Polarities

Polgara la Fae

Author's Note- this plot just came to me in the car (along with the first line), and I decided to write it before it left. I hope you like.

Disclaimers- I own Nina, Audrey, Dmirtri, and Saavedra, and I hope she's not Mary Sue in a different body. She does have weaknesses and phobias, so...

Sometimes I thought of them as polarities. Oddly enough, those were the two main male figures in my life. If I had to name a greatest influence, I'd be hard-pressed to pick one.

The times I saw them as polarities so sharply were the times when Alex'd had a bit too much to drink, or when Mulder hadn't had enough. They're really quite similar people, but time and circumstances had warped the cloth that they're woven from. Alex had had the pressure from his family to succeed and "do better than your Pappa did". Mulder's sister vanished. Alex got into the wrong sorts of things. Mulder obsessed.

When I first met Alex, I was in college. My friends and I were slightly drunk and coming out of a pub. Called the Pug, by the way. I saw this man (young man, about our age) looking slightly lost, like a puppy Pug. We all stopped and looked at him. It was pouring outside, and his dark hair was plastered to his face and head, making him look like his hair had been molded. His eyes were hazel, and he was sitting on the street, and he looked like he was trying to remember exactly who he was waiting for.

I went over to him, and noticed he was muttering quietly in Russian. My father was Russian, strangely enough, and he was asking the world at large, "Why do I get the crap assignments?" I told him "Probably because you're just starting out". He looked up at me, and smiled.

"Thank you". "No problem,____" I trailed off, hoping for a name. I found this Russian stranger interesting, partly because he was Russian, and partly because of how intense he looked.

"Alex"

"You're welcome, Alex. I'm Saavedra Kennedy. I'm studying psych at Oxford. If you need anything look me up."

We walked away, and I thought that was the last time I'd see Alex. No, far from it. Once he and I had met each other a few more times, we'd become very close indeed. But I get ahead of myself.

I met Mulder before I met Alex. I met Mulder in my first psych class at Oxford, when I just happened to sit by him. He and I became great friends, because of how similar we were. Without meaning to, we'd talk at the same time, and laugh at the same jokes, and we were practically inseparable.

Except for that bitch, Diana (Fowley) who forced us apart. Just a little bit, but enough to make us separable. She tore holes in out friendship, and not only Mulder's and mine, but Nina's and ours and Audrey's and ours, and even Dmitri's and ours.

Nina was the wild dance and theatre major, Audrey the quiet artist, Dmitri the dancer, and Mulder and me as the fairly quiet, but intense psych majors.

Diana was (probably still is) one of those girls, the ones who think they can just have any guy they want then throw them away like used tissue. She was in Psych with us, and she wanted Mulder, to help her with homework and as her boy toy. Mulder? As her boy toy? Yes, she did want him just for herself. For sex and homework help. She was tallish, but shorter than me. Around Audrey's height. Mulder had to tilt down to see her.

She wore miniskirts and heels, bright vinyl jackets, and popped gum in class. She always had someone carrying her backpack, or she'd wheel it sometimes. A big guy, who often as not, was a football jock, all brawn and no brains. Her dark brown hair was badly highlighted blond, and she wore too much makeup.

Diana was a factor in our lives for a few months. She hung around with us, which we tolerated only for Mulder's sake, who deserved better than her, but also deserved better than to have one of us fight with her in the open while he looked on, embarrassed, nand not sure who to vote for.

Although, one day, she was being a real snob, looking down on a girl we knew who was named Michelle, who wasn't the prettiest girl by a long shot, and struggling with her books. Mulder was smiling at Michelle, and Diana got all red and was obviously pissed off because he was smiling (for Goddess's sake) at her. She talked to him about keeping his eyes on her for 5 minutes, until Nina, who'd been getting steadily angrier and angrier until now she was a firecracker about to explode.

