Summary: A pre X-files story. Dana skips school and her older sister, Melissa, leaves home.
Rating: PG-13 for controversial concepts.
Disclaimer: Dana Scully, Melissa Scully, Maggie Scully belong to Chris Carter, 1013 productions and some other big corporation. They are used without permission. Father Winslow and Mrs. Haggerty belong to me. Quotes are used without permission and are from Stevie Nicks' "Gypsy".
Author's Notes: If you're looking for Fox Mulder, he no here.
Thanks: To BeckyD for the edit. To 'Neeth for love and grace in the midst of our clashing beliefs.

"And it all comes down to you,
Well, you know that it does."

1.

9:30 in the A.M.
Tuesday, during the last week of school.

Dana sneaked a pull at the bottom edge of her-- no, Missy's-- tube top. It did no good. The exposed skin was just as hot and sticky as that still covered by the elastic-gathered fabric.

Still, she felt pretty-- and exposed-- as she walked down Main Street, very much aware of the sweat-prickle of her scant thighs in her on-Missy-tight denim jeans, the hard heat beating down on her too orange hair and the tops of her sneakered feet, and the bleached concrete burning through her rubber soles.

Missy always said if you acted like you belonged in a certain place, then people treated you like you belonged in that certain place. But Missy looked like she belonged to the world, like a regular gypsy. Dana just hoped that philosophy also worked if you were a fifteen-year old midget.

She brought a freckled arm to shield her eyes, and looked around her, her feathered hair floating across her face. The tips brushed her slouching shoulders, doing a drag and stick. Her reflection wavered past a glassed-in collection of television screens. If she squinted just right, she looked like Missy.

Dana stopped at the street-corner and waited for the light to change. It did.

She crossed the street, made her way to the bench at the bus stop. She sat, folded her arms over her chest, squinted against the bright afternoon sun.

And waited.

That was when Melissa Scully spotted her. Only to her eyes, the teenager at the bus-stop looked too grim to be Dana. But when the girl dropped her gaze from the bus, shifted her feet, and settled her arms behind her, Melissa knew this was, in fact, her sister.

The tall Scully girl briefly considered stepping back into the store. Neither she nor Dana had any business downtown at this time of day. And if Dana, baby that she was, spotted her, she might go running to dad and tell him that she'd heard Missy was out downtown at noon.

Which didn't explain why Dana herself was downtown playing dress-up in Melissa's clothes.

Dana never saw Missy waving at her from across the street. Before stepping on the bus, she reached into her back-pocket and pulled out her rainbow wallet. The driver's license was still in there. Dana sighed. If only she'd really been old enough to drive, then she would not have had to skip school at all.

Confessionals always made her feel dizzy. Something about the closeness of the clean dark wood, the strange smell-less smell. She did not like this glorified closet. It was too narrow, too dark, and her knees slipped on the green covered kneeler even as her elbows dug into the arm rest for purchase. Part of her couldn't help wondering, why was it necessary for her to speak to God through a holy-man in box when God was supposedly in her heart, anyway?

The girl bent her head to her closed fists. Despite the discomfort and the mystery, this was familiar and she was scared and hurting and alone with her thoughts and now more than ever, she needed some semblance of home.

If she stayed too long in confession she'd sprain her back. Discomfort mixed in with your religion, anyone? A bit of remembered conversation around the dinner table wafted back to her: There's got to be something a little bit wrong with a religion that says discomfort equals holiness. She wriggled some more, acknowledging, yet again, that yoga definitely had some points over what her sister called the oldest of tax-exempt faiths.

She felt, rather than heard, the barrier slide open. Though she did not want to, she tried her hardest to see which priest was behind the screen.

So busy was she making out borders of purple draped on black over little bits of white she missed the priest's first words.

"Bless me, Father," she blurted, in her haste she forgot to disguise her voice as planned. "For I have sinned, it has been, it has been..."

She could not remember the words. What was she supposed to say next? She breathed in and out rapidly. She should leave. She did not belong here anymore...

"What is it, child? Take your time."

