him
after class and even took charge of things once we arrived. It
was sweet and fumbling and puzzling, and like walking through a
glass window with my eyes closed and my breath held. In the
moments after, I waited to feel cast out of Grace, but felt
only the warmth of the bed and the gentle concern of my lover:
"How do you feel? Do you hurt?" I told him I was fine, gazing
myopically up at the ceiling as I cradled his head on my
breast.

I could not confess losing my virginity to the local, elderly
priest at St. Ann's near the campus. But neither could I
refrain from calling Missy the next day at her experimental
community two hundred miles away. She correctly interpreted my
thoughtful silences and asked if I wanted her to visit. I
loved her for being willing to drop everything and drift over
to see me, but I realized that I needed this time alone. Being
a Scully was so all-encompassing, so intrinsic to every detail
of life, that moments of simply being Dana without the Scully
repercussion were precious.

Ironically, the thought of surrendering my independence proved
so strong that it caused me to break up with that first lover
of mine, a few weeks later. I believe it was a first for him,
being jilted before he called game over, but to his credit he
bore it well. I marvelled that he could continue to treat me
so civilly and nicely in Seminar, and thought him more mature
than ever until realizing he'd gone on to the next girl almost
immediately.

Physics was a release from the difficult depths of heartstuff,
a razor-strop for the mind, a game of observation, conjecture
and the indispensable high keystone of pure mathematics. It
was like picking a fight with Ahab. Data and conclusions had
to be rock-solid and impenetrable, or lives could be lost at
sea.

I picked a fight with Einstein instead, and in the hollow
victory of accolade and acceptance, I felt the weight of ages
upon me: kill the king, take the throne. But only until the
next game.

What was the next game?

*******************************************

It was a warm evening in late spring, right after I had
received my Master's, and I was staying in my parent's guest
room for the first time. They had gone up to Seattle to the
Whidby Island Navy base, and had a house big enough for only
the two of them. I was impressed but nostalgic, and perhaps
was drawn to the happier memories of Navy life as a result.

I asked Ahab about Navy work, and whether he thought I should
try to use my skills there.

He didn't laugh, which pleased me. He waved me out to the
front steps, where he was banished to smoke his pipe, and sat
down beside me.

"Mind if I smoke?" he asked, before lighting a match. I shook
my head, smiling at one of the last old-fashioned gentlemen I
knew.

"Daddy...If you're going to tell me it's a man's job--"

"No, Starbuck, I'm not. In many ways I raised you to take over
for me, you know that. But it's a hard life. Not just the
work. You remember what it's like to move around all the
time, and your mother..."

"Yes. I know. And Billy and Charlie already joined up, and
who knows what Missy'll get up to next. Mom would freak out."

"She knows you've got the sea in your blood. But for that very
reason, you'd never be content with a ground job even in
physics, and you've got better things to do with your time than
playing suffragette and lobbying for women to be allowed to go
to sea with the men."

"Have I?" I pulled up straight and looked at him, "And what
would you think of me if I let them dictate my role to me?"

"I'm saying choose your fights carefully. Think of the brains
you have and how you can best use them. Women don't go on
tours, Star. It's coming soon, I know, but not yet. If women
go on ships today, it's because there's a war on. Don't be
romanced away from reality."

"Well, what, then?" I grumbled. "Honestly, I like physics,
Daddy, but I really don't see a future for me in my field. I
don't want to get into deeper academic research, or teach it,
and military and industrial applications would demand a PhD
anyway."

"You're not going in for your doctorate? I thought you'd been
making applications."

"I was. I am. But I'd just be in the same place three years
from now, only older."

"You're only twenty-four. A lot of folks have no idea at that
age. You could change tracks entirely if you wanted. You're
already a Master. You don't have to be a Doctor."

"Make me sound like I'll be wielding a scalpel and sutures
next." I grinned, "Still, I never got sick around blood. I
was always the one with bloody knees or a gashed forehead from
falling out of a tree."

"Mmm." Ahab pulled again at his pipe. "You'd need a footstool
for operations."