She exploded. "Jesus Christ, Diana! You berate Mulder for smiling at another girl, and everyone knows you do more than that with every guy who's fool enough to want you! You show them a good time, then shuffle them off. I bet, if we asked people around campus, we'd get different responses on who your boyfriend is. In the sports area, why, we'd get easily ten different answers, but the same opinion around campus. What a slut, that Diana!"

Diana lunged at her, causing a catfight to ensue. They were really going at it, Diana scratching with her nails, but Nina giving better than she got. Mulder looked like a lost little puppy throughout Nina's speech, and now looked lke a terminally depressed puppy.

I went over to sit by him, and told him, "Nina's been wanting to do that for months." Not the most comforting thing to say, but I didn't say anything too bad about Diana.

He took the whole fiasco very hard, and he wasn't himself for a long time. But before that, I met Alex again.

HE was in a club that we were in too, and he and I danced for some songs, and we got to talking, and we became friends, who'd promised to help each other out.

As college wound down, Mulder and Alex and I all were in the (US) government. Albeit Alex's flirting with the Consortium, we did pretty well for a while. Mulder went into the FBI, into Quantico, and I went into the CIA, becoming a spy.

Like my mother before me. Actually, like my father too. My mother was a very very good spy. She was British (Irish actually, but Ireland doesn't really have a spy network) but she looked out for Ireland as much as possible.

As I got more and more jobs, I'd travel all over the globe, and as often as not, I'd run into Alex. Mulder and I were no longer involved by the first half-year of out government work. He'd asked me to marry him, but I'd said no, because of our respective work, and I wasn't ready to marry anyone.

Plus, I believe that everyone has one soul mate, who they're destined to be with forever, and I wasn't sure that Mulder was that one. Now I know that Alex was mine, and Mulder's is Dana, and everything worked out how it's supposed to be.

Alex and I became involved in the early 90's, but we'd rarely see each other. He'd leave notes under my door, and I'd leave messages on his phone. Sometimes we'd both be in DC at the same time, and he'd show up at my place, and we'd order pizza or go out dancing, or we'd both cook. We'd make love afterwards usually. He is a damn good lover.

As time went on, we'd arrange to be in the same place, maybe Paris on the 22nd, or Venice, then Tunisia.

I did find out that he was dipping into the Consortium, flirting with the dark. I tried to stop him and his behaviors. He believes that the end justifies the means, and I can't go there at all. No freakin' way. It doesn't matter what the result is, if you do despicable things to get it, it can't have been worth it.

He always meant to quit the Consortium, and he did a couple times, but then he went back to being their slide boy. I hated his weaknesses, like those.

I knew those weaknesses made him human, but I wished he could change some of his weaknesses. He'd back down from things sometimes, and he killed someone once. An innocent, not a person he was sent to assassinate. He beat him to death. He doesn't do it because he's sadistic; he did it because he doesn't have a stop switch. The man had been battering his wife and child. He just started punching and kicking, and he only stopped when he realized the man was dead.

That hurt him so much, and he still thinks about it. I've tried time and again to help him move past, both in prayer meditation, and in talking it out. He feels the weight of that as a burden he will forever carry, and I feel helpless to change the weight of it.

He embraced my religion with open arms. He was looking for something to give him a little more spirituality and fufillment. I'm Wiccan, Heritage Wiccan. A Witch by birth, and I grew up practising it and believing. One of the main things I believe is that everyone ahs both light and dark within them. One element is usually dominant, but in order for the person to be peaceful, they need to balance their opposites.

Polarities, huh? Only when they both show one side of themselves, and that's usually when the person looking isn't observing too well or when they're not human for a short while, for whatever reasons.

Still, everyone's human, and has their light and their dark. Most people only see Alex's dark, because he doesn't trust very many people, and I am honored to be one of them. You see Alex's light when he helps me in a ritual, when he grins at me for no reason at all. You see Mulder's dark when he can't let go of something, or when he doesn't regard anyone but himself.

Look farther into people!