Title - "They Grew Together"
Author - Wintersong
E-Mail address - wintersong@animatrix.ns.ca
Rating - PG 
Category - V, 3POV 
Spoilers - none
Keywords - none
Summary - none 
Disclaimer: They belong to CC and 1013.


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I watched him break my daughter. May God forgive me, 
I stood by and watched as he took the young woman I 
raised and shattered her beyond repair.

Sometimes, I resent him for that.

It had, after all, been his quest which set my 
daughter’s feet upon the path that would eventually 
destroy her. Smashed her time and time again, forcing 
her to rebuild and rebuild , until the person she 
became was no longer the person she thought she was 
becoming.

In hindsight, we never saw it happen.

Bill still doesn’t understand. He looks at her and 
sees Dana. He sees everything that she used to be and 
he doesn’t understand the choices she makes - because 
Dana would never have made them. Not the Dana we knew 
or the Dana she should have become. So he looks for a 
reason. Something that could force the sister he knew 
onto foreign paths of action. 

Someone like Mulder.

Someone who is easy to blame because his choices are 
so alien to everything a Navy family understands. The 
Navy may take your freedom. It may take your health. 
It takes the irreplaceable moments of your children’s 
lives and someday it may even take your life.

But it doesn’t take your family.

It doesn’t burst through your doors or sneak through 
your window. It doesn’t lie to you or murder the ones 
you love. Do your job and the reward is safety. Do 
your job and the enemy never sets foot on American 
soil. As long as you do it right.

So it was easy to blame Mulder. Blame him for the 
choices she should never have had to make. Blame him 
for every choice that the Dana we knew would have 
made - and did not. Blame him for every failure, 
because Dana Scully would do it right - so it must 
have been his choices that brought the sky crashing 
down.   

We were half right. Dana never made those choices.

It was Scully.

Scully, who never had to question if her partner 
would rather someone else at his side. Scully, who 
was free to be strong in all things, not just the 
things society deemed proper. Who thought nothing of 
chasing into the dark after the monsters and whose 
place was wherever she damn well wanted to be. A 
woman who will cry for her dead, but who still pulls 
the trigger. A woman I do not always understand .

And one that it had never occurred to me she would 
want to be.  

I thought it was simply the changes you would expect 
to see after all that pain. A hardening of manner, a 
slight loss of innocence. Then, it was easy to say 
that it was her work persona. The person she needed 
to be to do her job. The facade that she discarded 
once she was home. Scully, the FBI agent. Dana, the 
woman.

There were days I hated Scully.  Hated her for taking 
over more and more of my daughter’s life. Forcing her 
to think of herself only as an FBI agent, never a 
woman. Doubting things that Dana never questioned. 
Spending bits and pieces of her soul that Dana 
couldn’t spare.

She must have seen it coming. Even if she wasn’t 
absolutely certain why she was afraid. She fought it 
hard enough. Fought as she became the person he 
expected, and he became the person she allowed him to 
be. Sometimes it must be a bitter pill that it wasn’t 
murder, not even in the first degree.

It was suicide. 

And yet...and yet...

There is a split second hesitation every time someone 
calls her Dana. A barely there stutter and pause as 
she stops to realize who they are talking to. But 
there is none when he calls her name. Scully is who 
she wants to be. Scully is who she sees as her inner 
self, who she chooses to be. So maybe the bitter pill 
isn’t hers to swallow.

It’s mine.

Because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with 
Dana.



-fin