*******************************************

Four years later, the young Dr. Scully was still called Dana by
her colleagues, over Friday beers or on dates. Daniel
Waterston, my Surgery professor, claimed more and more of the
dates and then the occasional weekend at out-of-town
conferences. He said he was introducing me to people who could
further my career. He always bought me a new suit before each
trip and sometimes shoes.

I wondered what on earth I was doing and why I didn't feel the
flames of hell. There were five trips in all that year. I
could not deny the pull towards the keen and ambitious minds I
encountered nor Daniel's intensity which translated into near-
poetic surges of eloquence and passion in work and in sex. I
was his Goddess, his muse, his Dana of the green and growing
hills, and I could provide for him what his wife and daughter
could not. Only I understood him and made him complete. He
told me so often.

Just yesterday, in fact.

*******************************************

"Oh, God." I groaned on a sigh as Raphaela carefully combed my
wet hair smooth.

"What is it, little one? You hurt somewhere?"

'No, no. Just got lost in a memory."

"Well, let it go."

*******************************************

I was beginning to expect and recognize faces at the
conferences, but recognized less of myself each time. I liked
the sleek black skirt suits he bought me, which made me look
taller, and both demure and dangerous, but I didn't like the
strappy high heels or the fussy French twist he liked me to do
with my hair. "Less red to see," he said, teasing but not
really, and would tell me the name of some complicated cocktail
or Andalusian wine I should order at the bar.

Well-cut suits and good wine, at least, I have kept a taste
for. And makeup at least covers freckles and sleepless
nights.

That last weekend away...I was sitting by myself in a sunny
corner of a hotel lobby in downtown Chicago, in another black
suit with a white conference nametag, turning the pages of a
medical journal. Daniel had brought me coffee in bed and had
left soon after, to fetch the rental car. He would return in a
few minutes to pick me up.

An article on FBI recruitment of medical professionals caught
my eye, and I was deeply engrossed when Daniel came up behind
me.

"Oho, so you want to be a doctor and a cop? Your father an'
mither would be proud, to be sure."

"So kiss me, I'm Irish. But it's worth looking at, this
government angle. I don't want private medical practice, and
what can one newly-trained doctor do in the hospitals but grunt
work for someone else? Look, the FBI is recruiting five
pathologists next year. I aced all my Path courses. I loved
it. Not everyone can hack it. I could specialize. It could
be a good move."

"Sure, you could shoot your own autopsy subjects. Save the
government a pile of cash. Remind me to pick you up some Eau
de Morgue later."

"Be serious."

"I am. Women like you with minds like yours don't become
government slice-and-dicers."

"No?" I raised an eyebrow at him.

"No. They make the right connections and secure a lucrative
and very coveted position in surgery, and pay back their
student loans within a few years while publishing award-winning
articles in much better journals than that rag. Remember,
Dana? That's why we're here. For you."

"We're going to be late."

"We're going to talk about this later."

But as always after a tense episode, like a true devotee,
Daniel was very placatory for a time, and brought offerings of
lunch and respectable mentor-to-student conversation to the
office I shared with two other students.

A week later, lying in my bed in the early evening, I watched
him dressing to go back to his family for dinner. I was
appalled that the thought didn't disgust me and wondered what
had happened to my soul.

I lifted myself up on one elbow and picked at the sheet.

"D'you think she still doesn't know?"

He paused, tying his shoelaces. "I don't believe she does.
What brought this on?"

"Just thinking."

"You went to Mass, didn't you?" he asked, not quite accusingly.

"You know I can't. No, it's deeper than that. I think my soul
is damaged, Daniel. I should horrify myself, but I don't."

I rolled over onto my back and laced my fingers over my belly.
That reminded me of yet another proscription I was willingly
embracing, and I sighed. Modern science and common sense had
nothing to do with the Charism of the Church sometimes.

"Dana, put that superstitious nonsense out of your head.
You're a brilliant girl with a wonderful future, and everything
is going to work out fine for us. God does not hate you," he
enunciated, "And my wife is not going to find out. For the
simple reason that we have been very sensible and discreet, and
anyway, it's practically expected in the upper ranks of
medicine, as I'm sure even Dana the Pure can't have missed."

"Don't be crass--and don't make fun of me."

"You love it when I'm crass and make fun of you. It makes you
blush like a schoolgirl."

