Came on Lion - 1/1
Title: Came on Lion
Author: amyhit
Rating: G
Spoilers: Not a one
Summary: closer than a girl can get / to trouble if she hasn't yet / got in it
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author's Notes: Because the synopsis doesn't make it clear, this is one day of Dana Scully's childhood. References and beta notes at the end.
Dinner is cooking in the kitchen when Dana comes downstairs. The garbage door is resting open for catching potato peels and her mother is scouring a cast iron frying pan in the sink. Her mother is wearing a nice dress with a sash and earrings, and over top she's wearing an apron to keep the dress clean. The whole downstairs smells of steam and vegetables. Bill is at the kitchen table with a piece of string, trying to remember the different ways he was shown how to tie knots. Dana knows how. She could show him if he'd let her, if she wanted to.
As soon as Dana comes in her mother wants to know if Missy is still doing her homework. "Yes," says Dana, even though it's not really true. She was upstairs with Missy before, but she came down because Missy kept saying "Rrrrggghh, you're distracting me!" every time Dana got up, or opened a drawer, or even tried to help. She also said, "What do you know about fractions? You're ten." Missy likes to ask Dana what she knows, but Dana isn't supposed to answer. So that's when she came downstairs. It seemed that Missy wasn't doing anything but be distracted. Probably she was thinking about that boy from the first pew in church, but Dana won't tell about that.
Her mother hustles past carrying the clean frying pan and Dana presses closer to the fridge to keep out of the way. The pan hisses and sizzles when it's set on the stove. Then her mother goes out of the room and opens the door into the pantry and Dana can hear jars clinking together behind the kitchen wall. Bill watches the kitchen doorway, then looks back at Dana. "Hey," he says so she'll look at him. When she looks he spits something at her - probably a grape seed. There's a bowl of grapes on the table.
Her mother comes back with flour on her hands and some in a levelled off measuring cup. "Well, it's a good thing you did yours up this morning," she says, meaning Dana's homework. "I need someone to go down to the corner and buy coffee for your father's breakfast tomorrow."
"But-- " She begins, then stops herself. She squares her shoulders. It isn't any good to protest, definitely not today. "Okay," she says.
"There won't be time for me to go - not before he's home, and then once dinner's done I'm afraid it'll be too late."
Something on the stove begins to boil over. Her mother doesn't even look up from her mixing bowl. "Bill, will you add some water to that big pot please - that one there on the left." Bill scrapes back his chair and walks to the sink. "A small amount should do fine -- for the coffee, I mean, Dana, but you'd better go right away if you can. You don't want to still be away when he comes."
No, Dana doesn't want to still be away when her father comes.
"I put some money on the table for you," says her mother.
Bill stops pouring water into the cauliflower pot and looks around at her. His gaze goes down to the table where their mother has put the money. It's right there beside where he was working at tying knots. He looks like he's noticing it for the first time and she sees his eyes narrow. She takes the money off the table quickly and closes it in her fist.
She goes out into the front hall where it's quiet and the light is getting dim, the sunset glowing orange through the brown glass panels bordering the door. It's dark enough that she can't tell which sneakers in the closet are hers. She has to feel which ones have the laces untied to see if they're hers or Missy's. "How come she gets to go?" Bill is asking in the kitchen. Dana doesn't like the way he sounds. All day, since this morning, he's been acting like he has to get back at her for telling on him. She didn't mean to tell on him, not really; she couldn't help it that their mother saw the mud he'd tracked in.
She shoves her feet into her shoes and tries to get the laces done up neatly and quickly with the money in one hand. Her outfit doesn't have any pockets, and there isn't time to get her jacket.
Her mother says, "Maybe a second cup of water in with the cauliflower, please, Bill."
"How come she gets to go," repeats Bill.
Dana opens the front door enough to go out and then she closes it tightly behind her. The air outside is cold for this early in the year. She thinks about Charlie, crying this morning because he'd finally been allowed to go outside for a couple minutes and nobody'd told him summer was over and that he'd missed the last of it being sick in bed. Her mother had sent her outside with him, just in case. "Are you mad we can't go see Dad's ship 'cause of me?" he'd asked, wiping his cheeks. The green grass was starting to go brown in the yard. She'd been looking up the street. "It's the doctor's orders, Charlie," she'd said after a moment, and stood there holding his hand.
Now Dana goes quickly down the front steps and doesn't cut across the grass to get to the sidewalk. You're not supposed to - that's what the front walk is for. She doesn't turn around so she'll see Bill coming after her, either.
He catches up to her when she's already almost there. He could have caught up before that, but instead he came up along the other side of the street until he got ahead of her so he could run across quickly and hide behind one of the cars parked along the curb. She knows he's just going to jump out at her or something, and that she shouldn't be a fraidy-cat because he's only being mean. She just wishes she knew which car he was going to jump out from behind. Then she wouldn't have to look so hard at her feet to keep from getting scared when he finally did it. The long shadows, and the tall, thick hedges along the fronts of some of the yards are only make it harder for her not to be jumpy.
Her brother waits until she's almost at the intersection. Just across Cardinal Street at the corner of 81st is where the grocer's is, and Bill picks the second parked car from the corner.
"RrrrRAAAAWRRrr!" he yells, throwing himself out from the shadow of a heavy looking Buick. The noise is guttural, half like a boy and half like a panther - they scream like that, she's pretty sure. She doesn't jump. Or, well, he doesn't see her jump at least. He stops dead in front of her, arms at his sides so he's blocking the way like a thug. "Give me all your money." He bares his teeth and scowls at her. Her hands are making really tight fists. She wishes she were better at name calling.
She steps to the side to go around him but he mirrors her. "Leave me alone!" she demands, pushing past. She gets to the corner first and marches straight across even though she should wait there. She hopes his knees are burning from crouching behind that car waiting for her.
He dashes past her in the grocer's parking lot and beats her to the doors, leaping up and trying to touch the awning sticking out over the fruit displays. It's not a very big store. Bigger than a general store, though, with the awning coming down low in the front. She tries to touch the awning sometimes when she comes here with Missy, but not with Bill around because she can't even reach close.
She walks straight for the set of double doors going in and going out, but he gets around in front of her again and this time he really won't let her pass. He fakes left and right, as if it's all in fun, but she can tell it isn't. "Bill, don't. Bill! Move."
