Title: The Children We Were (1/1)
Author: Tara Avery
Email: tavery@ntonline.com
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up to Millennium.
Category: V, A
Keywords: Scully Angst
Summary: Why do bad things happen to good children, Mulder?
Disclaimer: Not mine.  Chris Carter can have them.  Even nice kisses can't 
make me less angsty.
Feedback:  Yes, please.  Please?

For Sabine--encouragement and excellent writing all balled up into one 
person--who could ask for anything more? :) (subliminal message--write 
faster!!)

For wen--I needed to write a poetic piece of angst, wen, so who else could I 
dedicate it to?  I love ya, sweetie.

*~*~*~*

The Children We Were
Tara Avery
tavery@ntonline.com

*~*~*~*

You are a tiny child with big eyes, begging to sleep.  The shadows are too 
large around you, they loom like monsters, they loom like your father.  You 
have been searching for answers since the moment you understood that not all 
daddies hurt their babies.  You have been demanding answers since you learned 
that most mommies hold their babies close and rock them to sleep, but not 
yours.  You have never been allowed to sleep.  I know you blame your insomnia 
on the disappearance of your sister, but I think it is so much more than 
that.  I think you have always been a little boy trapped behind too much 
understanding, and not enough.  You never wanted the stars or the moon or the 
sun or love, really.  You just wanted to be allowed to sleep without crying, 
without fearing a midnight wake-up call, without the nightmares that happened 
to you when you were awake.  Maybe you wanted love, too.  To be cherished, as 
you imagined other children were cherished.

I am a little girl with too many siblings, not enough father, too much 
anxious mother.  I didn't ever want to sleep because I had to share a room 
with my sister, who was older than me.  We had posters on the walls of boys 
and bands and things I didn't like.  I wanted my own space.  Ironically 
enough, I wanted glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, spelling out all the 
secrets of the universe.  My problem is that I always wanted to know the 
secrets of the universe--not my mother's version of events that offered no 
real answers.  My sister used to tease me about all my boyfriends when I was 
in the little girl phase of hating all boys, and their germs.  I am a little 
girl with red ringlets, a kilt, knee-socks.  I am the All-American girl, from 
the All-American family.  We ate pot roast, or roast beef, or stuffed 
chicken.  We had apple pies on Sundays, homemade, never store-bought.

I've been drowning in sin since I was old enough to understand that I--my 
sister--my mother--my brothers--my father--were all going to hell.  Hell is a 
big bad place when you're six years old.  Hell is a big bad place period.  
That's what they tell children--even good children.  You're going to hell if 
you don't clean your room, eat your peas, say please and thank you.  I am the 
girl who smiles and knows all the answers in Sunday School.  Sunday School is 
a big bad place, with the nuns who smack your hands with a strap or a meter 
stick if you say the wrong answer, say the wrong thing, ask the wrong 
questions.  I am still asking questions, in spite of them.  To spite them, 
maybe.  They do not answer the question why.  They teach you not to ask 
questions.  Sit down, shut up, answer the right way, memorize all your 
verses, don't ask hard questions, keep your eyes on your own paper, Dana!  
Jesus loves all the little children who are going to hell anyway.  I am a 
smiling child from an All-American Family, post-roast, apple-pies, welts on 
my hands from asking the wrong questions.  My mother wonders why I lost my 
faith.

You are still that tired child--I see him hiding behind your eyes.  He comes 
out to play when you think I'm not looking.  He comes out to torture, to 
taunt, to tease.  He knows that you don't like him.  He knows that he reminds 
you of a past you only want to forget.  He doesn't want you to forget.  He is 
the same as the phantom pain I sometimes feel on the palms of my hands while 
I sing lazy verses of hymns during Sunday masses.  It has been a long time 
since I sang a hymn without guilt in my eyes.  Guilt I didn't put there.  We 
are the same that way, only I have never let my guilt run my life like you 
do.  Your tired child beats at you, covers you in guilty shadows, like the 
blankets you hid under when you saw your father's shadow darkening your 
doorway.  Have you ever told anyone that you wished, sometimes, that he would 
leave you alone and hit Samantha instead?  Have you ever tried to work 
through those guilty feelings, Mulder?  Have you ever dared to look at them 
yourself?  You and I both know that you suffer from a severe guilt complex, 
but do you even know where it comes from?