"So that's why you do it. And you're still not taking me
seriously."

"You're not talking seriously." Was that an edge of fear in his
voice? I looked at him closely. He was watching me, and the
nearly imperceptible tic at the corner of his eye was back.

"But I am, Daniel." I said carefully.

"This is about the FBI thing, is it? Think I'm not listening,
that I don't care about your happiness? I do, Dana. I also
care about your best interests."

"I believe you. In terms of my career, I believe you do have
my best interests in mind, but since you're so quick to dismiss
my feelings I wonder if you can possibly have my happiness at
heart."

"You're just starting out. I don't want you to make mistakes
you'll regret and not be able to undo. You're the best student
I've ever had, you bring me such joy. Not like my daughter.
You're worth spending time on. You make me so proud. Look at
how far you've come since we got together."

There it was. With one stroke he had revealed his colours and
opened the Pandora's Box of my deepest self, all that had been
locked away in the name of pleasure and ambition and arrogant
pride.

I started up from bed, one hand over my mouth, and bolted for
the bathroom. From behind me, I heard him gasp: "Oh, shit, are
you pregnant? Is that what this is?"

No, I'm so far from the God of my past that there's all but no
chance, Daniel, I shrieked back at him in my mind. I knew it
was shock and recognition and horror, hitting me in the gut
like no murder closeup could as I retched. The acrid stink of
hell reached my nostrils as medieval words describing me
appeared shimmering behind my eyelids. Adulteress. Whore.
Abomination. Thou shalt not. Whoso among you...

Finally came the quiet and relentless voice of one girl's
conscience, whispering, you met his wife and fucked him anyway,
you prostituted yourself on him, you just had to do the worst
thing you could just to see what would happen, didn't you? If
you kicked away all the discipline, all the unquestioning faith
of your family in their perfect girl?

"Just go." I hissed at him, between heaves over the toilet, as
he stood uncertainly in the door. "Just go."

"But you're sick. Did you eat--"

"Yes, I am, finally. Now go." I flushed the toilet, stood up
naked and ashamed and made him look at me. Wiping the back of
my hand across my mouth, I dared him silently to try to offer
me my dressing gown or a glass of water. "Go, Daniel, or I'm
calling the police."

"If--if it gets any worse, you'll call me, right?"

I stood still. Backing away, he left.

I heard him gather up his briefcase and coat and close the door
behind him. When I was sure he would not come back, I went to
the door, locked it, and returned to the bathroom. I knew I
could never be clean, but I was freezing cold and shaking.
While the bathtub filled and the mirror steamed up I brushed my
teeth and tried to stop them chattering. Then I got into the
tub and scrubbed myself all over until parts of me were raw and
stinging.

The night passed in fits of wild dry sobs and wretched pleas,
and when the sun rose again I ached all over and felt like I'd
been punched in the gut. The phone rang five times that day,
but I let it ring. I made only one call, to Missy. After a
few moments when I thought I would be sick again, for I had
never learned to cry, I managed to speak, and she heard my
whispered confession. I expected her to be shocked and
disgusted, or speak of karma and free love, and lessons of
life, but she didn't.

"You should go to Confession tomorrow." she said, "Before you
scare yourself out of doing it forever. Then you can know God
heard you and whatever happens next, you can know it's what God
wants for you. You'll go on expecting bad things to happen to
you and not accepting anything good, otherwise."

"Oh, God, Missy, I can't. To a priest?"

"Yes, to a priest. You think you're the only churchgoer who's
had an affair, silly? Don't take more than your share of it.
Go to a church far away if you want. It hardly matters which
one. Isn't that what we were taught, that in Confession every
priest is the ears of God?"

"But you don't believe that, do you?"

She smiled, and for the first time I truly felt the serenity of
my older sister, so unlike the rest of us ever-unsatisfied
Scullys. "It doesn't matter. You need to use what you believe
to get back to where you want to be."

It took me closer to a month to confess, but it was finally
done. I had to face Daniel many times before then, in class
and in my own office, and he was polite and distant. He
enquired about my "flu", and I told him I was quite healthy. I
would give him nothing, and he would not ask. Once I looked up
at him too quickly and caught his expression of bewilderment,
but there was something else that made my blood run cold. It
was a look of patience that verged on condescension, and I
realized he was expecting me to beg to come back.

