Mulder imagines it more vividly than he normally imagines anything, and certainly more intensely than he intends to. Unknowingly true to reality, for that matter, with fewer scales than he'd originally pictured, as though someone pulled the memory from Scully and plunked into his head. It's...well, it's a lot of things, fascinating and uniquely inspiring in ways he's not letting himself examine in any detail.

He tucks the thought somewhere in the back of his mind, with the rest of the intellectual curiosities he's encountered as an agent, and makes himself focus on pruning his hands instead.

When he opens his eyes, he's grinning - but there's an edge of weariness to it. Becoming more human takes more energy, it seems, than giving himself over to the magic the natural world has imbued in him. "Not bad, huh."

He has every intent of playing it off that he's fine, because of course he does. Still, now that his hand can close around hers, it does. Firmly.