"We expressed it the only way we could." She isn't there yet, not at the worst parts. The time when he'd visited - perpetually cheerful and making up irreverent puns on the Lord's Prayer - as much as he could, fearful all the while that one day he'd walk into the hospital to the worst possible news. He'd been half out of his mind at times, but he'd done his best always to seem affably convinced she was three steps away from perfect health. "I couldn't exactly get down on one knee and confess with your brother breathing down my neck, either."

There's no bitterness there, just amusement - for all Bill had despised them in those days, Mulder ended up getting the better of him in the long run, at least for a while. (The man's probably back in the Fox Mulder anti-fanclub, Mulder realizes suddenly, but that doesn't really bother him, either. Scully's opinion is the only one he cares about anymore.) And even at the time, he could understand just why Scully's brother felt the way he did; he just resented the hell out of it, found it insular and cowardly.

But she's not there yet. And the idea of telling her just how bad it'll get, how papery her hands will come to look resting on a hospital blanket, isn't going to give her any comfort. So instead, he adds softly, "I didn't need to know how you felt to love you, Scully. Knowing you were there, still in the world with me...that was enough."