I made my Confession the next day. The good Father was duly
shocked, but said he was glad to know I felt I could confess.
He said that the real meaning of events doesn't always appear
until much later, that I seemed a like a good girl who had been
led astray, and that he felt there must be some future good in
such an experience. He gave me enough penance to seem
worthwhile and advised me to concentrate on the better aspects
of my life until I understood why the unfortunate event had
happened. Some of them are spookier than my Mulder, those
Fathers.

*******************************************

"You got a smile on your face, now. More memories?"

"Yeah. Good ones. I think."

"That's better."

*******************************************

Upon receiving my official letter of invitation to interview
with the local FBI recruiter, I first called my parents, and
then went out to buy a suit. I refused to wear black suits
with long skirts anymore. I found myself a burgundy wool
pantsuit with a black velveteen collar and cuffs and was
deliriously parading it in front of my mirror at home before I
recalled the tone of my father's voice on the phone.

"The FBI, Starbuck?"

"Yeah, Daddy. There are five spots on the next intake for
pathologists and I think I have a good chance. I could go so
much faster that route than the hospitals--make a real
difference."

"I see."

"So wish me luck! I'll call you this evening and tell you all
about it."

"Please do."

I wore that burgundy suit to my first interview, revelling in
the quick glances from the other agents that said they never
expected a slice-and-dicer to look like that. I smiled as
though my heart was not pounding and my palms not slick, and
spoke about my fascination and respect for the human body, my
ability to remain focused and professional through crises and
horrifying scenes, and calmly agreed that I was indeed in the
top three percent of my class at Maryland.

I called my parents that night but they had gone out. In
retrospect, I'm convinced it was a blessing that they had, for
if the showdown had happened before I was accepted, I think I'd
have backed away. It didn't seem real yet. Dana Scully, FBI?
But it made sense. It felt right.

A week later I had my letter of acceptance in to the next
years' Intake, and after first calling a jubilant and stoned
Missy, I called my parents again.

My ears were ringing when we hung up an hour later. And the
next day. And the next. I was throwing away a promising
career, I was doing a great dishonour to my teachers, and I was
setting myself up for certain failure. Women doctors did not
belong in the FBI, which dealt with the lowest scum of
humanity. I was breaking my mother's heart, did I know that?

My mother was indeed crying, sobbing as I had never heard her
before. If but once she had asked me to back away, I would
have done so, but she never did. Not once. She only asked me
to listen to my father, and asked us both to stop screaming at
each other. But she never asked me not to go.

Finally I understood what she would not say. Her words of so
many years ago came back to me: "...I couldn't hold him back.
I'd be proud of him and I'd miss him terribly when he was away.
And I'd be praying for him every day...We can't ever tell
them."

There was my answer, and it stiffened my resolve to continue.

At last there was silence. Kill the king, take the throne.
The hollow ring of victory. Ahab went back off to sea, no
longer angry with me but sad and disappointed, and not
understanding where our connection had gone. My mother, in her
letters, never mentioned the fights they must have had, but
always added that he had asked after me and hoped I was happy.

But at last, also, there was purpose and a new field of
challenge and discovery. It wasn't what my father or Daniel
had expected, or could ever understand, but for once I was
ready to stand up and do it anyway. I was going to be the best
Path specialist the FBI had ever seen. I was going to re-write
the books and do good work. If only the months until September
would fly by faster...

God, no greener girl than I ever entered the halls of Quantico.
It was like being in University all over again, those months in
the Intake program. I was Dana the Keener, both laughed at for
my intensity and sought after for my assistance. But here were
like-minded people of my own age, for once.

And here also was Jack Willis. Oh, Jack. Intelligent with
wisdom rather than cleverness, heartfelt and direct, he seemed
the essence of honesty and decency. It took him six months to
ask me out, and two seconds for me to accept. This time there
was no need for secrecy. By the time we were dating regularly,
though he was still my instructor, we were nearly colleagues,
both unattached, and rarely working together. True, the Church
might not officially approve, but my friends did, and this time
I thought God would understand I was trying to do the right
thing.