He stops bouncing and just stands there, smiling, but not really. "I'm going to go in," he says, "and you can stay here. I'll be faster." No lead in. He's been planning for a while, thinking he was going to make her do what he says - maybe since the kitchen. Now she knows. This is what he wants. The OUT door opens and a man comes through awkwardly with both his hands full of grocery bags. She tries to move so she isn't in the man's way but Bill is making it difficult, blocking her steps wherever she goes. She shoves him and he grabs her fist - the one the money's in.
"Hey! I said let me in!"
"C'mon Dana, give me the money Mom gave you."
"Stop, let GO!" She means to sound serious, but she just can't. She tries to yank her hand away but Bill's grip is strong. "Mom sent me," she insists. "I'm supposed to do it!" The more serious she feels the more whiny and upset her voice gets. This is how it always happens. She usually tries not to say very much unless it's about how he's breaking the rules, otherwise he just mimics her voice and makes fun of her.
"Let go!"
He doesn't. He's grinning and he looks ugly. "Just give the money to me. I said I'll do it," he says. He is pulling at her fist and his eyes have gone narrow again, like they did when he saw the money on the kitchen table, except worse than that now. This is the part Dana hates the most, when she knows they're going to fight, and she's so angry, and she can't help it.
She shakes her head 'No'. Mom sent her to get coffee for breakfast tomorrow. Ahab's breakfast. It's her job and Bill's getting in the way of it. It's her job. She watches Bill's fingers prying at her fist, pretending not to feel his grip. "LET. GO." she says in his face. He's figured out the money's in the right fist for sure and dropped the left one. They're not struggling now, just starring at her hand while he works at it. Dana can feel the muscles all the way up her arm tensing. The left fist hangs at her side. She hasn't thought to punch him. It doesn't take very long before he's almost gotten her pinky bent back, but then a customer needs Bill to move because he's in the way of the grocery baskets. This distracts him enough that Dana almost manages to shake his grip off for a moment before he grabs on again, pulling her arm out hard in front of her.
She has before - punched Bill; did it properly like he would've done it right back, closed her fist and blackened his eye. Missy hasn't because all she and Bill do is ignore each other and call each other names, and Charlie's too little, but Dana has done it. Only because Missy eventually told him about Dana's rabbit and he said that made her a murderer. That was different though - nothing like this. She didn't hit him then because she had to, she just did it. Now she has to concentrate on keeping her fist closed tight. That's how she's started to think about it. She can't let him get it open. It isn't fair if he does - it just isn't.
She could kick Bill in the shins, but she doesn't do that either. He raps on her fist with his knuckles and drives at it with the flat of his hand a few times, grunting, but she won't loosen her grip. Her hand smarts worse each time he does it, but she won't let him beat her.
"Come on," he urges, not to her but to her fingers.
"No," she says. She stares very hard at the lines in her knuckles. She doesn't want to look at his face. She doesn't want to feel herself hating him.
Once Bill gets bored with trying to work her hand open himself, he grabs up a piece of wood - probably something that came off the bed of one of the fruit trucks - and tries to work her fingers loose with that. When it doesn't work he abandons the pursuit all together. "Fine," he says, shoving her fist back at her, "but it won't be my fault when you get us in trouble, Dummy."
Bill busies himself with a bruised apple that must've fallen from a crate, playing at kicking it off one of the posts holding up the storefront. Every few kicks he has to go after it. She could run inside then, but whenever he looks over at her his nostrils widen and his eyes shape themselves narrow, and she can see how determined he is. He would race after her and she wouldn't even get to ask a store clerk which was the right aisle before he caught her. Then they would be really bad for making a scene in the store.
Dana sits down against the storefront and puts her fists in her lap, both of them. "It's gonna be your fault," Bill calls. She watches him toe his apple out from under a nearby car. "This is really stupid, Dana, you know that?" He doesn't look as though he cares that they are fighting.
Her ankles are pressing into the concrete under her. She studies her lap. She doesn't care either.
By the time someone comes to get them the sun has already set. There are a couple of stray shopping bags rolling in the lot, and only one or two cars left. The light of the storefront is beginning to attract bugs, though there aren't as many now that it's getting colder at night. The trees planted up and down 81st Avenue make it even darker down that way, so that when Dana looks, at first she just sees a figure a little darker than the shadows, walking up the street towards the grocer's. It emerges onto Cardinal at the well-lit corner and starts across. The figure's strides are heavy and familiarly paced.
Dana, as always, sees him first. Bill is preoccupied with his apple, but he notices when Dana suddenly gets to her feet. "What?" he says gruffly. She stands with her back as straight as she can and doesn't answer. She stares past him, but she can tell he's looking her over. Maybe he figures it out just by looking at her, or maybe he sees the reflection in the storefront, but suddenly his eyes go wide.
"Dad!" says Bill, turning to see. He goes straight out to meet his father in the middle of the parking lot. They shake hands and Bill waits to be hugged without looking like that's what he wants. Dana sees why their father looked so dark coming up the street towards them: he's still in uniform. He comes in under the storefront and Dana studies him to see if anything is different. She tries to be thorough - wary of finding anything different on him, and relieved when she doesn't. Even his buttons seem to have held their polish, and his face is as unchanged as his uniform. She thinks of it as being important about the Navy, that things stay true to their form. The ships never look any different either, which isn't really right, she knows, because they're different ships. But she thinks he must have already been in the house because he doesn't have his hat with him. Bill wants to know if Mom sent him, too.
"That she did. She sent me to get the both of you," says their father. "And to make sure you haven't gotten yourselves into anything." His face is set, but he isn't angry with them. Not yet at least. They can't have been here as long as it seems like they have been, then.
Now that she's stood up, Dana feels she should brush off her dress at the back. She's supposed to keep it nice, like her mother's dress, and the ground was dusty where she was sitting; but she wants to keep still, too, and not fidget right now, while her father's just arrived. Bill has started kicking deliberately at the bottom of the post he was bouncing his apple off of - not looking like he wants to mention anything about their fight. Her father comes over to Dana and puts his hand on the top of her head, firm enough for her to feel the weight of it. "Dana." He strokes over her hair a couple of times with his thumb. He doesn't bend down close like he does with Charlie, even though Charlie's taller than her now. "Have you done what your mother asked of you?"
