TITLE: Opposition and Synthesis AUTHOR: Cecily Sasserbaum E-MAIL: cecilysass@yahoo.com DISTRIBUTION: Yes, certainly, but I love to know about it. It's fine if it's archived at Xemplary, Gossamer, Spooky site, etc. RATING: PG-13 SUMMARY: All things of importance are paired with an opposite. The progression of history depends on contradictions and eventual synthesis of diametrically opposed ideas. SPOILERS: Requiem, All Things, yadda, yadda, yadda. CATEGORY: V, A, R, Scully POV DISCLAIMER: Alas, not mine. Please do not sue. Only borrowing. FEEDBACK: Would be spectacular: cecilysass@yahoo.com. *** Is it the nature of all things to be paired?, Scully wondered. It was a week night, but she had treated herself to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Georgetown. She sat by herself at a two-person table. And in the midst of a festive restaurant full of college students and couples on dates, she was a solitary pregnant woman reading a medical journal and munching listlessly on pomegranate chicken. Looking up occasionally, to scan the restaurant through her glasses. Letting her gaze be casual. Not too longing -- even analytical. The stare of a scientist. How she wished she could order a glass of wine. How she wished she could walk into a bar and attract the anonymous attentions of strangers. How she wished her back didn't hurt so badly. It had been a particularly trying day. And all because that morning, she had woken up obsessed with the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel's dialectic. An old concept from college, from her philosophy and German classes. Every important idea in history is a thesis, and is naturally paired with its antithesis. Eventually they subsume one another, combine into something new. That is the synthesis. Two wrongs, in essence, making a right. It was the intellectual equivalent of pickles and ice cream, she supposed, because she couldn't stop thinking about it. This idea, which she had not given serious thought to for years and years, suddenly was all-important, had to do with everything. She needed to figure it out. Needed to talk about it. She had left work halfway through the day, giving Skinner a flimsy and unfinished sentence as an excuse, and showed up on her mother's doorstep. "Mom, " she had said, urgently, "I want to tell you about something. A philosophical concept." Her mother had been very patient. She listened to Scully, but let her eyes show her disapproval. "All right, Mom, suppose that somebody, somewhere in human history, believes that the best kind of government is a king who is strong and wise," Scully had explained. Her mother had nodded. "That person is opposed in history by someone who thinks the people should have the power. Their ideas are eventually combined, or synthesized, into a new idea: that the people should have the power to elect strong and wise leaders. It's how history progresses." "I see, honey," her mother said. She seemed cautious. "It's how positive change happens," Scully insisted, her voice cracking a little. She cleared her throat, started over. "You present two opposing world views and reconcile them, accomodate them, make them into something new and closer to the truth than either one was by itself." "It's beautiful, Dana," her mother said. She touched her hand, lightly, her face slightly puzzled. "It makes sense. It's a lovely idea." But her mother hadn't understood. Not at all. And Scully had left her house feeling silly, like she had been an adolescent trying to explain about a school crush or intrigue. And worse, she felt guilty, because she seemed to have provoked such worry in her mother. She picked at her chicken, feeling suddenly uneasy sitting in the restaurant alone. she told herself. Such obsessiveness, such a lack of forethought, such a reckless impulsiveness: it wasn't like her at all. Was more like... She paid her bill. Left the restaurant. Sitting in her car, she wanted to go to his apartment. She would. It was foolish, but she would. She told herself it would save her the trouble of driving over to feed his fish tomorrow, but really she knew better. She was rational at heart, after all. She wasn't very good at accepting her self-delusions. That was one primary way she was different from him. His apartment was dark, with only the fish tank providing an eerie glow, the miniature UFO inside floating up and down and casting disorienting shadows. She walked inside, inhaling deeply. The smell of the wood of the walls, and of his books, and of something slightly spoiled hiding somewhere in his kitchen. She felt the slightest stir inside of her. A sloshing around in that swollen place beneath her heart. The little boy. But she couldn't think of the little boy, not now. "It's the way of all things," she said aloud. Startling herself. Her voice, speaking outloud in his apartment for the first time in months, gave her a feeling of ease. Like it was something she'd been seeking. "Hello," she said, again, experimentally. She imagined he was here. Listening in the corner, where she could not see. Darkly. Silently. "According the laws of physics," she began, "every action must have a reaction. An opposite and equal reaction." There was no sound from the apartment. She had the urge to say more. It felt like an unburdening. A release. "It's the same in the philosophy of Hegel, too. In the history of humanity, no important idea has been without its intellectual opposite. And in the conflict between those two emerges the synthesis, which is the new and important idea. Eventually it becomes a new thesis, which is paired with a new antithesis, and so forth..." She stopped, and carefully minding her protruding stomach, sat down on the couch, trying to settle her gurgling insides. Listening to the bubbling of the fish tank. What would he say? What would he say back to her? "But," she began, slowly, and then stopped. She was hesitant. "But aren't you confusing different things, Scully? Aren't you oversimplifying? The laws of physics and Hegel's dialectic aren't describing the