TITLE: Hoop Dreams

AUTHOR: FabulousMonster

EMAIL ADDRESS: fabulousmonster@hotmail.com

DISCLAIMER: I do not own these characters. They are the property

of Ten-Thirteen, Chris Charter and Co. and FOX.

DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Gossamer, yes. Anywhere else, just let me

know.

SPOILER WARNING: Up to and including Season 7's "Closure".

RATING: PG

CLASSIFICATION: MSR, Mulder POV

SUMMARY: Mulder's unique method of falling asleep.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is my second foray into the realm of X-Files

fanfic. It is a reflection of Mulder's emotional life after

"Closure", and a companion piece to my first work, "i am" (you do

not need to have read "i am"). Many thanks to Tiny Dancer's

Transcripts on the Fandom web site: they served as excellent

reference for the dialogue I use. I'd also like to thank my

brother for keeping me honest with my basketball terminology. The

title, "Hoop Dreams," is blatantly stolen from the excellent

documentary of the same name.

To fully appreciate this story, a basic knowledge of basketball

terminology would be beneficial (but not necessary).

Comments and feedback are appreciated ... but be gentle!

Hoop Dreams

'Fox...'

'And I... I even made my parents call me Mulder. So... Mulder.'

'Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you.'

'If there's an ice tea in that bag, could be love.'

'Must be fate, Mulder. Root beer.'

I have been sleeping better lately.

Let me qualify. As a psychologist, I have read enough studies on

sleep disorders to know I'm still not within the norm. I haven't

given up my leather couch, but I only seem to be sleeping there

three days a week instead of my usual seven. At Scully's

insistence, I have also been going to bed at an earlier hour: two

and three o'clock in the morning is slowly giving way to

midnight. Scully says I will have made real progress the day I

wake up and realize I missed SportsCenter the night before. It

"is" somewhat disconcerting to watch myself fall asleep in the

overhead mirrors--Maurice's observation of my narcissistic

tendencies leaps to mind--but one neurosis at a time.

'Scully, whatever you're going to say...'

<cross-court pass>

'I went to your father's funeral. I told your mother that you

were going to be okay.'

'How did you know?'

'I just knew.'

I have been sleeping better lately.

Let me qualify. My mind still runs like an endlessly looping

video in the too-quiet of my apartment, but the images are

different. They are small and grainy and slightly out-of-focus as

if shot through antiquated yellow film. The film rattles and

sometimes skips, and I am reminded of one of my old grade school

film projectors.

What surprise me most, however, are the images themselves.

The first time I met the Lone Gunmen. Scully saying goodnight as

we go into our rooms at the Arctic Geological Base. Melissa

(Sarah Kavanaugh?) looking at me (Sullivan Bittle?) in the

interrogation room. Scully smiling wanly at me from a hospital

bed. Scully holding Emily. Skinner's coat whipping in the wind of

Ruskin Dam. Scully standing dejectedly in my hallway. Frank Black

and his daughter. Scully walking into her bedroom wrapped in a

white blanket after Pfaster's attack. I think it is self-

preservation: these smaller, softly flickering pictures protect

my inner eye from the white-hot glare of the larger, violent and

destructive images that are inexorably linked to them. But they

can still leave me restless and unsettled.

'Dana, if, um... early in the four years we've been working

together... an event occurred that suggested or somebody told you

that... we'd been friends together in other lifetimes...

always...wouldn't it have changed some of the ways we looked at

one another?'

<behind-the-back pass>

'Even if I knew for certain, I wouldn't change a day. Well, maybe

that Flukeman thing. I could've lived without that just fine.'

<slam-dunk>

I haven't told Scully about my restlessness at night. Ever the

doctor, she would try to "fix" it, and her timecard is already

maxed out in the care and feeding of one Fox Mulder. I also don't

tell her because I don't think she would understand my solution

and how it came to me.

My Mom told me. I can't explain it (and for once, I'm not sure I

need to), but one night as I struggled in the twilight between

sleep and consciousness, she came to me. Her message was unclear

at first, her mouth seeming to form the words at a quarter-beat

ahead of their actual vocalization. I had to concentrate very

hard to understand...

'Rest, Fox.'

And I feel my heart catch in my throat. Strangled, I hear myself

cry, 'How can I, Mom? I failed you, Dad, Samantha, Scully...'

Then like a cool hand to a fevered brow:

'Rest, Fox. She will come to you if you show her you are ready.'

'How can I show her, Mom? Doesn't she know?'

But my Mom is gone. Behind my eyes, images shimmer and coalesce

and suddenly I am eleven, playing basketball with Samantha at a

makeshift outdoor court near our summerhouse. I bounced the ball

once, twice and Samantha gambols after it happily in her too-big

pink jacket and pigtails. Holding the ball, she looks back at me

and her smile tells me I am very close and...

I don't remember anything else until Scully woke me with the

police report on Samantha.

'Mulder, even with the ballistics evidence, I can still be the

shooter...'

'Scully, I can't let you take the blame. Because of your brother,

because of your mother, and because I couldn't live with it. To

live the lie, you have to believe it. Like these men who deceive

us, who gave you this disease. We all have our faith, and mine is

in the truth.'

'Then why'd you come here if you'd already made up your mind?'

'Because I knew you'd talk me out of it if I was making a

mistake.'

And so, when the videotape in my head threatens my sleep, I dream

of basketball. I don't replay past Knicks' games. I don't review

the elements of John Stockton's perfect jump shot. I don't debate

the merits of Vince Carter over Michael Jordan.