"No, Sir," says Dana.
"Why is that?"
"I- couldn't."
Bill gives the post a particularly hard kick. He isn't looking at her.
She doesn't know what he's so angry about since she hasn't told, and isn't going to. Not unless her father asks a question; then she can tell the truth. It's the whole reason Bill's mad at her anyway, because she told the truth. This morning he put on their father's boots when he went out early to finish the yard work and Dana saw him taking them off afterward. Later her mother saw that the boots had been shoved into the back of the closet all muddy, so Dana told. She didn't answer her mother's question about why Bill had them on in the first place, though, even though she thought she knew that too. "Just because," said Bill, looking at his socks, so Mom made him clean the boots. He sulked and put up a fight about it so then he didn't get his allowance either.
Suddenly Bill says, "Dad, Dana wouldn't let me help!"
"BILL!" she shouts at him. She can't help but shout, but it doesn't stop him anyway.
"I said I wanted to help with the shopping and she wouldn't let me," he explains.
"That's- not- true!" she says, determined to keep her voice from wobbling. Dinner must not be ready, then, she thinks, if they aren't in trouble already. It's lucky.
Just then a man in a green apron - the workers wear green aprons here - walks outside facing backwards into the store. He shouts back to one of the ladies at the tills about sweeping the mats once he's off his break. Then he turns around, nods to her father, before he walks off, groping in his pockets and beginning to whistle. Something about this whistling, and her standing here getting blamed, just makes her think how nothing is fair no matter what, and her throat starts to ache.
"Dana?" Her father turns to her. "What's this about you not letting Bill help?"
She wants to glare at Bill but instead she glares straight ahead. It doesn't matter what she says now. Their father is home. She didn't get back in time. She was fighting, and she doesn't even know why, and she forgot to hurry and she-- she forgot. "I didn't need help, I told him. I don't need any help," she says. She tries to keep glaring straight ahead but it's hard. Her face is starting to tremble. She's not even as angry at Bill as she is because of that, and it won't stop. "It was my job," she says, "Mom said I'm supposed to get...she gave the money to me. And then Bill tried to-- "
"She's got it in her hand, see!" Bill points at her right fist.
"I'm supposed to do it," she says, not yelling anymore.
"She won't let go. I asked her to and she wouldn't!"
Her father looks down at her hand. The whole hand feels like stone, like bone - no fingers to wriggle. It doesn't matter what she says now, Bill's got her. Like he did from the start. She can't even feel what her hand is gripped around anymore, just the grip itself - it's all one thing.
Her father looks at her for a little while, and then he looks at Bill. Bill's hands are fists, too, she notices. "Well," says her father with certainty. He clears his throat. "I don't know what you two have been standing out here doing to each other for half an hour, but I'm hungry, and I'd appreciate some real coffee, so how about we do this quickly and get ourselves home." He turns to her fully. "Dana, I'd like you to give me the money Mom gave you."
Dana looks at her father's face. He doesn't look impatient, or patient either. He doesn't put his hand out for the money, but she knows he expects her to give it. She's surprised it didn't occur to her to run to him as soon as she saw him and let him have it instead of her or Bill, but she didn't - she didn't even think of it - and now he's telling her to and she...and she.... No. She presses her molars together. The employee on his break is sitting on the hood of his car in the corner for the parking lot, blowing smoke rings for fun. She watches him doing it. Nothing happens. She wants to give her father the money - she thinks she wants to - her hand is shaking, and she wants to do it, really, but nothing happens. She can't. She isn't giving up. This isn't what fighting with Bill is usually like.
Her father is waiting for her to open her hand. She's cold. It's gotten almost completely dark now, and she's wearing a dress today, to look nice. "See," Bill says, "she won't even do it."
"Dana," says her father.
She looks down at her knees. They feel prickly from being cold. "Dana," says her father. She stares at her knees. Her fist is a stone. She's thinking about Bill jumping out at her, Bill being mean to her, Bill sitting on the floor with one big muddy boot in his hand and his eyes narrowed - she doesn't care about Bill, or this awful chore, or this coffee, which her Mom made her go get, or--
"Starbuck."
She looks up.
Her father is standing perfectly straight. He brings his uniformed arm up at a stiff angle. "Salute" he says.
So she does.
After a moment he nods. Then he bends down and picks up the money. "All right. You two better wait here." He turns about face and the IN door opens for him. "At ease, both of you." Just inside, a woman is washing the floor. The smell of dirty mop water swells out, warm and soapy. He goes in, and Bill looks after him. Dana looks at her hand, the palm blotched red and white where the blood was pressed out and her nails dug in.
The door stays open a few seconds longer, and then it closes.
After dinner her mother makes Dana help her with the dishes. Charlie came downstairs for dinner, but he was sent right back to bed afterwards, and Missy and Bill are in the living room, telling their father about things that have happened since the school year started. Missy keeps talking over Bill and Bill keeps repeating everything she's talked over, which Missy hates. "Hey, I get to tell him about the snake! " Bill breaks in, his voice rising loud enough for Dana to hear him clearly from the kitchen. "I was the one who caught it!"
"You got the whole walk home to tell Dad stuff!" argues Missy, raising her voice right back. "And you almost made dinner get cold 'cause you took so long." Her mother begins using the noisy steel wool to scrub a baking sheet and Dana can't hear any more over that. Her father isn't talking much anyway. He's busy arrange the wood in the fireplace so it'll burn properly. She edges back on her heels and tries to see into the living room from her post.
"Dana, you're dripping!" Her mother's warning forces her attention back to the kitchen and the casserole dish she has in her hands. "Hold that back over the sink - here." Dana does as her mother says. Her hands feel strange, weak from earlier, and she almost drops the heavy dish when she goes to put it away. Her mother runs the dishwater so hot that Dana can hardly put her hands in it most of the time, but she tries not to think about it hurting.
There's only one big potato boiler pot left to wash now, and the cutlery rattling around on the bottom of the basin. Her mother sends her searching under the sink for the floor rag. "You'd better wipe up that water on the floor before someone gets their socks wet," she says, standing aside so Dana can open the cupboard door. The rag is hung over the bend in the drainpipe, stiff from being put away wet. Missy says it's disgusting and won't even touch it. Dana doesn't think about it being disgusting. She breaks its stiffness in her hands and shuts the cupboard door, kneeling on the linoleum.
