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
(
geocities.com/earthworm1013)