Title: I Must Down to the Seas Again
Author: Maidenjedi
Pairing/Character: Bill Sr/Maggie
Rating: PG 13
Spoilers: Beyond the Sea
Summary: Bill Scully, Sr., and the loves of 
his life.


NOTES:  Title from "Sea-Fever" by John Masefield:  
http://www.bartleby.com/103/98.html

I needed, for the sake of the story, to play 
a little with the timeline, so though I'm not 
sure it fits to have Bill Scully in Vietnam, 
it can fit with Maggie Scully's line about 
the Cuban blockade in "Beyond the Sea." 


XXXXXXXXXX


He was never as good, on land.  He knew it.

Bill Scully was a sailor, had been since he'd 
glimpsed the ocean as a child and smelled the 
salt-heavy air.  His childhood bedroom had 
been a museum for model ships.  He'd joined 
the Navy before he had his first drink.

He'd been on ships for the last six years, 
and sailors were supposed to have girls in 
every port, but he never had. Nothing could 
tie him to the land; he was a different 
person, a less confident version of himself, 
on soil.  

In his wildest dreams, he thought he could 
stay at sea forever, floating and fighting 
the waves and Neptune for his right to 
live on the water.  

In spite of all that, however, Margaret 
Edwards had captivated him, with her big 
eyes and kind heart, her petite figure 
and far-from-chaste kisses.

He had to marry this girl.

"Maggie.  Mags.  Marry me?"

She giggled, she always did, at "Mags."  
And she blushed and was so beautiful, 
he thought maybe the sea would hold 
sway no longer.

--

"I hate this war."

"Me, too, baby.  Me too."  He whispered this 
into Maggie's hair, hoping no one but her 
might hear him.  He was still in uniform, 
after all.

He'd been away for a year, on a ship of 
course, fighting a war that left most men 
in his generation with a lasting blank stare 
and black moods.  He was no different, just 
like them, and his was a most damaging 
sentence for fighting in that war.  He wasn't 
out of the Navy, oh no, just chained to a 
desk for a bit (and he knew that "bit" was 
going to be his great trial; he already had 
visions of growing idle, fat, and dull).

He tried not to think about his now-bum knee, 
and instead focused on holding his Mags, and 
looking around at their children, these little 
people he hardly recognized. Bill, Jr. was so 
tall he made his mother look like a child 
standing next to him.  Charlie was the small 
one, the two of them uneven bookends.  Both 
boys were eager to please, their faces full 
of questions.  The girls were like their 
mother.  All girls were like their mothers.  
Bill had a hard time looking at Melissa, tall 
like her brother and blossoming, the defiance 
that marked adolescence evident in her 
countenance and making him anxious to let her 
mother do the talking.  Dana was still a child 
on the edges, but looked at him frankly, all 
her emotion at his return showing on her 
face - relief, wariness, confusion, joy.

All four of them began speaking at once, 
anxious for their father's approval, 
desperate to know he was the man who'd 
left them.

"Dad, I got all As this term!"

"Dad, you have to come to Scouts now 
you're back."

"Dad, I can read a whole book by myself!"

"Dad, Mother says I can learn to drive this 
fall.  Will you teach me, Dad?"

They went home, Bill Scully and his family.  
He was not sure of them, of himself.  He 
had to keep looking at Maggie, had to touch 
her.  Once home, he did much more.

He was assigned to a desk job at NAS Patuxent 
River, in Maryland.  The family moved as far 
from sunny California as they could and every
one of them moaned and complained.  Melissa 
pitched the first fit she'd thrown since she 
was a small child.  Maggie bore it all 
gracefully and was the only one not to curse 
her husband at any point in the move.

The war ended, as tidily as those things did, 
which meant not well at all.  Times were 
better, then worse, buffered by the comfort 
of family and the cold comfort of employment.  
Bill had to admit, he appreciated the time, 
finally, to get to know the kids.  He was 
more than happy for the time with Maggie, 
whose arms were never cold.

Yet, on a base meant for those who preferred 
the sky, it did not take long for Bill to 
regret the sea.

--

He cheated on his wife in 1981.

She never knew.  Or, she never let him know 
that she knew.  He always came back, after all.

"What if I didn't come back?"  There was no 
one around; he was on a bridge overlooking 
the Potomac River, after a rendezvous with 
Carla, the lieutenant who looked as good 
out of uniform as in.  

The lapping of the water in the chill winter 
made him think of the north Atlantic.  He 
missed the danger and the thrill of the seas.  
He had gone looking for it in a woman who 
had not ever tied him down, settled him.

And that was so unfair to Maggie, Bill choked 
on the thought.

It didn't stop him, though, from going back to 
Carla, just a few more times.  To see what he 
was missing, to see if there was something he 
could do to quell the desires in his heart.

He should have known better.