Above Dana, in the sink, her mother suddenly sets the heavy pot down with a purposeful thud. "Honestly you two, I--" her mother heaves in a breath and sighs it out. Dana doesn't look up. She knows what her mother is going to say. "You and Bill - I don't know what possesses you to go after each other the way you do. Your father must think I never discipline you - him coming home and always finding you fighting like this."
Dana blinks and looks down at the linoleum. She notices where the water splashed and wipes it up. Her mother sighs again, very deeply, and goes back to the potato boiler. She scrapes at something on the rim with her fingernail, rinses the pot quickly, and sets it on the counter to dry. "I don't know what to do with the two of you," she says.
In the living room a fire is beginning to crackle. The smell of hot wood and old soot is drifting through the downstairs fast. It's the first time the fireplace has been used since the winter. "I only did it because mine are too small," Bill is saying, sounding defiant.
"The ones your mother bought you in the spring?" asks their father. "Too small already, eh?"
"Oh, shut up, Missy, they are too!"
Missy talks over Bill's protests, laughing. "Daddy, Mom buys all our shoes way too big. Bill just doesn't wanna admit he was playing dr--"
"If my feet haven't grown then how come Dad's boots fit me now?" blurts Bill.
"He's lying, Daddy, they do not fit him."
"Almost!"
"My feet are bigger than yours are, so nyeaah."
"Yeah, and Mom calls them skis!"
"That's enough. Quiet down," says their father. He sounds gruff, but still relaxed. "Now you've both been warned twice: you're not to wake your brother. Understand?" She wonders if he's really tired. But Ahab's never tired. Dana pictures him sitting in his chair - the old one with the footrest that sticks and then pops out fast.
She is still wiping the floor. She's keeping her head down and scrubbing hard.
"I'd say you've wiped the floor good and plenty," her mother says. She unstops the sink and wrings out the dishtowel. "In fact, you can throw that cloth away; I don't think it'll take another washing." Her mother begins wiping the counters clean.
"Okay," Dana forces herself to say, quietly, but she keeps pressing the cloth against the floor. Her mother sweeps crumbs into the sink and rinses the cloth in cold water. Then she turns off the tap and looks at her daughter. Dana doesn't get up.
"Dana, honey, you can stop now, we're done. Why don't you go on into the living room?"
Dana blinks a few times, very fast, but it doesn't do any good.
"Dana? What's the matter?" Her mother said she doesn't know what to do with her. Dana doesn't know what to do with Dana either.
"We should've gone to s-see Daddy's sh- ship," she says. She blinks hard and feels her lashes get wet. She's sorry she made dinner late. "We should've g-gone-- it isn't fair. I w-wanted to-- g-go. We always-- g-go." She's sorry she told on Bill, and that his allowance got spent at the grocers, and that he's mad at her even though all she did was tell the truth about what she knew he did.
She feels more than sees her mother kneel down near her. "I know, Dana - we all wanted to go, I promise. But the doctor's orders were for your brother to stay in bed. You were there when Dr. Oldsman told us how we could all look after Charlie, remember?" She stops scrubbing and tries to breathe while her mother talks very gently, her fingers sweeping back some of Dana's hair. "I know it's hard, honey, but we have to do the best we can. And now that your father's home it'll be--"
Dana hits her hand against the floor - the one with the cloth in it. "I don't care about the stupid doctor's orders." She gets to her feet quickly.
Her mother must be shocked because it takes until Dana has put the rag in the garbage and turned to go out of the room before the reproach finally comes. "Dana!" her mother says. But Dana has already walked to the kitchen door by then, and she just keeps walking, into the hall and then right up the stairs, without stopping, and without looking through the doorway into the living room.
"Mom and Dana are done the dishes," Missy announces, as Dana walks past. Dana climbs up the stairs in the dark. The hem of her dress is wet and cold against her knees from where she knelt in some of the water she spilled. She feels like a stone, like a fist. She feels like it doesn't matter what she wants and maybe it never did.
Missy comes upstairs to pee after a while. Dana knows it's Missy because the beads on her homemade necklaces bounce together when she skips down the hall. Pretty soon she's done in the bathroom. Water runs through the pipes and a door opens. Then Missy sticks her head in through the bedroom doorway. Dana's been lying on her side, facing the door. She could roll over, away from her sister, but she doesn't. The lights are off in the room and the hall light catches in the tumbling length of her sister's hair. "Hey. Are you crying?" Missy wants to know.
"No," says Dana.
"Are you mad?"
"No," says Dana. She thinks it's true - mostly. The more she thinks about it being true the more it is. She's definitely not crying anymore. She barely did; only a little, in the kitchen, and then she couldn't cry at all when she was alone. Missy lets the door go and it creaks open farther on its own.
Missy begins to leave off whispering and just talk. "Well what's wrong with you then? Dad's home." She says it like it's all one thing, like it doesn't make any sense for Dana to be upset now. While her sister was in the bathroom, a kettle started to whistle downstairs. It sounded cheerful and distant, and then it stopped.
Dana pulls her knees up higher. "Nothing," she says. She's still wearing her dress, and she's still a little cold. When Missy goes back down stairs she's decided she's going to get under the covers and go to sleep. She wants to be asleep when her mother comes up to talk to her.
"There is so something wrong," hisses Missy.
"There isn't, Missy."
"Is too."
But there isn't, and Dana says so -- says she's alright, says there isn't anything wrong with her, says she's fine.
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Dedication: Not only did tree beta for me, she also saw in my fic what I needed to be seen, at a time when it made all the difference - and she told me she saw. But above that, she has helped me find the means to understand Dana Scully better - and maybe to write her better as well. It's almost redundant to dedicate this fic to tree. There's simply no one else it would be for.
Further Notes: The title and summary come from Sarah Harmer's song Came on Lion. Granted, it's not the perfect song for this fic, but I like the tone - the deep, subtle disillusionment, and the childlike lack of pretension. I was listening to Sarah's album a lot the week I wrote this, and without meaning to, I began thinking of this fic as 'Came on Lion'. Thus, the title was solidified.