He asked me to come to his cabin, the weekend of our shared
birthday, and for a moment the memory of Daniel swam before me.
But Jack would never have thought of showing me off in front of
a conference of doctors as his protege. He just wanted some
quiet time with me at his cabin, away from work. I was
charmed.

It was cold at the cabin, as the heat had been off all winter.
He wrapped me in a big patchwork quilt and made a fire in the
wood stove while I drank real cocoa from a thermos. While the
room heated, he sat behind me and wrapped his arms around me.
We sat in perfect silence like that, not speaking, not needing
to. Just staring into the dancing flames, and each other's
eyes. I had never looked into anyone's eyes like that, nor let
anyone see so deeply into mine. I felt safe and at ease for
the first time in years.

Later, wonderfully warm in a nest of quilts and golden skin in
front of the fire, we talked about dreams and fears, hopes and
visions. We rarely spoke of the past--only the present, and
the future. For a scientist used to theoretical and post-event
analysis, it was new and refreshing.

Jack never called me his Goddess, or his muse. He told me in
words what he was feeling, and never minded when I asked him
what he was thinking. He was always thinking about something
interesting. And he listened to every word I said, and asked
me probing questions afterwards. He didn't presume that I
wanted to build a life with him, or needed him, but hoped our
dreams matched and that we would always be good for each other.
In his arms, I cried in relief and he was not threatened. He
made love to me slowly and gently through my tears, and for the
first time in my life I fell asleep first.

I was thrilled when I was assigned directly to teaching as well
as consultation duties. As the new Agent Scully, I took
delight in wearing colours to work where everyone else wore
black and navy-blue. I darkened my hair to the shade of autumn
redwoods, and wore it long and loose where other female agents
pulled theirs back or cropped it short. My students and I were
known to eat lunch together on occasion, and if other agents
despised or rolled their eyes at the gamine in their midst, I
attributed it to narrow-minded envy.

It was nearly summer before I began to recognize the building
sense within me of misplacement, of playing a role that had
gone on for too long. Jack's kindness and placidity came
perilously close to making me scream with the need to fight for
something, and my students' familiar treatment of me bordered
on disrespect at times.

Changes had to be made.

The first, and hardest, was leaving Jack. Even then, he put up
no resistance, but simply asked if he could have done anything
better for me. He was quite shocked when I told him I needed
to fight now and then, and to be challenged and fought for, as
if I had admitted to a hidden drug habit that he could not
reconcile with his image of me. He asked me to be good to
myself, and hoped I would find a peaceful resolution to my
needs. I gritted my teeth and hugged him back.

I still shiver inwardly to think of our last moments together,
years later. The violence and power in that dear, familiar
body, taken over by some killer's soul, the safest pair of arms
in my memory turned lethal. And then Jack, my Jack, the real
Jack, slipping away from me into a coma just as he recognized
me before his final death. I could not state exactly what
happened, but I know what I saw, and the memory haunts me
still.

My relationship with my students and colleagues took longer to
change. Oh, I held onto Dana for as long as I possibly could,
but every day there were more pressing reasons to give up the
helm to Agent Scully. Narrow-minded or not, there was no
getting around the increased level of credence I received when
I was in full Agent mode. I dressed soberly and did not smile
when I delivered reports. Students learned to answer promptly
and accurately and to visit my office only during posted hours,
and stopped inviting me for after-hours gatherings. I called
nobody by their first names and ate at my desk unless I had a
lunch meeting. I very nearly joined in the gallows humour of
the other forensic pathologists, which to me seemed the most
disrespectful and ungodly way of dealing with death. I told
myself I was growing up, but looking back, the long slow slide
away from Dana began that first year with the FBI.

*******************************************

Raphaela's hands angle my head gently back and forth under the
spray, and sounds of the world around me begin to penetrate. I
wonder how I will look when I emerge, and if I will feel like
Dana again, or if it's even possible to regain a former self.

This ritual of self-change and new beginning is an ordinary
thing that normal women do, but I can't even pretend to be an
ordinary woman anymore. Even leaving aside the more
identifiable points that keep me separate from other women my
age. It's my very womanhood on the line, right now. I feel
it. I've never felt like a normal girl, never really cared for
the differences between the sexes. But this is in my blood and
bones, something that began with the removal of my chances for
childbirth, and the piercingly clear few days of having Emily
in my life.

