Work Text:
Prologue:
Imagine life as a Cartesian plane of time and space.
You were young and your lives were linear functions: simple and straight. His line slanted upward while yours was sloping down. The way he searched for answers looking at the sky, the way you pored over Science textbooks, meanwhile.*
A telescope exploring secrets of the universe, a microscope inspecting the mysteries of life.
Two lines opposite in directions are bound to intersect. And so your paths crossed.
The journey began.
i.
They sent you to him because he was Spooky and you were Science. Your MD’s knowledge was to ground him and his ‘up-there’ theories down.
But along the way, something magical happened: your contrasting characteristics combined instead of disintegrated. The particles joined forces instead of pushing away. He opened your mind to extreme possibilities while your Science kept him honest. You turned into ultimate partners instead of enemies. His mantra remained ‘Trust No One’ and you remained the skeptic, yet your trust in each other grew from ground zero to infinity.
Before you knew, you’ve become something more than partners. He found the answer in you and in his brown eyes you saw yourself reflected. Your fates intertwined and soulmates you became. You moved through life as a united force, unbreakable by any outside factors.
The opposing lines that used to intersect became two functions that completely coincide.
Now on the Cartesian plane there exists a single line instead of two, but twice as bold and a thousand times as strong: that’s him and you, together as one.
ii.
Somewhere down the road, the line was shaken by forces from within rather than without:
The constant stress from being on the run, the endless quest for a Truth so elusive.
Your guilt about giving up William, his guilt about leaving in the first place.
The aching for your child – a sentiment mutual yet uncommunicated.
Your son wasn’t there but his presence remained - palpable and acutely felt. A wound that never healed, a subject too painful to discuss. A mere mention of his name and there went the bitter throbbing of your hearts. Memories of the time when he was there – so warm but oh, so short. The longing and what-ifs that wouldn’t go away. The pains so deeply shared but the burdens were borne so separate.
That, and countless other thoughts that were left unsaid. A silence most deafening, a shadow so ominous.
The tiny cracks in the line became gaps that widened at stealthy but steady rates. The single line struggled under the strain:
You shared the same house, same bed, and your bodies knew one another’s by instinct. But at times you couldn’t help but wonder if he was really there. He got lost in online conspiracy forums, you tried to bring him back to reality but never could. Your conversations got shorter and sometimes even off-tangent. The space between you widened and the tension built. One day you woke up and barely recognised the Mulder you always knew.
Somewhere down the road, the single line snapped and split in two. You were the rational function and him the horizontal asymptote. You were so, so close, yet you could never touch. The two graphs yearned for re-connection but somehow they simply could not. There would always exist that space in between.
And the two functions, still heading the same way but are now separated, their equations no longer in sync.
iii.
You reached out to one another and in those tête-à-têtes the re-connection started. Your souls found each other again like pieces of a puzzle that finally matched. Your relationship bounced back but this time the bond is even stronger:
The rational function and the asymptote bent themselves toward each other. But this time, they didn’t become a single line because two decades down the road, you can’t come back to the simple linear functions you once were in your twenties.
Through the peaks and troughs of life, you emerge as Sine and Cosine graphs. Two entities distinct by nature, yet your patterns closely match. Your curves move together in synchrony, your intersections constant in rhythm and perfectly interwoven by instinct.
Just like the way his hands interlock with yours countless times on your nights out or by hospital beds. The way you fit perfectly under his chin in a tight embrace. The way your bodies match each other’s rhythm beat by beat when you make love. The way you’re the Science to his Spooky and you became the ultimate partners. The way you find the answers to life in each other. The way you fill the emptiness in his life while he fits into yours. The way this list would go on forever.
The way your souls intertwine as a perfect match.
The way you’re his and he’s your other half.
The way you’re meant to be.
Epilogue:
(sinx)^2 + (cosx)^2 = 1
May 20, 2001.
A line with the function y = 1 appeared on the Cartesian plane. It hasn’t intersected with these Sine and Cosine curves since shortly after its conception.
But somewhere down the timeline, most likely soon, it definitely will.
Fin.