Justified Expense
She had never believed in deja vu, at least not in the way Mulder did. But even Scully had to admit it was unnerving, all these years later, to be driving through the very same forest on the way to Bellefleur, Oregon, just as they X-files were threatened with extinction. The same drive from Portland, the same road that wound through the tall, ancient forest, the same radio station with it's fuzzy static as it played classic rock, it all seemed to work a strange counterpoint to the predicament they currently found themselves in.
"You feeling okay?" Mulder glanced at her as she stared out of the front, and it only occurred to her then just how silent she had been on the trip so far.
"Yeah," she admitted, ignoring the slight vertigo the tall trees on the hairpin turns were causing. She didn't want to tell him she got sick on the plane. She hadn't had that sort of motion sickness since she was little, and it was disturbing it was returning now of a sudden, at least in the last week or so. "I was just...thinking."
She didn't need to elaborate, Mulder knew. "It's weird being back here now, isn't it?"
"Back to where it all began," she admitted. "Our first case together."
"You were so young!"
"And you were such a jerk," she shot back, though Mulder only laughed at the memory. "Do you remember the stupid chemical formula you slapped on the wall, as if I hadn't had more chemistry than I could shake a stick at?"
"I was testing you to see if you were good at anything other than being little miss perfect."
"I see, and what were the mutilated cows?"
"Just trying to gross you out," he admitted, far from apologetically.
"Right, clearly you hadn't paid attention to the fact that I was a pathologist."
"Never said it was a well thought out plan," he replied cheerfully. “I did make it through your physics paper, give me some credit.”
“I can’t believe you dug that thing up,” she laughed, considering who they were then, such a long time ago. She had been little more than a bright-eyed ingenue, having spent three years in Quantico teaching and doing autopsies and never laying a finger to the actual field work she craved. Mulder had been the recently fallen Golden Boy, the cautionary tale amongst the recruits, brilliant but mad, reclusive, and more than a bit angry with the world who had at once lauded him, and just as suddenly turned. She had been as straight-laced as he had been rebellious, he had suspected her a spy, she had merely just struggled to wonder what in the hell was going on. Looking back now, it was a wonder the pair of them made it through that first case together.
“I remember thinking you were so...crazy,” she admitted slowly, smiling at the thought. “Though, honestly, I still think you are, but I was convinced you were a card short of a full deck. Aliens and conspiracies, and implants, and kids being taken at drunken parties. It was all sorts of insanity, the kind that you expect coming from some weird, unwashed man with a tin foil hat, living out of an Airstream trailer and listening to Art Bell on continuous loop.”
Mulder seemed more amused than insulted by the image. “Sounds like my idea of retirement! What changed your mind?”
She smiled softly. “When you laughed at me over the bug bites. When you held me while I was the one hysterical. And then you told me about Samantha. And I think then I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That you weren’t crazy at all,” she turned to him, his eyes still on the winding road. “That you were just someone looking for answers. Just like all of us who end up in this business are.”
Mulder mused in silence on her words for long moments. When he spoke, it was in sadness. “I didn’t quite get the answers I was looking for, did I?”
“No,” she acknowledged, following the line of impossibly tall trees that enveloped them. “But it was an answer, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He sighed, gnawing on his bottom lip. “You know, Chesty Shorty, or whatever his name is, suggested it was time to walk away.”
“He was doing it because he’s looking out for a bottom line, just like every government accountant.”
“Yeah, but you agree with him, don’t you?”
Mulder’s words stung more than she cared to admit. “I want an end to all of this as much you do.”
“I know. But you want other things too, right?” His green eyes flickered towards her briefly, and Scully tried not to look too guilty. “You want a life outside of the X-files. You want something more than just chasing after one dead end to another, hoping to find some scrap of something.”
He had her dead to rights, they both knew it. “I want a future, Mulder. I’d like that future with you.”
“I know. But that future would mean us both walking away.”
“Yeah,” she murmured quietly.
“If Shorty Chest gets his way, I may not get a choice.”
“Would it be so bad?” She blurted the question out, unthinking, and then wished she hadn’t. It was begging for answers she wasn’t sure she wanted just yet.
Mulder, at least, was more circumspect than she was. “I’d like to make the decision myself. But I won’t deny, he’s got a point. I got into this for Samantha. I know what happened to her.”
“And the rest? The work your father did, the conspiracy, what they were up to, the Purity virus? Why did it all matter?”
“That’s what I want to know, Scully. And I can’t leave this till I do.”
In her heart, she knew he was right. All the discussions about futures and ends of late, she knew that for him it was never just about Samantha. It was always about the bigger, more ephemeral question of “why”. Why did any of this happen?
“Mulder,” she replied with the smallest of sighs. “I know you can’t leave this behind, you’ve said that. What I’m worried about is that you won’t want to.”
And there it was...the true fear she had.
“Yeah,” Mulder heaved, not even bothering to deny it. “I worry about that too.”
They continued the rest of their drive into Bellefleur in silence.