same occurances. Physical forces and human history are two very different phenomena," she said. How easily her voice fell into his familiar rhythms. She lay her hands on top of her belly, closing her eyes. "That's true," she conceded. "But I'm only trying to point out that there is a template in philosophy and in science to describe why I think these things have happened to us." "To us?" she whispered back. "I think that originally, you and I were the human embodiments of a thesis paired with an antithesis, and that was why our work was so important." "Important to whom?" she said. "Important to a higher alien race that is using us for some unknown purpose?" "No, no," she said, quickly. "I'm not talking about that. You know I don't believe that. I believe there's a benevolent God who works through us. I'm talking about you and I, and how we operated as an opposition." "Maybe once we acted in opposition to one another, Scully, generating predictable conflict along those lines, but am I wrong in thinking that changed, gradually? We changed one another. We didn't always act in direct oppostion, after a while. And am I wrong in thinking you're no longer my antithesis? That we're more alike than different now?" she asked. "You're asking me if I'm a believer," she said carefully, "and I would have to say that I am. I believe ... in so many things now. " A pause. "And that's exactly what I mean. That's what the whole point is, here, Mulder." A coldness hit her, suddenly. She hadn't meant to say his name. It made this lonely game seem unbearably sad, pathetically inadequete. "The point is," she began again, faintly, "that I think we've synthesized. We're no longer a thesis and antithesis. We're something new. We've reached the end of the cycle." She felt tears welling up in her eyes. "That means I can argue your side. I can argue your point of view, and even agree with it, and you can mine. But," she continued, her voice quavering, "not only have we melded intellectually, it's ..." It made sense. She should just say it. "There's an actual, *biological* synthesis now," she said. "I think it was always intended to happen. I think it was an inevitable path. All of our choices in life, all paths, all things led up to one night, one event, a conception that was a physical embodiment of all kinds of abstract ideas." She sat up, becoming convinced as she spoke. "And that's ... that's why, Mulder. That's why it could happen, even though it should rationally have been impossible. Even though there's no scientific reason, in any of the testing I've done, that fully explains how I could conceive. Because it was an inevitable synthesis of thesis and antithesis. Something beyond science, but also beyond aliens and government conspiracies and psychic powers. Something bigger. Something fated all along." She swallowed, and then softer: "At least this is what I believe, Mulder." Deep inside her belly, there was a restless and impatient stirring. The little boy. Moving about. She stared at her belly for a moment. "Gee, Scully," she whispered."aren't you attaching a lot of importance to one night of getting lucky? Can't a guy just score?" She smiled, rolling her eyes, leaning back on the couch. "You seemed to attach quite a bit of importance to it when it happened, Mulder," she added softly. "You bawled like a baby, if I remember correctly." And that was a mistake, she realized. She shouldn't have said that. Hurt too much. She sat up, and uncontrollably, began to cry, with sudden painfulness, her sobs causing her stomach to bounce slightly. "You got all mushy, as I recall.You were embarassingly emotional." She wiped her cheeks, furiously. "As if you knew. As if you knew how awful and beautiful and important it would be. Did you?" she said, suddenly, her voice tearful. She wanted, suddenly, to ask him the most important question of all. "Do you think that the synthesis means that you're gone forever? That our work together has come to its natural end?" Silence. "Are you coming back, Mulder?" There was no answer. But then, there wasn't ever really an answer, was there? An awful aloneness swept over her. More powerful than vertigo. She felt herself numbing. Her tears slowed down. Tasted dull and salty. You should sleep, Scully reminded herself, stupidly. Everyone tells you you should get more sleep. You should listen, because you're pregnant and crazy and irrational, and what's worse, you still think of yourself as rational, which is inherently dangerous. She felt herself rise off the couch, walk into the bedroom, and slid, easily, under his covers. Pressing her mouth and nose against his pillow, searching for a smell, some recreation of his presence. And in a soft familiar nook in his bed, she fell asleep. Her body still occasionally shuddering with a residual sob. The light from the street beneath Mulder's window casting jagged crosses over her body. She dreamed. She dreamt of Mulder, as she often did. Of arguing with Mulder, of trying to convince him of something or the other. They were on a case, and he kept saying things that annoyed her, things that piqued her anger, made her flinch a little. Made her stomach rumble. She rolled her eyes, made some comment about how absurd vampires or zombies or ghosts or monsters were. Dream-Mulder had laughed, made a counter-argument, an argument laid out with beautiful precision. It was irritating, because she could almost accept such an argument. She felt it like a physical pain inside of her, this annoying nonsensical argument that was making too much sense. But it wasn't the argument that was uncomfortable, she realized, waking up. It was the baby. The baby was kicking. The baby who was partially her, and partially him, but was also also something completely different altogether. The baby was pushing insistently against her stomach, refusing to be forgotten. His presence inevitable. And his existance undeniable. She pressed her hand against her belly, gently, and did her best to push back. feed me back, if you're so inclined: cecilysass@yahoo.com