Category: SA

Rating: PG for a little swearing

Archive: Gossamer, Ephemeral, the Harem...anywhere else, just ask please. :-)

Feedback: Please! azarsuerte@hotmail.com

Keywords: Scully!Angst, Angry!Maggie, missing scene from "William"

Spoilers: "William"

Acknowledgments: To Langleigh for giving me the idea, and the ladies at the Harem of X-Files Other Women Defenders for wondering if Maggie Scully might sometimes be unhappy with her daughter's choices

Dedication: Again, to Langleigh, who asked me to write this. She said I wrote Margaret Scully well, but in this piece, most of Maggie's words--in content if not verbatim--are hers. I only transcribed them.

Summary: Maggie reacts to the news of her daughter's decision.

"One Good Reason"
by Azar

"Give me one good reason," Maggie Scully fumed at her daughter, "why I should believe you haven't been looking for an excuse to get rid of this child."

Dana stared at her mother, incredulous and angry. "Give you a reason? How can you say that? My God, Mom, how could you even think that?"

"How can I not?" Margaret almost shouted, her arms tightening almost imperceptibly around her grandson. "Dana, this baby is a miracle. A gift from God. But instead of being thankful for the son He gave you when doctors swore you would never be able to conceive, you've done nothing but treat him like one of your goddamned cases to be investigated! And now you tell me you want to put him up for adoption? God, Dana, if you don't want him, give him to me!"

"I do want him!" the younger woman choked. "Do you really think I want to give up my baby? The only child I'll ever have and the only thing I have left of the man I love?"

Her mother's angry eyes pierced her, drawing blood from what little was left of her soul that could still feel pain, that wasn't beaten into numbness. "Then why on earth would you give him away? Dana--"

"Because I love him, damn it!" She shouted back. "I love him too much to ask him to live like this, always looking over his shoulder--"

"Do you think he won't always be looking over his shoulder if you give him up?" her voice was softer now, but her words no less hard. "Looking for you?"

"What if I can't protect him, Mom?" the younger Scully pleaded. Unable to meet her mother's angry eyes any longer, hers focused sadly on her child. "What if someone comes for him...and I can't stop them?"

"You're an FBI agent, Dana. How could two strangers who don't even know that someone might want this child protect him better than you, his own mother?"

"Because They'll always know where I am." Her face tightening, Dana reached one hand up to touch a small scar at the base of her neck, biting back a sob. "Without me...William can disappear, just like Mulder did. I can live with giving him up...I can't live with risking his life when I know I can save it."

"You should have thought of that before you accepted this assignment," Maggie snapped. She relented a little when she saw the horror in her daughter's eyes. "Oh, Dana...you know I love Fox and I know this is what you want...that you chose him..."

Approaching, she laid her grandson in his mother's arms and captured her daughter's face in her hands, forcing her to meet her eyes again. "...but I want you to be happy, Baby. And you're not. You're not happy being apart from Fox and you won't be happy without your son. You've sacrificed enough. Don't throw away what little happiness you still have left."

Looking down at the child in her arms, Dana shook her head slowly. "It'll never be enough, Mom. I gave up the chance to have a normal life a long time ago. But my choice shouldn't dictate William's--he still deserves that chance and I won't deny it to him."

Margaret watched mutely as her daughter turned away, carrying William back to his crib and laying him in it. Her lips parted, words hovering on them that she'd never been able to voice, but words that spoken now might get through to Dana and make her see the enormous mistake she was about to make.

Words about a child she'd given up long ago...and never stopped longing for.

Words that died on her tongue, still unshared.

FIN