Mulder hesitates, torn between the desire to hear Scully on his side for once and the desire to protect her own good name. The silence probably answers her implied question for her, his hand moving endlessly through her damp hair, but still he has to make himself speak.

"You tried, Scully." She deserves the credit she's not getting; he knows he's become a beast to live with, that if she could have stayed, she would have. It just feels inevitable, in retrospect, that he'd chase her off. Nothing and no one stays for Fox Mulder. The best-case scenario is that he'll lose what he loves due to others' machinations, or worse, to fate; the worst-case scenario is this one, in which there's some fatal flaw in him that ruins everything. "You tried for years."