I play basketball. The basketball that is pure sport, when the

world slows on its axis, real time becomes slow motion, sound is

eliminated and there is just you, the ball and the basket. A

human convergence of motion to target: ball-to-hand-to-air-to-

net.

Sometimes I play basketball with Samantha. We always play at the

outdoor court of my original vision, and we are always alone.

Sometimes I am a typical eleven-year-old older brother, resenting

and enjoying her company. I keep the ball away from her, teasing

and bossy at the same time.

But mostly when we are together, I see myself in my adult form. I

am gentler, and I exist only for Sam to make a basket. I pass the

ball to her and she struggles to hoist it to the net. This

continues until I finally lift her above my head so she can slam

the ball through the hoop. She greets her success with a

delighted squeal, and I spin her around in a congratulatory hug.

My sight morphs into two visions: I see her through my eyes and

see both of us as if observing from afar. The late afternoon sun

turns the sky a kaleidoscope of pink and it slowly fades and...

'Aww, now what?'

<pass>

'It's locked?'

'So much for anticipating the unforeseen. ... I had you.'

'No, you didn't.'

<alley-oop pass>

'Oh, yeah. I had you big time.'

<two-handed jam>

Sometimes I am a sixteen-year old junior playing shooting guard

on our varsity team.

'Mulder, what the hell are you doing?' Coach barks from the

sidelines.

I have just taken my second charging foul before the half.

'Showing these guys we mean business!' My disregard for authority

rears its head even then.

'Yeah, good plan, asshole. Foul out before the game's half

finished. What good are you then to anybody?'

"'What good are you to anybody.'" The mantra of my adolescent

wasteland. I hear it in the omnipresent silence of my house, the

absence of my parents at any of my games.... Teenage anger flares

and I slam the ball to the court.

'Hit the showers, Mulder. You're finished for the night!'

I later see myself shooting free throws after the game, the gym

bathed in darkness except for the street lights that stream

yellow through the wire-enclosed upper windows. The sound of the

ball travelling through the net and then falling to the floor

echoes. I hear the gym doors open.

'Getting in some extra work?' I feel Coach position himself

twenty feet behind me. I'm not going to let him off that easy.

'We would have won tonight if you'd kept me in the game,' I

inform him without turning around.

<swish>

'Maybe,' I hear him say quietly, 'but you might have hurt

yourself or someone else in the process.'

'I thought we were in this to win.' I still don't turn around.

<swish>

'I thought we were in this to be the best person we can be and to

make the others around us better.'

<clang. the ball bounces of the rim>

'You weren't the best person you can be tonight, Fox.'

His words slice me to the bone. My Mom's hooded eyes, the sound

of my Dad eating sunflower seeds alone in his study, Samantha's

empty bedroom dance tauntingly before me. I still don't turn

around.

'I don't think I can be that right now...' I reply, chokingly.

The silence roars in my ears. And then...

'When we don't think we can be our best person...that's the time

that we have to be.'

<swish>

And the pain of so many years releases inside me.

I understand.

My Dad's decision to sacrifice our family, my Mom's suicide, and

my own single-minded pursuit of the truth, I now see for what it

was (and is): a familial but flawed attempt to be the best people

we could be in this Brave New World of right-is-wrong, up-is-

down, and black-is-white. In my parent's attempts to reach out

to me before (and after) their deaths, I take solace--we Mulders

bend but do not break.

I understand. And I forgive. My Mom. My Dad. And myself.

The sun breaks through my darkness, and the pink kaleidoscope I

saw with Sam bathes me in light and I turn to face Coach to thank

him, and...

He is Scully, standing before the adult-me, a basketball tucked

under one arm, the other poised jauntily on her hip. Dressed in

her dark suit, blue waistshirt, and four-inch heels, she cocks

her head to one side and regards me with wry amusement. She

tosses me the eyebrow, not the ball.

And I realize that the give-and-go, pick-and-roll rhythm of our

seven years together has been reverberating in my head the entire

time. Of all my visions, this comforts me the most.

Scully and I played baseball, but basketball defines us.

We interchange seamlessly between offense and defense, passer and

scorer. We flow together, each anticipating the other's moves as

we weave in and out of government conspiracies, alien colonists,

serial killers, and our own fears and insecurities.

'Mulder, you've got to get up. I don't know how much time we

have. You've got to get up, Mulder. No one can do it but you,

Mulder. Mulder, help me. Please, Mulder.'

<in-bound pass under the basket>

'You... help... me.'

<sky-hook for two points>

And sometimes, the character of our team is defined by the slumps

we experience:

'Why she would suddenly happen into your life when you are closer

than ever to the truth. I mean, you ... you ask me to trust no

one and yet you trust her on simple faith.'

<pass>

'Because you've given me no reason here to do otherwise.'

<off-target return pass>

'Well, then I can't help you anymore.'

'Scully, you're making this personal.'

<off-balance shot>

'Because it is personal, Mulder. Because, without the FBI,

personal interest is all that I have. And if you take that away

then there is no reason for me to continue.'

But most of the time, sleep and peace find me, and I dream...

'Scully, I was like you once--I didn't know who to trust. Then

I... I chose another path... another life, another fate, where I

found my sister. The end of my world was unrecognizable and

upside down. There was one thing that remained the same. You...

were my friend, and you told me the truth. Even when the world

was falling apart, you were my constant... my touchstone.'

'And you are mine.'

Nothing but net.