Not likely, she thought as her knee slid off the kneeler. She braced her toe against the slick linoleum, catching the rubber sole firm on the ground. A dull pulse of pain throbbed through her insides. She really was supposed to be resting.

"I-I have a friend." It's only a little lie, please, God. "She, she was doing--" She stopped, out of breath. Why was this so hard? It probably wasn't anything Father Winslow hadn't heard before. She tried again, "she was having..." Why was this so hard? "Carnal relations with her boyfriend."

There. Done. Rip out the screen and tell me I'm damned to hell forever, but wait, Father, it gets worse!

There was a rustle as the father shifted in his seat. The priest sighed. His voice was soft and warm, and wise. "My child, what does this friend have to do with you?"

Hot tears stained the arm rest. She rubbed at them with her arms, "I helped her. I helped her...I helped her go to the clinic..."

"What clinic?" he asked.

She told him everything she'd already decided to, and added five Hail Mary's and two Acts of Contrition for the first lie when it came time to say her penance, hoping that in the long run, it would be enough.

"Dana," Melissa's voice was low and smooth, calm even, as she spoke through the green painted slats beneath the porch. "Dana, I know you're in there."

Dana clenched her arm across her stomach harder. Her face crumpled with the effort not to cry.

"Day-na," Missy coaxed, hooking her slim, perfectly groomed fingers between the slats of the porch. A slight frown wrinkled her brow. She'd thought Dana had given up hiding places.

"Just go away," Dana said in a rush, just before throwing a clod of dirt hard against the barrier between them. Missy let go immediately, biting back a squeal of rage as punctuations of dirt showered her.

"Leave me the hell alone!" Dana cried, and threw something else at the planks separating her from her sister.

Dana cursing? "Oh, Mother," Missy breathed, not knowing what to imagine. "What happened today?"

"None of your business."

"Did you skip school?"

Silence from Dana and just the slow ticking of some bug-- thing in the clump of tall grasses by the road. "I saw you by the bus-- stop today..."

"So why'd you ask me if I skipped school?"

Patience fraying, Melissa tapped at a board, "You better tell me. Whatever it is, looks like I'm gonna be in trouble for it."

"What?"

"Bill says Mrs. Haggerty called mom this afternoon. About me. Says she saw me taking the number 28 off of Main Street today. You know, the number twenty-eight that lets off three blocks from the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Norlight?"

In the darkness Dana went violently pale. "You wanna come inside?" she asked softly.

"Underneath the porch?!" Melissa said, running her hand down her eyelet skirt.

"I'm not coming out. And it's clean. Mostly."

Melissa Scully thought about it for a moment. "Sure. Hold on."

A few seconds later Missy was pushing aside the loose slat and began to make her way into the cool, dark space.

She came in on her haunches, her right hand fisted into the ground for balance as she waddled over. Dana's large blue gaze watching coldly as all her sister's gypsy grace disappeared. Missy wasn't one for crawling around in secret places. She was at her best in the wide open; running, swimming, and especially when whirling around in a field, peasant skirts unfurling wide across her Barbie legs, long hair gleaming in slow drifts around her ecstatic face. On all fours, she looked like a retard.

"Mom thinks I went to Planned Parenthood." Melissa said when she could make out her sister in the gloom.

Dana nodded.

"How come?"

"I needed to talk to them."

"You did, hunh?" Melissa wished for a smoke. "You wanna tell me why?"

"I took your driver's license so they'd think I was old enough," Dana blurted.

"Old enough for what?"

Dana was stubbornly silent. The sprinkler went on with a hiss. Melissa imagined the golden object click whizzing a languid jet of water in sweeping arcs across the lawn.

"Old enough for what, Dana?" Missy asked again, kneeling before her sister her eyes searching desperately for signs of anything in Dana's dark-and-light striped face.

"Can you hold me?"

The last time Melissa had tried to hug Dana, on her last birthday, she'd endured the touch for only a few seconds before pushing her older sister away.

"Sure," Melissa said reaching forward to pull Dana close to her. "Sure."