The helicopter had impressed them both as it had landed in the back pasture of their farmhouse. Mulder had stared at it from the kitchen window, his hands stopping in the middle of putting on his winter coat as he had regarded Scully skeptically.
"Such service," he snorted. "You never would have seen this when we were working in the FBI."
Scully had said nothing, but privately agreed. She wrapped herself in her own coat and scarf, wondering how it was some random field agent ranked a helicopter to fetch them, when she and Mulder had been lucky to gain a long succession of large, gas guzzling, economy sized rental cars. Perhaps toeing the straight line and not mentioning things such as aliens and mutants in your field reports rated you better transportation.
He cocked one of his dark eyebrows at her, his hazel green eyes asking her if she was ready, and she nodded her head wordlessly as she grabbed her purse, and rushed out with him across the frozen ground and brittle, brown grass to where the 'copter sat, as she held her gloved hands against her coppery red hair to prevent it flying into her eyes and mouth. Mulder helped boost her smaller frame into the craft, before his longer legs pulled him in, and the co-pilot ensured that they were safely settled in.
She glanced down at their small farmhouse again, where just two hours ago she had driven in, convinced that Mulder would say no to Agent Drummy's summons, give the FBI the figurative finger, and return to his paper clippings and morose thoughts as she turned to cleaning the mess he normally left in the kitchen. She had been positive that was what he would do, even as she heard the fair minded, justice loving part of her brain reason with him that a woman's life was in danger, and he had of course given the expected response of the injured party in a bad break up. Of course he would, she had reasoned, and how could either of them not. They had given so much of themselves to the X-files and their quest for the truth, their reputations, their families, their own son, and still it wasn't enough. Here they were, knocking for Mulder again.
Knocking for Mulder, she reminded herself, and not for her. She was only along for this ride because he had asked. And of course, that nasty bit of conscience on her part that kept reminding herself that someone's life was in danger, feeding into that perpetually guilty Catholic part of her soul, the one that drove her to seek both medicine and the FBI in her youth. If she hadn't of felt bad for the woman, she would never have agreed to ask Mulder. If she hadn't had agreed to ask Mulder, she never would have tried to guilt him into it. And he would never have turned that pompous, pointed look on her, causing her to cave in and go along with it. She sighed out loud, placing her forehead against the cool glass of the cockpit window.
"You ok," he asked loudly over the sound of the helicopter's rotating blades.
"Yeah," she responded back, smiling tightly as he squeezed her hand reassuringly. She shrugged as she looked up at him.
"It's a bit nerve racking to be going back when the last time I called myself an FBI agent they were out to kill you."
"It's a bit ironic, isn't it," he snorted, a sarcastic smirk on his face. "But it's a hell of a choice to make, you know, turn us down, even though we know where you are, and face still having out trumped up charges on your head, or come out and play nice nice with us again, and we will pay you on the head and send you home a free man again." She could hear the bitterness dripping off his words despite the noise of the machine. "The FBI's way of kissing and making up."
"At least they are willing to give you what you haven't had in six years, Mulder…your freedom."
"They could have just given that to me without tying strings to it. Like you said, they could have come after me at any time, they were just thrilled to have me out of their hair."
"Perhaps they FBI wants to just let bygones be bygones, Mulder," Scully offered up, though she herself didn't really believe that statement.
"How can you let bygones be bygones with a rifle pointed at your head, Scully." He shook his head in disbelief. "It's not much of a choice for me, is it. You get to go out to your hospital everyday, you have the freedom of living your life and doing the work that you love, even when it frustrates you beyond words. My life's work was packed in boxes and hidden in some dank hole somewhere, laughed at and scorned, till some FBI agent goes missing and they call in my ass to get them out of whatever shit pile they got stuck in."
"Bitter much, Mulder," she asked with a sardonic smile. Really she didn't blame him, he had every right to be. But she couldn't deny that his remarks about her work stung. She had wanted to retort back that she wasn't the one who got herself busted by a military tribunal for breaking into a secret government complex and hacking their computer system. She wanted to point out that she wasn't the one who had nearly gotten her killed on numerous occasions by pissing off the wrong people, and she wasn't the one who had gotten them into their current predicament.
She wanted to say all those things, but she knew they were wrong. Instead, Scully sighed, and only shook her head.
"One of these days, Mulder, I hope you stop raging against the heavens long enough to realize what you have here on Earth. You have your truth, Mulder, what more do you want?" She had his truth too, and she lived with the knowledge of it everyday as she fought so hard to save the lives of those patients who trusted her.
He only gave her one of those unfathomable looks, the ones that used to take her breath away when she had been a young, green agent still in awe of "Spooky" Mulder. "I want to know that all that I've strived for, Scully, hasn't been in vain. Isn't that why you are fighting so hard for Christian?"
Why did he have the Goddamn knack of stabbing right into the heart of the matter with a meat cleaver? She turned her face away to watch the steadily growing darkness.
"I don't think you work has been in vain, Mulder," she whispered, but doubted he could hear her over the soft 'thumping' sound of the helicopter blades above.