2.

"She is dancing away from me now."

Grounded. At eighteen. If she wasn't supposed to be lolling on her bed like a limp lily she would have raised hell. As it was, mom had stuffed her full of soup and sent her up to bed and now she was looking after Dana.
"Mom asked for you." Missy said kneeling by Dana's bed.

"What'd you tell her?" Dana said through chapped lips, more than a little fearfully.

"That you were tired, and angry and weren't ready to talk right now."

"And?"

"She bought it," Missy pushed back a length of copper curl from Dana's moist face. She was pale, white white white, and her eyelids were tinged a perfect shade of violet. Too bad about the cobalt crescents beneath her eyes... "D'you have any medicine you're supposed to take?"

"Um, yeah. The antibiotics and muscle relaxants are in my sock drawer."

Missy rolled her eyes at the familiarity with which the words rolled off Dana's tongue. With a sudden motion, Dana started to sit up stopped part-way and winced. "Ow."

"Oh, Mother," Missy reached out to steady her. "I'm sorry, Day, I shoulda told you, you don't wanna move around too much."

Dana let Missy push her back down against the sheet. "How do you know?"

The older girl gave a noncommittal half shrug, "I know some people who've gone through this before. I'll get the pills. Case mom asks, the story is we're both feeling a little sick, okay?"

Dana nodded. Then closed her eyes. With her arms folded across her stomach, and her penny-pretty hair curling around her face, she looked like a little baby-doll. So pretty, Melissa thought, only this baby-doll punched you if you tried to dress her up.

Baby-doll, Melissa thought, and her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Baby. She swallowed the glob of phlegm that rose up in her throat and spoke again, "But you caught it from helping out at Sunday school, and I'm not okay because...Dana, are you listening?"

Dana's violent tinged eyelids fluttered open, "...sure..."

"Don't say a word, okay?"

"Easy as pie, bye-the-bye," she murmured. "Can I go to sleep now?"

"In a minute. I gotta get your pills." Missy rose from her kneeling position. "And I'm thinking." And I'm not as smart as you, not by a long-shot so, "Gimme a minute", gonna-be-a-doctor Day-na Kate Scully, outta-my-way-jerk Day-na Kate Scully, kick-the-boys-and-make-em cry Day-na Kate Scully.

Missy couldn't help smiling around the ache in her chest. In her heart of hearts Dana had so many names, all of them true, and she was Missy's favorite, though Missy tried to hide it.

Dana was smart, the smartest of them all. That was good. Smart enough how to figure out how to...handle this without anyone being the wiser. And if Mrs. Haggerty, Mother-bless-her-anyway, hadn't got a bug up her butt over PP Dana would'a pulled it off, too. Cow.

Dana looked much better than she had beneath the porch, until she opened her eyes again. Their blue had nothing to do with color, and it scared Missy. "One question. You're the one who wants to be a doctor, what were you doing hiding out under the porch?"

Dana shrugged. "I wasn't thinking."

Melissa's eyebrow rose stratospherically. Dana not thinking? "Or maybe you wanted to get sick and die?" Missy looked down at her, brushed her fingers down her face. "It's cold down there, and wet, and you've..."

"I killed my baby, Missy."

"Don't say that."

"But I did. If the Pope found out, he'd, he'd excommunicate me." If possible, Dana crumpled further upon herself, diminishing right before Missy's eyes.

"Dana, stop it."

"I'm a murderer, Missy. Maybe I deserve to die."

Melissa bit her lip.

"You think I did wrong, don't you? You think I'm selfish?"

"Will you be quiet? You're supposed to be sleeping!" Then in a much softer tone of voice, "Do you want everyone to know what's going on?"

"No," she muttered. "But you do think I'm selfish?"

Melissa sat down on the corner of the bed, wrapped her fingers around one of Dana's blanket covered ankles. "Do you really want to know what I think?" she began carefully. Even, she added silently, if I am an air-head?

"...Yes."

"I believe, I think, that souls come and go, like on a wheel, and that your baby's soul, will come again, into another life."

Dana considered the idea. It was very reassuring, but that didn't mean it was true. And it didn't fit all the facts, such as Dana believed they fit together. "What's your proof?" she asked.

Melissa hugged Dana tight around the shoulders, careful not to jar the younger girl, "What's proof? I know it, I know it inside." She placed her hand against her own stomach. "And I see it in your face. You're not selfish. And you're not a murderer. I just know."

"It sounds like make-believe."

"And the turning of bread and wine into human flesh and blood doesn't?"

Dana squirmed, "Mom wouldn't like to hear this."

"No, she wouldn't it. Like to hear it," neither do you, "But how're you feeling?"

"I'm okay."

"Good." Melissa said, wafting a kiss past Dana's brow-line and rose to her feet.