Something to fight for, indeed. Around thirty-seven, thirty-
eight, if a woman has never been pregnant, her hormonal system
begins to step down. The years preceding are when so many
women crave the physical state of pregnancy, responding to the
preliminary changes.

It's when a woman is supposed to be in her sexual prime, for
God's sake, and some days that seems all I have left to offer.
The irony is hardly lost on me. But such things as keeping
Saturday open for dates, keeping track of movies and theatre
shows, long discussions on relationship-building and cooking
proper dinners are laughable at this point, even if there were
any offers.

Mulder has scared away all of the men that weren't scared by
me. Sometimes this pleases me a great deal, especially as he
manages to do it in such a way as to convey that he knows I
don't need him to, but he's going to do it anyway. Sometimes
I've quietly closed our office door and turned to him just to
watch him squirm for a moment before I lay into him for his
presumption. ("Yeah, but I was right, wasn't I, Scully?")
Sometimes it's been disastrous and he's found me with that
hidden targeting software he has in his head. Too many times.
Holy God.

Are we the only couple who has ever asked if we have earned our
right to love each other yet? If we deserve to stand down our
guard now and then and be two human beings?

A normal woman would have taken the obvious leap of faith last
night and gone through the door that was left open for her--
that had been open for her for years, literally and
metaphorically. A normal woman would have left a note on the
dresser, at least, before sneaking away before dawn like a
guilty mistress, to drive and think in the storm-washed air.
God knows I wanted him. What made me hesitate, and consider,
at that last moment? I could have gone to him with a clean
conscience and enough good reasons to scale all of the reasons
why not, that we had built up over the years.

But it had to be Dana alone coming to him, not Scully, though
he can call me that in his sweet rough voice just as much as he
likes.

Perhaps it was because he took such good care of me. The men
in my life have always tried to protect me, even while trying
to push me forward. My father demanded toughness, accuracy and
honour. Jack wanted the sort of sentiment and soul-connection
that was Missy's forte. Daniel played Pygmalion. I left each
one not because of these things, specifically, but because they
all seemed to think I needed saving from myself. It took a
long time and many mistakes, but I realize now that my
ambivalent sense of myself as a woman, or even being small, had
nothing to do with it. I don't blame them for believing that
that was their motivation, because I believed it, too. It was
my own internal conflict they sensed, the mind and the heart.

Just yesterday, Colleen Azar called it Ajna and Anahata, the
eternal dance. It was not my body or my sexuality they were
trying to protect but what joy in living and willingness to
feel that I had left. Had I known that, I might have been more
forgiving.

While I railed against my cancer and the forces who inflicted
it upon me, Colleen was grateful for hers. It was a wake-up
call, she felt, that opened her eyes to the true needs of her
heart and soul.

When she found out that my cancer was located between the
eyebrows, she nodded as if she knew already, and stated, "Ajna.
The center of intellect and intuition. When the intellect and
intuition are out of balance, the center becomes diseased.
Call it conspiracy if you need to, but it happened in your own
body. When intellect doesn't provide the answers, what will
you do?"

What, exactly, does my intuition need that I have not given it?
Only that I admit the truth as I feel it, even if it runs
counter to every law or common sense. But that's my role,
that's my job, to be the fricative force to Mulder's
overwhelming intuitive leaps. I can admit I've been deeply
tempted to follow his paths of logic to the same places at
times, but even when I am, that's not how I can best help him.

And what does Mulder ask of me? Only that I recognize him as my
necessary counterbalance as well. He is my intuition, my
unspoken self, the places in my soul and heart for which my
mind has no measure or calibration. We are each other's safe
place and dangerous ground, with very little in between. We
are so used to the dangerous ground that safety is something to
be coveted from afar. A quiet evening alone together, with no
telephones and everyone we love safe from harm would be
blissful. An unhurried coming together and the mindless,
gasping ecstasy which I already know is ours would be beyond
heaven.

*******************************************

"So, little one." Raphaela is poised with comb and scissors,
and I nod, unsmiling. "Now we make you look like you."