I felt guilty because I wasn't a boy.  I made myself into a tomboy, yelled at 
my mom when she made me wore dresses, cut my long hair off with a pair of 
dull, kid scissors when I was nine or ten or eleven.  I wanted my dad to love 
me like he loved Bill and Charlie.  I wanted him to take me out sailing, to 
teach me what it was to be a Scully.  I wanted to know those secrets as badly 
as I wanted to know the secrets of the universe, and I sold myself out to get 
them.  I made myself into something I hated, but by God my Ahab loved me.  I 
was his sailor girl, his little girl that wanted to be a boy, his little girl 
who read fairytales under a blanket with a flashlight just to remind herself 
that she was once a princess and not a deckhand.  I didn't really like 
Melville, you know.  There are no women in Moby Dick.  I never wanted to be a 
boy.  But it's all part of who I am now, and who am I to argue with that?

When I was still a little girl, my father told me he had to go away on a very 
long trip.  Three days seemed like a long time to me then--there was no 
comprehending three months.  He asked me what I wanted him to bring back for 
me, and because we had read Beauty and the Beast at bedtime the night before 
I asked for a rose.  He laughed at me, and of course I didn't understand.  He 
said that roses were for big girls, there would be time enough for roses 
later, what did his little girl want?  A doll?  A game?  I was angry about 
being called a little girl in front of my siblings--Bill would tease me about 
it later, of course--so I put my hands on my hips and said, "I just want you 
to go away."  I had worked so hard to be a boy for him--it was a betrayal to 
be labeled as a girl out loud--right there--in front of everyone.

I should have felt guilt when I saw the horror in his eyes, but I didn't.  I 
felt vindicated, justified.  My mother gave me a sound spanking as soon as 
Dad left.

Thanks Ahab.

Why do bad things happen to good children, Mulder?  We don't discuss your 
childhood much, but there are things I know from your dossier, from your 
files on your sister--from the things you never say.  I know you have no fond 
memories of Christmases, for example.  Why did your father hate you--you of 
all people?  Did he just hate everyone?  Were you just an easy target?  I 
wish--wish to God--he had chosen anyone but you.  What might you be like now?  
There is something in you that is stunted and sad and childlike because of 
your father--you have a trapped child within you.  I see him there, 
struggling sometimes, or tickling you with humor, or crying behind your eyes.  
When we are on cases where children have been taken, or hurt, or killed, I 
can see that child struggling to maintain his sanity.

Nothing is simple between us, Mulder.  Nothing is simple or right or good.  
Not even New Years kisses, honest and simple and traditional.  We both knew 
then that something was not--quite--right.  You whispered "Happy New Years, 
Scully" and I whispered it back, and the sadness was there all over again.  
We are still haunted by the ghosts of the children we were.  I am still 
frozen; you are still tired.  I am haunted by Catholic guilt, and you are 
haunted by the screams of your sister, your mother, yourself.  You are a 
White Knight in Shining Armor, rescuing the world now, because you couldn't 
save the women who were important in your life then.  You are a tiny child 
who thinks he has failed.  You are thirty-nine years old and you are still an 
aching little boy, and it's the saddest thing I have ever seen.  We are 
broken, shattered, scattered.  Hearts can't be broken, and broken, and 
broken, and put back together again.  Humpty Dumpty and a thousand shards of 
heart.  There are some things crazy glue can't fix.

