Minutes pass. The water thunders its hypnotic, insistent cadence against my flesh.

And then I hear him.

"Scully?" His voice, rising above the water's potent, inexorable hum. It startles me awake. He sounds unnerved.

My voice has no answer for him.

Damn him for coming back here. For knowing.

For not coming sooner.

I want to kill him. I want to throw myself into his arms like a child. I want him to disappear. I want a promise that he will never leave me, a whispered, soulful oath of fealty.

I want him. I want the distance between us and the chill in my bloodied soul to disappear.

And yet I cannot speak, and I cannot feel it.

"Scully?" Again, louder. His shadow cuts a black swath across the shower curtain. There is real fear in his voice now.

I can only wait, one forever beat, two, before I hear the hesitant clink above my head and feel the frigid draft from the open bathroom door as the curtain slides away.

He sees, and I can only wait.

For an instant nothing moves, and I wonder if he is just illusion, a trick of the light and the mind. Then, suddenly, his presence is there with crystal lucidity, breaking through the surreal, wordless bubble and lancing into my consciousness, stabbing into me, hurting me with its jagged, intense edges.

"Jesus Christ, Scully!"

He jabs at the knob and stanches the flow of frigid water from the shower, then yanks the curtain fully back with a swift, clean jerk. I hear a rustling as he pulls the suit jacket from his own shoulders and moves for mine.

I shrink from his touch. I suddenly fear it will shatter me with its gentleness and break open a thousand tiny wounds that will pour out my life's blood to pool like dark, red wine in his hands. My voice returns with an instinctual growl. "Go away, Mulder."

A pause, and he pulls back, bewildered and unsure. I am the one who heals him, filling in the cracks and the holes with the warmth of my hands. He is the one who breaks. Not I.

"Go home," I say again. Leave, Mulder.

Stay, Mulder.

From the corner of my vision, I see him shake his head. Deciding. "No," is all he says, one quiet, even word. And then his feared hands upon me, touching through the soaking fabric, lifting. The water swirls, protesting this injury to an inertia unwilling to give up what it has claimed.

I am shaking. Something cracks.

Anger. Real. I grasp at the feeling, the life of it, the energy. I shove him away abruptly, sharply. "Let go!" I snap.

He does.

The water reclaims me. I grope for comfort through a fiery magenta haze of sudden rage.

Damn you, don't let go.

Silently, he hands me a towel. My gaze reaches involuntarily upward and I look him in the eyes for the first time. It is there, that labyrinth that is Mulder trapped in lambent hazel-green. I'm frightening him.

I'm frightening myself.

"What the hell are you doing here?" It is a snarl I hardly recognize as my own.

He clears his throat, hesitant but unmoving. Then a sigh, and he looks at the floor. "Six times, Scully," he says. "That was the sixth time you've hung up on me."

I am so stunned I drop the towel.

Damn him, how does he know? How does he reach in and emerge with such revelations? How does he see into me and capture the truth about these things of which we so often never speak?

But he is speaking now. He is asking now. "Why?"

Speechless. Bastard. Because I need you. I need to feel it.

He kneels beside me on the bathroom floor, his shoes pressing patterns into the bath mat, and looks at me with a careful but unabashed tenderness.

I see his lips move, and I hear her name again, one last funereal incantation. "Emily?"

Anger, fury, a building vermilion crescendo inside me.

I hit him.

I hit him hard.

My fist connects with his chest and he falls back onto the tile floor with an involuntary gasp and an expression of stunned shock.

I cannot hear my own voice over the roaring in my ears. "GET OUT!"

He hesitates, still gasping, looking at me with some indescribable union of raw emotions whose disparate threads I cannot unravel.

The roaring dies as swiftly as it had come. I didn't want to hurt him. I hope I didn't hurt him.

"No," he whispers. I see gentleness catch fire and overpower everything else in his eyes. "No." And he is back beside me on his knees as if never moved.

He loves me, but I cannot feel it. I need to feel it.

"Why didn't you tell me?" is all I can say.

We've spoken of this before, but never like this, never here, never now. His eyes cast about as if grasping for something to hold on to. His mouth moves without words until finally, "Too much, Scully. I just... I just couldn't."

He looks at me, and I feel his fingers brush against my arm, and I see the truth in his eyes.

Fear. And I shatter.

I shatter but I do not bleed.

I burst forth from the ruined shell in a blaze of pathos mirroring the sun. Strong arms envelop me and pull me at last from the polar and unforgiving water into the unbounded resurrection of his embrace.

I am reborn in infinite sorrow and a wash of blinding tears. I feel his hands moving through my damp hair and pulling me against him, into him, and I know I hear him whisper, "Because I love you," mingled with the sound of his heartbeat against my cheek.

And I feel it.