This is for you, Ahab, for twelve years of long tight pigtails.
(snip.)

This is for you, Jack, the lock of hair you asked me for.
(snip.)

This is for you, Daniel, the red hair you said was jejune.
(snip.)

This is for you, Mulder, for the way you touched my hair last
night...

Agent Scully, I believe that's called a fatal slip. But that's
what this is all about, after all, isn't it?

The smile in the storm.

It's just a haircut.

It means there's a benevolent future to hope for.

"Look at you!" Raphaela is practically clapping her hands in
delight.

I open my eyes and feel myself stare, then grin as my own
reaction hits home. How can I look both older and younger? The
inoffensive waved bob has been rendered into a sleek cap that
accentuates a slim throat, feline jaw and small pink earlobes.
My natural ginger looks striking and touchable as it springs
and falls with a life of its own. My eyes, no longer in
shadow, look more open. I see not a scientist and doctor,
inaccessible to human emotion, out to save the world through
the catechism of science, but a passionate, self-aware woman
who has paid her dues and for whom the gates of the world stand
open.

Despite everything, Dana is not dead after all.

"Raphaela, I--it's so different!" I manage. She nods,
understanding. She's seen this reaction many times.

"You look like you now." she says.

"I love it." I tell her finally. I do.

"And here, you see, you can grow it long now, it'll keep a nice
shape in the back."

"How did you know I was thinking of it?"

She rolls her eyes expressively and hums as if she knows
something I don't.

"Go show your boyfriend." she commands, dusting me down with a
soft brush before letting me up.

"He's not--" I begin, and realize I'm caught. Raphaela laughs
and waves a long finger at me. "Well, I didn't do this for
him, anyway." I retort, and she purses her lips and nods
seriously before laughing again. I can't win. I tip her
generously and leave to the sound of her welcoming her next
client.

*******************************************

The drive back to the office takes longer than I expect, and I
arrive just in time for Mulder's and my meeting with Skinner.
I hurry straight to Skinner's floor and call a greeting to Kim,
in the outer office.

Kim looks up and does a double-take. "Wow, I like it!" She
gives me a warm, genuine smile.

"Thanks." I can't help but grin broadly. The feminist in me
hollers at the surge of pride I feel in having scored a further
point in this game of being a woman in the modern age. It's
post-modern feminism, I holler back. Kim's eyes are fairly
dancing at this point and I know she knows Mulder hasn't seen
it yet. It's something women know, and would take Mulder and
Gertrude Stein together to figure out over a large bottle of
Glenfiddich with their sleeves rolled up.

I tap on the door, and open it. Skinner glances up, and Mulder
turns in his chair to face me and I will not look at him, I
will not look at him...Skinner is a master at reading people,
and I don't intend to open the pages for his benefit.

If I look at Mulder I might just say something about leaving
him all alone last night and how it'll never happen again and
should never have happened in the first place.

"Sir." I nod to Skinner and seat myself, only now admitting
into my mind the possibility of greeting Mulder. I face him
and smile, the strangely intimate formal smile we keep for each
other. I see he is already watching me closely. Not asking
questions behind his eyes, or speculating, or even staring.
His eyes are simply warm and--

Oh, my. I don't believe I've ever been on the receiving end of
this look.

Simple enjoyment.

Whatever else he's thinking, he's happy for me because I'm
happy for myself. My heart, to employ a poetic term, leaps. I
can hear it. Yesterday I would have looked away. Today I hold
his gaze just for a moment. God knows we have little enough to
share in celebration. Why not celebrate a decision to change
something in oneself for the better?

Why not celebrate the kind of relationship that is so complete
that one person's joy is sufficient unto the other?

I feel the halcyon tomboy, the seeker of truth and the
ambitious scientist begin to reconcile, balance and merge. For
the first time in a long, long while, Dana wakes, stretches and
grumbles contentedly about being hungry. I know that Mulder,
with his radar for puzzle pieces coming together, senses
something but he will wait for me to explain.

"If we can begin..." Skinner says, and I wonder if he has
observed all this, but only a split second has elapsed, and he
just wants to hear our report.

******************************************************