Author: amyhit
Rating: G
Spoilers: Not a one
Summary: closer than a girl can get / to trouble if she hasn't yet / got in it
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Author's Notes: Because the synopsis doesn't make it clear, this is one day of Dana Scully's childhood. References and beta notes at the end.
Dinner is cooking in the kitchen when Dana comes downstairs. The garbage door is resting open for catching potato peels and her mother is scouring a cast iron frying pan in the sink. Her mother is wearing a nice dress with a sash and earrings, and over top she's wearing an apron to keep the dress clean. The whole downstairs smells of steam and vegetables. Bill is at the kitchen table with a piece of string, trying to remember the different ways he was shown how to tie knots. Dana knows how. She could show him if he'd let her, if she wanted to.
As soon as Dana comes in her mother wants to know if Missy is still doing her homework. "Yes," says Dana, even though it's not really true. She was upstairs with Missy before, but she came down because Missy kept saying "Rrrrggghh, you're distracting me!" every time Dana got up, or opened a drawer, or even tried to help. She also said, "What do you know about fractions? You're ten." Missy likes to ask Dana what she knows, but Dana isn't supposed to answer. So that's when she came downstairs. It seemed that Missy wasn't doing anything but be distracted. Probably she was thinking about that boy from the first pew in church, but Dana won't tell about that.
Her mother hustles past carrying the clean frying pan and Dana presses closer to the fridge to keep out of the way. The pan hisses and sizzles when it's set on the stove. Then her mother goes out of the room and opens the door into the pantry and Dana can hear jars clinking together behind the kitchen wall. Bill watches the kitchen doorway, then looks back at Dana. "Hey," he says so she'll look at him. When she looks he spits something at her - probably a grape seed. There's a bowl of grapes on the table.
Her mother comes back with flour on her hands and some in a levelled off measuring cup. "Well, it's a good thing you did yours up this morning," she says, meaning Dana's homework. "I need someone to go down to the corner and buy coffee for your father's breakfast tomorrow."
"But-- " She begins, then stops herself. She squares her shoulders. It isn't any good to protest, definitely not today. "Okay," she says.
"There won't be time for me to go - not before he's home, and then once dinner's done I'm afraid it'll be too late."
Something on the stove begins to boil over. Her mother doesn't even look up from her mixing bowl. "Bill, will you add some water to that big pot please - that one there on the left." Bill scrapes back his chair and walks to the sink. "A small amount should do fine -- for the coffee, I mean, Dana, but you'd better go right away if you can. You don't want to still be away when he comes."
No, Dana doesn't want to still be away when her father comes.
"I put some money on the table for you," says her mother.
Bill stops pouring water into the cauliflower pot and looks around at her. His gaze goes down to the table where their mother has put the money. It's right there beside where he was working at tying knots. He looks like he's noticing it for the first time and she sees his eyes narrow. She takes the money off the table quickly and closes it in her fist.
She goes out into the front hall where it's quiet and the light is getting dim, the sunset glowing orange through the brown glass panels bordering the door. It's dark enough that she can't tell which sneakers in the closet are hers. She has to feel which ones have the laces untied to see if they're hers or Missy's. "How come she gets to go?" Bill is asking in the kitchen. Dana doesn't like the way he sounds. All day, since this morning, he's been acting like he has to get back at her for telling on him. She didn't mean to tell on him, not really; she couldn't help it that their mother saw the mud he'd tracked in.
She shoves her feet into her shoes and tries to get the laces done up neatly and quickly with the money in one hand. Her outfit doesn't have any pockets, and there isn't time to get her jacket.
Her mother says, "Maybe a second cup of water in with the cauliflower, please, Bill."
"How come she gets to go," repeats Bill.
Dana opens the front door enough to go out and then she closes it tightly behind her. The air outside is cold for this early in the year. She thinks about Charlie, crying this morning because he'd finally been allowed to go outside for a couple minutes and nobody'd told him summer was over and that he'd missed the last of it being sick in bed. Her mother had sent her outside with him, just in case. "Are you mad we can't go see Dad's ship 'cause of me?" he'd asked, wiping his cheeks. The green grass was starting to go brown in the yard. She'd been looking up the street. "It's the doctor's orders, Charlie," she'd said after a moment, and stood there holding his hand.
Now Dana goes quickly down the front steps and doesn't cut across the grass to get to the sidewalk. You're not supposed to - that's what the front walk is for. She doesn't turn around so she'll see Bill coming after her, either.
He catches up to her when she's already almost there. He could have caught up before that, but instead he came up along the other side of the street until he got ahead of her so he could run across quickly and hide behind one of the cars parked along the curb. She knows he's just going to jump out at her or something, and that she shouldn't be a fraidy-cat because he's only being mean. She just wishes she knew which car he was going to jump out from behind. Then she wouldn't have to look so hard at her feet to keep from getting scared when he finally did it. The long shadows, and the tall, thick hedges along the fronts of some of the yards are only make it harder for her not to be jumpy.
Her brother waits until she's almost at the intersection. Just across Cardinal Street at the corner of 81st is where the grocer's is, and Bill picks the second parked car from the corner.
"RrrrRAAAAWRRrr!" he yells, throwing himself out from the shadow of a heavy looking Buick. The noise is guttural, half like a boy and half like a panther - they scream like that, she's pretty sure. She doesn't jump. Or, well, he doesn't see her jump at least. He stops dead in front of her, arms at his sides so he's blocking the way like a thug. "Give me all your money." He bares his teeth and scowls at her. Her hands are making really tight fists. She wishes she were better at name calling.
She steps to the side to go around him but he mirrors her. "Leave me alone!" she demands, pushing past. She gets to the corner first and marches straight across even though she should wait there. She hopes his knees are burning from crouching behind that car waiting for her.
He dashes past her in the grocer's parking lot and beats her to the doors, leaping up and trying to touch the awning sticking out over the fruit displays. It's not a very big store. Bigger than a general store, though, with the awning coming down low in the front. She tries to touch the awning sometimes when she comes here with Missy, but not with Bill around because she can't even reach close.
She walks straight for the set of double doors going in and going out, but he gets around in front of her again and this time he really won't let her pass. He fakes left and right, as if it's all in fun, but she can tell it isn't. "Bill, don't. Bill! Move."
