From: jj1152@messiah.edu Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 20:58:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: "Remembrance and Reflection" 1/1 This is a short vignette that I really don't know how to classify. You see, I wrote it initially just for myself, to develop a back history between Scully and a character I created who is going to play an instrumental part in "Schism: Distance" and several other stories I'm developing. She was mentioned briefly in "Wassail." Oh, and this story also contains one brief reference to my story "Pen Pals." What that reference is should be pretty obvious. :) But, anyway, this turned out pretty well so I thought I'd share it. Summary: Randi, Scully's roommate from her undergraduate days, reflects on her friendship with the agent. Told from first person. ************************** Remembrance and Reflection by Julie L. Jekel jj1152@messiah.edu ************************** I first met Dana Scully in college. She was a transfer student from UC Berkley and a sophomore, I was a lowly freshman. Somehow, we ended up as roommates. Personality-wise, we were almost the odd couple all over again. I was an artist, in just about every sense of the word, Dana was a scientist. I bounced from majoring in English to Theatre in and back, she was Pre-Med all the way through. I dragged her with me to auditions, she tricked me into helping her find a decomposing rat for a class project. I wanted to be a novelist, she was developing an interest in pathology. We were the best of friends. Dana once told me that I was the first person she'd ever met, outside of her family, who could sometimes read her mind. I wasn't as good at it as some of the people she knows now, but every so often we'd finish each other's sentences or just look at each other and laugh over some silent joke. She needed a friend in those days. You see, Dana had something going against her from the start-- since she'd transfered in from Berkeley, a lot of people assumed that she thought she was smarter than everyone else. Even some of her profs graded her harder than the rest of the class because of that. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Sure, Dana was brilliant, but the grades she got were because she worked her tail off, forgoing the social life (that had forgone her for lesser reasons) in order to insure her dreams. Let me tell you, it didn't help her reputation much, but our Lion didn't care. She knew where she was going, and this was just a way-station. Our Lion--that was how those of us who took the time to know her thought of her. I can't say why for everyone...there was certainly nothing predatory about her. I think it was that great red/gold mane of hers, coupled with her incredible strength of character. But there was more to it than that for us, an element only we two knew about, which is why I was the one to give her the nickname in the first place, and why I'm the only person she knows now that still calls her by it. You see, there weren't very many people on campus who called themselves Christians in those days, and those who did were a pretty closed circle. Dana was Catholic and uncertain of her position towards certain elements of her faith in light of the science her logical no-nonsense mind had embraced. Preacher's Kid or no, I had weird ideas and loved science fiction a little too much. We weren't exactly welcome. So, we talked it out between ourselves, in theological discussions which often lasted late into the night and always revealed more differences than could any analysis of our diverse hobbies. It was in one of those late night talks that Dana confessed to me that she sometimes felt like Daniel in the lions' den, hedged in on every side by hostile, opposing viewpoints hungry to devour her in her uncertainty. I remember replying that believing in something firmly, without swaying, usually left the lions struck dumb...or at least dumbfounded. Poor as it was, but the analogy stuck. Still, she wouldn't let me call her Danni as I'd originally been inspired, confiding in me that she'd had that nickname as a child, but had put it to rest ten years before, after the disappearance of the pen pal who'd given it to her. So, I called her Lion instead. Years later, she would tell me that those talks of ours helped her learn how to agree to disagree, or a least how to dispute someone without losing respect for them or letting her Irish temper get the better of her. And that this skill had proved valuable when she joined the FBI and was partnered with a man who challenged her more than I did. Personally, I think she gives me much of the credit due to her. Whe roomed together consistently for the next three years, until she graduated, becoming in that time almost as close as sisters. We told each other virtually everything. Dana was the first person outside my family ever to hear the story of my adoption. And she never told another living soul about it unless I asked her to. She kept secrets--including her own--better than anyone else I've ever known, even me. Sure, sometimes she'd ask me if she could tell her mother about something, but I didn't mind, because Mrs. Scully was as trustworthy as her daughter. And even so, Dana never told her anything without the permission of whoever had confided in her. In some ways, she hasn't changed. When Dana called me about a year ago, her announcement that she'd gone to Confession for the first time in six years prompted a discussion which would have made our college selves proud. And I get the feeling she's still good at keeping secrets too--even though she tells me some she doesn't think should *be* secret. Not to mention she's still hanging out with us nutcases too--almost every comment about her partner is prefaced with 'he's a lot like you,' a statement I had to agree with when I met him a few months ago. And she still throws herself into her work with a quiet passion that is, unfortunately, too easy to overlook. But she's lost so much since I first knew her, most of it in the last few years. And I don't mean just her father and sister, though Ahab and Missy's deaths affected her profoundly. More than that, probably because of it, she's lost her innocence. She doesn't trust nearly as easily as she used to, or as fully. It bothers me, even though I'm not surprised. And we've gained something in common neither of us ever wanted for her--missing pieces of our lives. Now, if I talk about the black hole that is the first ten years of my life, she shudders and remembers three months that were stolen from her. Is it any wonder she never read my novel? We don't see each other much anymore. Haven't for years, since I went home to St. Louis and she went to med school. But we've stayed close through letters, phone calls, and more recently, e-mail. I even went to visit her in D.C. a little while back. We talk, we joke that her work stories inspire novels of mine that she will never read, we keep each other updated. And we pray for each other. But one thing I don't tell her. I've never told her how afraid I am for her sometimes. Some instinct left over from my absent past tells me the monsters my friend is chasing--human and otherwise-- are all too real, much more so than she realizes. I pray every day that her partner--a believer like but also unlike me--will be able to protect her from her doubts just as she protects him from his own foolishness. And I pray that someday they will find a way to lead a halfway normal life together. I say together because I now know--even if they don't--that they could never be happy apart. Amanda 'Randi' Randall