You want to be loved, protected, protecting, perfect.  I want to love you, 
but I can't.  Nothing is that simple, between us.  Nothing is that good.  I 
want to dance, and let my hair grow, and sing even though I can't keep a 
tune.  I want you to come away with me, like a twilight god, and to tell me 
the secrets of the universe that are hiding behind those child-eyes of yours.  
I want you to chase me through the rain--warm rain, summer rain, the kind of 
rain that makes the world smell fresh and new and born again.  The kind of 
rain you can only dream about in the winter.  I want you to chase me until we 
fall all over each other and make love in the mud and the warmth and the 
gentle caress of raindrops on our hot skin.  I want to see the stars dancing, 
without fear.  I want a plate of stars, sparkling like so many pure diamonds.  
I want to wear stars in my hair.  I want to have you put your heart in my 
hands, and I want to soothe it.  I want to tell it that there is no more 
cause for hurting.  I want to give you my heart, Mulder, to see it melt in 
your tender, warm hands.  I want you to look at me with your eyes so much 
younger than thirty-nine, to tell me then that everything is all right, that 
we are melting together.  Wouldn't that be beautiful?

Instead, we look at case files together on the couch, and the dead eyes of 
dead little girls look up at us, mocking.  They have daddies and brothers and 
mothers and sisters and cats.  Or, they did.  Now they have bruises around 
their eyes, their necks, their wrists.  They leave bruises on our souls.  We 
are bruised children wearing tailored suits, Armani suits, carrying badges 
and guns.  We take every fallen child to heart, because we know that we are 
amongst the fallen ourselves.

I want to reach out across the tentative, tiny space that separates us, I 
want to tell you the dreams I had when I was a child, and I want you to tell 
me about the things that broke you into splinters when you were a child.  But 
I know that I won't--I can't--and neither can you.  The tentative, tiny space 
houses a wall so thick--it's a crystal wall.  I can see you clearly through 
it, but the crystal makes you look like that six-year-old you once were.  
There--you have the same sad eyes, the same confused loyalty, the same 
heartbreaking guilt, so undeserved.  I wonder if you see me the same way.  I 
want to cry, but can't.

"What would it take to make you sleep, Mulder?"

You look startled, of course, and shuffle the papers in the dossier, ruining 
their precise order.  You aren't even aware that you're doing so.  I want to 
give you back a childhood untouched by horror, but it can't be done.  There's 
no use wishing on stars when you're sad and almost thirty-five.  There's only 
so much I can do.

"I need to see all the bastards like this one," you wave at the table, 
encompassing all the shattered little-girl-dead pictures there, "put away for 
good."

I nod.  We remain silent, but don't look at the work we're supposed to be 
doing.

"You know--" I begin tentatively, almost shyly.  "--You know that you can't 
do it all, right, Mulder?  You know that it's too much."

The child is screaming behind your eyes.  The child in me is beating against 
the walls of its frozen cage, my frozen heart.

"I know.  That's why I can't sleep."

"I'm sorry I didn't put my arm around you on New Years Eve."  We both know 
what I am talking about.  "I really wanted to."

"I understand, Scully."

"Do you?"

He offers a small smile, a token of his understanding.  "We both have trouble 
sleeping."

There are webs of cracks in the crystal wall--but not too much.  It would be 
too damaging all at once.  I reach out, cross the distance, lay my hand 
gently over his.  "For now," I say.

"For now," he whispers.

Our faces are close; we breathe the same breath for a heartbeat.  Then we go 
back to work.  For now.

*~*~*~*

Thank you to everyone who read this!  Please send any and all feedback to 
tavery@ntonline.com -- it will prepare me for the long haul of exams in the 
upcoming weeks!  AND doubles as a Christmas present!

NOTE:  I borrowed some of the sentiment and the line "I know it's been quite 
a long time since I sang a hymn without guilt in my eyes" from Sarah Slean's 
song John XXIII.  No infringement is intended there, either ;)  also, 
beautiful background music for this piece would be Tori Amos' song Merman.  
Wow.

Thank you again!

Tara Avery
for other XF Fanfic by me: www.angelfire.com/bc/TaraAvery/fanfic.html