He stops bouncing and just stands there, smiling, but not really. "I'm going to go in," he says, "and you can stay here. I'll be faster." No lead in. He's been planning for a while, thinking he was going to make her do what he says - maybe since the kitchen. Now she knows. This is what he wants. The OUT door opens and a man comes through awkwardly with both his hands full of grocery bags. She tries to move so she isn't in the man's way but Bill is making it difficult, blocking her steps wherever she goes. She shoves him and he grabs her fist - the one the money's in.
"Hey! I said let me in!"
"C'mon Dana, give me the money Mom gave you."
"Stop, let GO!" She means to sound serious, but she just can't. She tries to yank her hand away but Bill's grip is strong. "Mom sent me," she insists. "I'm supposed to do it!" The more serious she feels the more whiny and upset her voice gets. This is how it always happens. She usually tries not to say very much unless it's about how he's breaking the rules, otherwise he just mimics her voice and makes fun of her.
"Let go!"
He doesn't. He's grinning and he looks ugly. "Just give the money to me. I said I'll do it," he says. He is pulling at her fist and his eyes have gone narrow again, like they did when he saw the money on the kitchen table, except worse than that now. This is the part Dana hates the most, when she knows they're going to fight, and she's so angry, and she can't help it.
She shakes her head 'No'. Mom sent her to get coffee for breakfast tomorrow. Ahab's breakfast. It's her job and Bill's getting in the way of it. It's her job. She watches Bill's fingers prying at her fist, pretending not to feel his grip. "LET. GO." she says in his face. He's figured out the money's in the right fist for sure and dropped the left one. They're not struggling now, just starring at her hand while he works at it. Dana can feel the muscles all the way up her arm tensing. The left fist hangs at her side. She hasn't thought to punch him. It doesn't take very long before he's almost gotten her pinky bent back, but then a customer needs Bill to move because he's in the way of the grocery baskets. This distracts him enough that Dana almost manages to shake his grip off for a moment before he grabs on again, pulling her arm out hard in front of her.
She has before - punched Bill; did it properly like he would've done it right back, closed her fist and blackened his eye. Missy hasn't because all she and Bill do is ignore each other and call each other names, and Charlie's too little, but Dana has done it. Only because Missy eventually told him about Dana's rabbit and he said that made her a murderer. That was different though - nothing like this. She didn't hit him then because she had to, she just did it. Now she has to concentrate on keeping her fist closed tight. That's how she's started to think about it. She can't let him get it open. It isn't fair if he does - it just isn't.
She could kick Bill in the shins, but she doesn't do that either. He raps on her fist with his knuckles and drives at it with the flat of his hand a few times, grunting, but she won't loosen her grip. Her hand smarts worse each time he does it, but she won't let him beat her.
"Come on," he urges, not to her but to her fingers.
"No," she says. She stares very hard at the lines in her knuckles. She doesn't want to look at his face. She doesn't want to feel herself hating him.
Once Bill gets bored with trying to work her hand open himself, he grabs up a piece of wood - probably something that came off the bed of one of the fruit trucks - and tries to work her fingers loose with that. When it doesn't work he abandons the pursuit all together. "Fine," he says, shoving her fist back at her, "but it won't be my fault when you get us in trouble, Dummy."
Bill busies himself with a bruised apple that must've fallen from a crate, playing at kicking it off one of the posts holding up the storefront. Every few kicks he has to go after it. She could run inside then, but whenever he looks over at her his nostrils widen and his eyes shape themselves narrow, and she can see how determined he is. He would race after her and she wouldn't even get to ask a store clerk which was the right aisle before he caught her. Then they would be really bad for making a scene in the store.
Dana sits down against the storefront and puts her fists in her lap, both of them. "It's gonna be your fault," Bill calls. She watches him toe his apple out from under a nearby car. "This is really stupid, Dana, you know that?" He doesn't look as though he cares that they are fighting.
Her ankles are pressing into the concrete under her. She studies her lap. She doesn't care either.
By the time someone comes to get them the sun has already set. There are a couple of stray shopping bags rolling in the lot, and only one or two cars left. The light of the storefront is beginning to attract bugs, though there aren't as many now that it's getting colder at night. The trees planted up and down 81st Avenue make it even darker down that way, so that when Dana looks, at first she just sees a figure a little darker than the shadows, walking up the street towards the grocer's. It emerges onto Cardinal at the well-lit corner and starts across. The figure's strides are heavy and familiarly paced.
Dana, as always, sees him first. Bill is preoccupied with his apple, but he notices when Dana suddenly gets to her feet. "What?" he says gruffly. She stands with her back as straight as she can and doesn't answer. She stares past him, but she can tell he's looking her over. Maybe he figures it out just by looking at her, or maybe he sees the reflection in the storefront, but suddenly his eyes go wide.
"Dad!" says Bill, turning to see. He goes straight out to meet his father in the middle of the parking lot. They shake hands and Bill waits to be hugged without looking like that's what he wants. Dana sees why their father looked so dark coming up the street towards them: he's still in uniform. He comes in under the storefront and Dana studies him to see if anything is different. She tries to be thorough - wary of finding anything different on him, and relieved when she doesn't. Even his buttons seem to have held their polish, and his face is as unchanged as his uniform. She thinks of it as being important about the Navy, that things stay true to their form. The ships never look any different either, which isn't really right, she knows, because they're different ships. But she thinks he must have already been in the house because he doesn't have his hat with him. Bill wants to know if Mom sent him, too.
"That she did. She sent me to get the both of you," says their father. "And to make sure you haven't gotten yourselves into anything." His face is set, but he isn't angry with them. Not yet at least. They can't have been here as long as it seems like they have been, then.
Now that she's stood up, Dana feels she should brush off her dress at the back. She's supposed to keep it nice, like her mother's dress, and the ground was dusty where she was sitting; but she wants to keep still, too, and not fidget right now, while her father's just arrived. Bill has started kicking deliberately at the bottom of the post he was bouncing his apple off of - not looking like he wants to mention anything about their fight. Her father comes over to Dana and puts his hand on the top of her head, firm enough for her to feel the weight of it. "Dana." He strokes over her hair a couple of times with his thumb. He doesn't bend down close like he does with Charlie, even though Charlie's taller than her now. "Have you done what your mother asked of you?"