Dana watched as Melissa went to their closet and began pulling out clothes and draping them on the bed.

"But I'm never going to church again," Dana said after a while.

"I don't think that's going to go over too well with the folks. It's bad enough I don't know where the cross mom gave is anymore."

"I don't belong there," Dana mouthed into the darkness. Her words were lost in the sounds of clothes rustling and of hangers clicking against each other.

"What are you doing?" Dana asked, eyes droopy.

"Packing."

After a while Dana spoke again, "Why?"

"You can't expect Maggie Scully to have a pagan and an infanticide--"

Missy closed her eyes in agony, crumpling the pants she held to her chest. "Dana, I-- I--"

"You don't believe we only get one life to live?"

"Dana, does it matter?"

"Mrs. Haggerty thinks so."

"Mrs. Haggerty would like it if everyone had the same lousy options to pick from in life that she had."

"Father Winslow believes it."

"Father Winslow doesn't believe a lot of things," Missy said darkly.

"But I lied in there, Melissa. And now he thinks I was covering for you."

"It's not important."

"Isn't the truth always important?"

"Dana, listen to me. It's over. The baby, if it was a baby, is gone, and mom's going to think what she wants to think, and dad's going to think what he wants to think, and Mrs. Haggerty gets more support to close down the clinic..."

"But it's murder just the same."

"The church is wrong, Dana. I know it. I believe it."

"'Wishing don't make it so.'"

"You're wrong, Day-na. You're wrong. Faith moves mountains. It raises the dead. Faith can make the rain fall over the driest dessert. I'll just...gonna have to wish strong enough for the both us."

"What do you mean?"

"I skipped school and took the bus to the free clinic. You tried to stop me from going and I made you come with me because I didn't want you to go home and tell mom what I was doing."

"Missy, no!"

"Are you crazy?! Missy, yes. You still need mom and dad. In think this is just the excuse we all've been looking for."

Melissa turned under the covers to face the door when she heard a familiar tread outside her bedroom. The door opened a little bit: "Melissa, are you awake?" The question held no gentleness, no consideration for the possibility that the person inquired after might need rest, succor, compassion.

"Yes, mom."

"Your father wants to speak to you now..."

"Can I have a minute, mom?" she said sleepily, already slipping into her role.

Margaret Scully pulled the door shut with a soft bang.

Dana flinched. The sisters looked at each other. "It'll be all right, Dana." Missy rolled out of bed and onto the floor, fully dressed. She'd been mulling over what she would say and why when her father finally called her down for the interrogation/trial.

"MISSY," came their mother's voice from downstairs.

"What are you going to do?" Dana asked.

"They think it was me. Let them think it was me." Melissa smiled. "It's time for me to leave anyway. Whatever happens, I don't blame you. Do you understand?"

Dana nodded. "Thank you, Missy."

"Okay, remember, you know nothing. Here we go," she said and she smiled.

Somehow, when she smiled the room brightened, her goldish hair shedding light around her face and shoulders. Missy had such wise eyes, such strange sad lonely eyes, but beautiful, and Dana couldn't begrudge her that beauty.

"Love ya', sport," said Melissa Scully as she grasped the door knob. Dana would always remember how perfect she looked, in the white trimmed halter shirt they'd fought over that morning, long arms banded with woven thread, turquoise butterfly earrings studding her ears. On her, even the freckles were perfect, sexy, even, speckling up her arm and across her breastbone, climbing over her shoulders and dotting the clean line of her collarbones. Her pretty breasts swung braless beneath the bunched fabric of her shirt as she moved with dancer's grace and pulled open the white door.

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If you've made it this far, please let me know what you think.

Author's Notes: Hey there. First of all, I mean no offense. I imagine I'm stepping on a lot of toes here and I want to go on record (online alias that I am) and state that I wish to cause no pain. That said, this story was inspired in part by Scully's absolute resistance to speak with a clergyman when she was dying (US Season 4, Gethsemane). I immediately thought, what would inspire Scully, who has been known to go to confession irregularly, get a little upset at having a family priest show up at a little party at her house?

And suddenly, I saw Maggie Scully hissing at Missy for corrupting Dana and dragging her down to a free-clinic and exposing her to all sorts of 'filthy' things. And I thought about Scully's walls, and her silence and the strange tension and slight contempt that Maggie Scully seemed to have for Melissa (US Season 1: One Breath). But the actual writing happened on a day whenm, for some strange reason the Fleetwood Mac classic "Gypsy" floated, into my head, and all of a sudden it was a hot sticky day in 1978 (or the very early 80s), and Scully, then Dana, was skipping school even though she was bound and determined to be a doctor. I could see Missy, spinning like a top, like Mike Stipe's sister in the REM video for the song, "The One I Love," only spinning alone and the melody for the song "Gypsy," which to me was mindful of love and admiration, and envy and yearning.

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