The last time, he came home late, after midnight.  
It was over, they had known it before the evening 
began and it had been perfunctory and a little 
like clinging.  Waiting for him in the kitchen 
was a little woman, all accusatory gaze and 
indignant tilt of the head.

His Starbuck.

"Why didn't you come home for dinner?"  God, her 
voice was small.  And he wasn't prepared for the 
demanding tone.  When he'd seen her, he expected 
petulance, possibly anger.  He'd expected Melissa 
would be the one to figure it out and confront 
him, of the two of them.  

He hadn't cared.  Bill hadn't felt regret, or 
anything other than weariness, for so long.  
Until Dana spoke, he felt nothing.

And then he felt everything.

He did not cry in front of his daughter.  He 
left that to her, until he could get away.  
And she forgave him, or so he thought (in truth 
it was years later, and he was gone by then).  
He made sure she got to bed, and then went to 
Maggie.

What he wanted, really, was not another woman.  
He needed something different, a more 
substantial change.

The next day, he chanced it and requested sea 
duty, command of a ship or something.  To his 
shock, it was granted.  Before two years were 
over, he was conducting war games as a ship 
captain.

On the sea, once again.  His marriage, it 
turned out, was never better.

--

All fathers have ambitions for their children.  

Bill Scully, Jr., followed his father into 
the Navy, through the Academy.  The proudest 
day of Bill, Sr.'s life was watching his 
eldest son's commissioning at Annapolis.

Charlie, too, went to sea, in the Merchant 
Marine.  Though not an officer, he was still 
doing something to serve his country.  

Bill's daughters, though.

"Bill, you can't put these kinds of pressures 
on Dana.  She has to figure things out for 
herself, she has to have the right to make 
her decisions."

"I don't want to see her waste medical school, 
all that training!  The F.B.I. is a foolish 
path for her."  For a woman, the unspoken line.

Dana was not the worst of the two, though.  
Melissa, now, there was a wayward daughter 
if ever there was one.  Bill hadn't actually 
spoken to her for six months before she wrote 
to say she was in California and did not know 
when she might return.  He'd stopped speaking 
to her after they fought over her rejecting 
Catholicism and running around with that 
good-for-nothing hippie.  Who probably took 
liberties and drugs to boot.

He and Maggie agreed on Melissa, at any rate.  
But not Dana, and when Maggie went to Dana's 
graduation from the F.B.I. Academy, Bill went 
into work.  It was a long time before he could 
admit, and then only to his wife, that he was 
proud of his Starbuck, the brave little woman 
who just wanted earnestly to please him.

--

He started having "episodes" about a year 
before the heart attack that would claim his 
life.  Dizzy spells, he called them.  Maggie 
fretted, Bill brushed it off, and that was that.

But he sensed it.  The way a seasoned sailor 
smells hurricanes, or knows how to tell the 
weather by sunrise and sunset.  He could tell, 
he did not have much time, even though the 
actual thought never materialized.

He finally retired, mostly at his doctor's 
insistence.

He spoiled Maggie, taking her out and keeping 
her in the bedroom.  They laughed and told 
stories, prayed together, spent time with 
their children.  They went out on the boat 
they'd purchased when he got his last promotion. 

"Bill?"  Maggie was sitting with her legs 
over his, and he was playing with her feet.

"Yeah, Mags?"  

"Do you think we've been happy?"

The boat rocked, and the sky was full of stars.  
His wife was with him, and while he did not 
feel well, he felt content.

"Yes."

--


Ashes spread over ocean, no one but family.  
He'd been very explicit.

She had them play "Beyond the Sea," and told 
Dana the story, how it had been playing the 
first time he came home to her.  

She could wish that some things were different.  
She could have wanted a homebody, a landlubber.  
But God gave her Bill, with his yen for bluer 
oceans just over the horizon.  And they had 
been happy, at last.

Dana's face was stiff with the effort to hold 
back tears, and Maggie wished she could tell 
her exactly what Bill had always said about her.

"She's going to be a great one, my Starbuck.  
She's got it in her to be so brave, to slay 
dragons if she chose.  There are many kinds 
of dragons, I know."

He was her father.  It was understood.

--


--

end


A/N:  Because I have not written a word in 
months, and this came out kind of hurried as 
though it might not be written otherwise, I'm 
putting it out there and letting it be. 

I had forgotten what an incredible hour of 
television "Beyond the Sea" really was.  I think 
there is a lot of backstory to be explored 
there - I wish I had the guts to really tackle 
Bill Scully.  It seems easier, almost, to talk 
about Mulder's mother than about Scully's father.  
But I thought I'd give it a go tonight.

The other thing - I think of the Scully family, 
especially compared to the Mulder family, as 
having been very typically American, and a bit 
corny.  But I did want, in writing about Bill 
tonight, to show that he wasn't so very different 
than Mulder's father in his way.  Both, after 
all, served two mistresses.  One was just 
better at it, in the end. 

maidenjedi@gmail.com