"No, Sir," says Dana.
"Why is that?"
"I- couldn't."
Bill gives the post a particularly hard kick. He isn't looking at her.
She doesn't know what he's so angry about since she hasn't told, and isn't going to. Not unless her father asks a question; then she can tell the truth. It's the whole reason Bill's mad at her anyway, because she told the truth. This morning he put on their father's boots when he went out early to finish the yard work and Dana saw him taking them off afterward. Later her mother saw that the boots had been shoved into the back of the closet all muddy, so Dana told. She didn't answer her mother's question about why Bill had them on in the first place, though, even though she thought she knew that too. "Just because," said Bill, looking at his socks, so Mom made him clean the boots. He sulked and put up a fight about it so then he didn't get his allowance either.
Suddenly Bill says, "Dad, Dana wouldn't let me help!"
"BILL!" she shouts at him. She can't help but shout, but it doesn't stop him anyway.
"I said I wanted to help with the shopping and she wouldn't let me," he explains.
"That's- not- true!" she says, determined to keep her voice from wobbling. Dinner must not be ready, then, she thinks, if they aren't in trouble already. It's lucky.
Just then a man in a green apron - the workers wear green aprons here - walks outside facing backwards into the store. He shouts back to one of the ladies at the tills about sweeping the mats once he's off his break. Then he turns around, nods to her father, before he walks off, groping in his pockets and beginning to whistle. Something about this whistling, and her standing here getting blamed, just makes her think how nothing is fair no matter what, and her throat starts to ache.
"Dana?" Her father turns to her. "What's this about you not letting Bill help?"
She wants to glare at Bill but instead she glares straight ahead. It doesn't matter what she says now. Their father is home. She didn't get back in time. She was fighting, and she doesn't even know why, and she forgot to hurry and she-- she forgot. "I didn't need help, I told him. I don't need any help," she says. She tries to keep glaring straight ahead but it's hard. Her face is starting to tremble. She's not even as angry at Bill as she is because of that, and it won't stop. "It was my job," she says, "Mom said I'm supposed to get...she gave the money to me. And then Bill tried to-- "
"She's got it in her hand, see!" Bill points at her right fist.
"I'm supposed to do it," she says, not yelling anymore.
"She won't let go. I asked her to and she wouldn't!"
Her father looks down at her hand. The whole hand feels like stone, like bone - no fingers to wriggle. It doesn't matter what she says now, Bill's got her. Like he did from the start. She can't even feel what her hand is gripped around anymore, just the grip itself - it's all one thing.
Her father looks at her for a little while, and then he looks at Bill. Bill's hands are fists, too, she notices. "Well," says her father with certainty. He clears his throat. "I don't know what you two have been standing out here doing to each other for half an hour, but I'm hungry, and I'd appreciate some real coffee, so how about we do this quickly and get ourselves home." He turns to her fully. "Dana, I'd like you to give me the money Mom gave you."
Dana looks at her father's face. He doesn't look impatient, or patient either. He doesn't put his hand out for the money, but she knows he expects her to give it. She's surprised it didn't occur to her to run to him as soon as she saw him and let him have it instead of her or Bill, but she didn't - she didn't even think of it - and now he's telling her to and she...and she.... No. She presses her molars together. The employee on his break is sitting on the hood of his car in the corner for the parking lot, blowing smoke rings for fun. She watches him doing it. Nothing happens. She wants to give her father the money - she thinks she wants to - her hand is shaking, and she wants to do it, really, but nothing happens. She can't. She isn't giving up. This isn't what fighting with Bill is usually like.
Her father is waiting for her to open her hand. She's cold. It's gotten almost completely dark now, and she's wearing a dress today, to look nice. "See," Bill says, "she won't even do it."
"Dana," says her father.
She looks down at her knees. They feel prickly from being cold. "Dana," says her father. She stares at her knees. Her fist is a stone. She's thinking about Bill jumping out at her, Bill being mean to her, Bill sitting on the floor with one big muddy boot in his hand and his eyes narrowed - she doesn't care about Bill, or this awful chore, or this coffee, which her Mom made her go get, or--
"Starbuck."
She looks up.
Her father is standing perfectly straight. He brings his uniformed arm up at a stiff angle. "Salute" he says.
So she does.
After a moment he nods. Then he bends down and picks up the money. "All right. You two better wait here." He turns about face and the IN door opens for him. "At ease, both of you." Just inside, a woman is washing the floor. The smell of dirty mop water swells out, warm and soapy. He goes in, and Bill looks after him. Dana looks at her hand, the palm blotched red and white where the blood was pressed out and her nails dug in.
The door stays open a few seconds longer, and then it closes.
After dinner her mother makes Dana help her with the dishes. Charlie came downstairs for dinner, but he was sent right back to bed afterwards, and Missy and Bill are in the living room, telling their father about things that have happened since the school year started. Missy keeps talking over Bill and Bill keeps repeating everything she's talked over, which Missy hates. "Hey, I get to tell him about the snake! " Bill breaks in, his voice rising loud enough for Dana to hear him clearly from the kitchen. "I was the one who caught it!"
"You got the whole walk home to tell Dad stuff!" argues Missy, raising her voice right back. "And you almost made dinner get cold 'cause you took so long." Her mother begins using the noisy steel wool to scrub a baking sheet and Dana can't hear any more over that. Her father isn't talking much anyway. He's busy arrange the wood in the fireplace so it'll burn properly. She edges back on her heels and tries to see into the living room from her post.
"Dana, you're dripping!" Her mother's warning forces her attention back to the kitchen and the casserole dish she has in her hands. "Hold that back over the sink - here." Dana does as her mother says. Her hands feel strange, weak from earlier, and she almost drops the heavy dish when she goes to put it away. Her mother runs the dishwater so hot that Dana can hardly put her hands in it most of the time, but she tries not to think about it hurting.
There's only one big potato boiler pot left to wash now, and the cutlery rattling around on the bottom of the basin. Her mother sends her searching under the sink for the floor rag. "You'd better wipe up that water on the floor before someone gets their socks wet," she says, standing aside so Dana can open the cupboard door. The rag is hung over the bend in the drainpipe, stiff from being put away wet. Missy says it's disgusting and won't even touch it. Dana doesn't think about it being disgusting. She breaks its stiffness in her hands and shuts the cupboard door, kneeling on the linoleum.
Above Dana, in the sink, her mother suddenly sets the heavy pot down with a purposeful thud. "Honestly you two, I--" her mother heaves in a breath and sighs it out. Dana doesn't look up. She knows what her mother is going to say. "You and Bill - I don't know what possesses you to go after each other the way you do. Your father must think I never discipline you - him coming home and always finding you fighting like this."
Dana blinks and looks down at the linoleum. She notices where the water splashed and wipes it up. Her mother sighs again, very deeply, and goes back to the potato boiler. She scrapes at something on the rim with her fingernail, rinses the pot quickly, and sets it on the counter to dry. "I don't know what to do with the two of you," she says.
In the living room a fire is beginning to crackle. The smell of hot wood and old soot is drifting through the downstairs fast. It's the first time the fireplace has been used since the winter. "I only did it because mine are too small," Bill is saying, sounding defiant.
"The ones your mother bought you in the spring?" asks their father. "Too small already, eh?"
"Oh, shut up, Missy, they are too!"
Missy talks over Bill's protests, laughing. "Daddy, Mom buys all our shoes way too big. Bill just doesn't wanna admit he was playing dr--"
"If my feet haven't grown then how come Dad's boots fit me now?" blurts Bill.
"He's lying, Daddy, they do not fit him."
"Almost!"
"My feet are bigger than yours are, so nyeaah."
"Yeah, and Mom calls them skis!"
"That's enough. Quiet down," says their father. He sounds gruff, but still relaxed. "Now you've both been warned twice: you're not to wake your brother. Understand?" She wonders if he's really tired. But Ahab's never tired. Dana pictures him sitting in his chair - the old one with the footrest that sticks and then pops out fast.
She is still wiping the floor. She's keeping her head down and scrubbing hard.
"I'd say you've wiped the floor good and plenty," her mother says. She unstops the sink and wrings out the dishtowel. "In fact, you can throw that cloth away; I don't think it'll take another washing." Her mother begins wiping the counters clean.
"Okay," Dana forces herself to say, quietly, but she keeps pressing the cloth against the floor. Her mother sweeps crumbs into the sink and rinses the cloth in cold water. Then she turns off the tap and looks at her daughter. Dana doesn't get up.
"Dana, honey, you can stop now, we're done. Why don't you go on into the living room?"
Dana blinks a few times, very fast, but it doesn't do any good.
"Dana? What's the matter?" Her mother said she doesn't know what to do with her. Dana doesn't know what to do with Dana either.
"We should've gone to s-see Daddy's sh- ship," she says. She blinks hard and feels her lashes get wet. She's sorry she made dinner late. "We should've g-gone-- it isn't fair. I w-wanted to-- g-go. We always-- g-go." She's sorry she told on Bill, and that his allowance got spent at the grocers, and that he's mad at her even though all she did was tell the truth about what she knew he did.
She feels more than sees her mother kneel down near her. "I know, Dana - we all wanted to go, I promise. But the doctor's orders were for your brother to stay in bed. You were there when Dr. Oldsman told us how we could all look after Charlie, remember?" She stops scrubbing and tries to breathe while her mother talks very gently, her fingers sweeping back some of Dana's hair. "I know it's hard, honey, but we have to do the best we can. And now that your father's home it'll be--"
Dana hits her hand against the floor - the one with the cloth in it. "I don't care about the stupid doctor's orders." She gets to her feet quickly.
Her mother must be shocked because it takes until Dana has put the rag in the garbage and turned to go out of the room before the reproach finally comes. "Dana!" her mother says. But Dana has already walked to the kitchen door by then, and she just keeps walking, into the hall and then right up the stairs, without stopping, and without looking through the doorway into the living room.
"Mom and Dana are done the dishes," Missy announces, as Dana walks past. Dana climbs up the stairs in the dark. The hem of her dress is wet and cold against her knees from where she knelt in some of the water she spilled. She feels like a stone, like a fist. She feels like it doesn't matter what she wants and maybe it never did.
Missy comes upstairs to pee after a while. Dana knows it's Missy because the beads on her homemade necklaces bounce together when she skips down the hall. Pretty soon she's done in the bathroom. Water runs through the pipes and a door opens. Then Missy sticks her head in through the bedroom doorway. Dana's been lying on her side, facing the door. She could roll over, away from her sister, but she doesn't. The lights are off in the room and the hall light catches in the tumbling length of her sister's hair. "Hey. Are you crying?" Missy wants to know.
"No," says Dana.
"Are you mad?"
"No," says Dana. She thinks it's true - mostly. The more she thinks about it being true the more it is. She's definitely not crying anymore. She barely did; only a little, in the kitchen, and then she couldn't cry at all when she was alone. Missy lets the door go and it creaks open farther on its own.
Missy begins to leave off whispering and just talk. "Well what's wrong with you then? Dad's home." She says it like it's all one thing, like it doesn't make any sense for Dana to be upset now. While her sister was in the bathroom, a kettle started to whistle downstairs. It sounded cheerful and distant, and then it stopped.
Dana pulls her knees up higher. "Nothing," she says. She's still wearing her dress, and she's still a little cold. When Missy goes back down stairs she's decided she's going to get under the covers and go to sleep. She wants to be asleep when her mother comes up to talk to her.
"There is so something wrong," hisses Missy.
"There isn't, Missy."
"Is too."
But there isn't, and Dana says so -- says she's alright, says there isn't anything wrong with her, says she's fine.
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Dedication: Not only did tree beta for me, she also saw in my fic what I needed to be seen, at a time when it made all the difference - and she told me she saw. But above that, she has helped me find the means to understand Dana Scully better - and maybe to write her better as well. It's almost redundant to dedicate this fic to tree. There's simply no one else it would be for.
Further Notes: The title and summary come from Sarah Harmer's song Came on Lion. Granted, it's not the perfect song for this fic, but I like the tone - the deep, subtle disillusionment, and the childlike lack of pretension. I was listening to Sarah's album a lot the week I wrote this, and without meaning to, I began thinking of this fic as 'Came on Lion'. Thus, the title was solidified.