Disclaimer: none of the CSI:NY characters belong to me. I've used some lyrics from Nickelback's Rockstar (the speech in italics). And Kid Rock belongs to himself.

Third in my Tone Poem series. Tone Poem is a song by Toyah about dreams, so it seemed fitting, I let Adam quote a line from that.

This was inspired by a comment CSINYminute made, so I'd like to dedicate it to her.

Footsteps clatter along a corridor. Rushing along, knocking on doors. Doors, all leading somewhere. Steps, up … down …

He doesn't remember which way. The corridor, doors. Out? Further in?

Have I been going in circles?

Stuck.

Gotta get out of here …

Flack stands still for a moment. This floor …

He looks down, at his feet, the floor.

This floor, was it this floor?

What am I doing here?

Floor of one, ceiling of another. And somehow it doesn't feel real.

In the distance, a flapping of wings. A sound of darkness, echoing through the corridor. He can't tell where it's coming from. And whether he should move towards or away from it. A light at the end of a tunnel. The headlights of an oncoming train?

A crash. Noise. Everywhere.

Floor, ceiling, walls, everything tumbles. Collapses. Rebuilds. The same corridor.

The same?

It looks familiar. Flapping. He looks up. The doors of the morgue. Swinging back and forth. Propelling themselves towards him, or creating a draught that pulls him in?

He enters.

"Hello Flack, I've been waiting for you!" Sid calls out, moving towards him without looking up. Stepping away from an autopsy table, revealing the body that lies on it.

Flack tries to turn away. I don't want to see someone lying there. I don't want to see myself lying there. But his eyes are drawn to the metal table as if they were magnets. And in a moment he stands next to it. I don't want to see anyone lying there.

He cries out.

"Stella." He sees his hand hovering over her still face.

"Oh Flack." Her eyes pop open and she gives him a look. "Really! Can't you see I'm trying to get some sleep here?"

"And the big sleep no less." Sid pipes in.

"What?" Now Stella gives Sid a look. "No! Wasn't planning on that." She turns to Flack again. "In that case, thanks for waking me." She gets up and dexterously wraps and ties the sheet that had covered her around her slim body.

"Wait, where are you going? I wasn't done with your autopsy yet." Sid exclaims.

"Relax," Stella smiles at Sid, "I'm pretty sure I'll be back for that at some point."

"Take your time." Sid says, speaking Flack's mind.

She smiles at them as she walks away, passing through the doors of the morgue. They're flapping again, behind her.

Closing. But she got away. She's alive. Frankie didn't get her. I remember … she's alive. But "what's going on here?"

"What do you mean?" Sid looks up. "Did anything unusual happen?"

"Uh, yeah …" Flack points at the doors. "Stella just … I don't know …" I don't know what just happened. He shrugs, then looks behind Sid. "What's Kid Rock doing here?"

Sid shuffles through some folders and replies without looking up. "You know what they say about life in general and that of rockstars in particular."

"Yeah, but he's still alive." Flack points out. Kid Rock raises an eyebrow at him.

Now Sid does look up and back and forth between them. "Oh, in that case indeed what's he doing here? Maybe you should ask him."

"Why me?" Flack wonders. "It's your morgue."

"Yeah." Now Sid is right in front of Flack. "But I ask the dead, the living are your job."

"Um, okay." Somewhat reluctantly Flack turns to Kid Rock. "Why are you here?"

"'cause we just won't eat" the rockstar replies.

"Eh?" Flack continues to be puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"everybody's got a drug dealer on speed dial" Kid Rock makes a dialing motion with his hand.

"Uh-huh." Flack feels Sid behind his back and turns to the ME with an inquiring look.

Sid mirrors Flack's look. "Well, that is what they say about rockstars. But I still don't understand what you mean."

"with that evil smile" Kid Rock gives them a wink.

"Uh, no, not with that either." Flack looks to Sid but the ME has turned back to his folders. I guess they are easier to understand.

A sound attracts Flack's attention to a corner of the room and his eyes go wide as he sees Danny and Lindsay making out. "Uh, guys …" They look at him without stopping. "You think the morgue is the right place for that?"

Danny pauses for a moment to be able to speak. "You know me to be the kind of person to seize the opportunity, so …" He kisses Lindsay again. "Besides, you're the one who's dreaming this so you should ask yourself that question."

Dreaming? I'm dreaming this?

"Well, that explains a few things." Sid looks around his morgue a bit pointedly.

"Why would I be dreaming this?" Flack asks. He barely notices Hawkes entering the morgue, Adam in tow.

"Dreams, huh?" Hawkes addresses Flack. "Well, you see, they express your subconscious."

"Have you got any of my songs on that?" Kid Rock points to Adam's iPod. Adam just stares at him, nodding slowly, very slowly.

Flack looks from one to the other and then at Hawkes. "What did that have to do with my subconscious?"

Hawkes smiles at him. "When we dream it's like someone blows a whistle in a dormitory. Everybody jumps up and grabs the next best thing. In this case it's the nerve cells grabbing memories, images, and the dream is an attempt to put those images together and make sense of them."

Flack nods slowly. The analogy does make sense. But, "How do you explain that I'm dreaming that you're explaining to me how I dream?"

"Who says you're dreaming?" Hawkes states calmly.

"Dreams are the link between living and dying." Adam points out, quoting a line from a song he'd recently added to his playlist.

No. No, this has got to be a dream. Flack looks around the morgue, but all he sees of himself in it is a faint reflection in the shining metal of the tables. Then he sees Mac entering and hastens towards whom he considers a pillar in his life. "Can you tell me … what is that?" Flack finishes the question not quite as he had planned, staring at the cup in Mac's hand.

"Looks like chamomile tea to me." Mac replies with a puzzled look.

Flack steps back. "Okay, so I guess I'm dead, but what on earth did I do to go to hell?"

"What makes you think you're in hell?" a female voice behind him asks.

Flack turns to see Angell. "Mac's drinking chamomile tea." he answers her question, pointing over his shoulder.

"Good point." Angell says, "But still, I think that would be Mac's hell then."

Mac nods vigorously.

"Ice cream anyone?" Stella comes through the door and is immediately surrounded by a cluster of people. "Guess that's a yes." Flack can hear her faintly from somewhere amongst them.

"Cool, cookies and cream for us." Angell smiles at Flack, coming towards him with two scoops.

"Have you got coffee flavor?" Mac asks, sounding a little desperate.

"No," Stella tells him, "just chamomile, why?"

"Oh please," Mac turns to Flack, "can't you dream some coffee flavor for me?"

"Dream? You're dreaming this?" Stella encompasses the morgue with a motion of her hand and tilts her head at Flack. He replies with a simultaneous shrug and nod. "Wait, that means … why were you dreaming of me dead earlier? And what's Kid Rock doing here?" She looks around nonplussed.

This time Flack replies with only a shrug. He wishes he knew. He also wishes he knew why he's dreaming of Kendall, ambiguously licking rich chocolate ice cream off her fingertips so that he's not sure whether Adam is on the verge of drooling because of the ice cream or because of her. Forgetting even about his iPod until Kid Rock claims his attention.

"You got speakers for that?"

"Yeah, sure." Adam whips a pair from his pocket and hands them to the star. His eyes don't leave Kendall's hands.

"Hey, get down from there" Mac tells Sid.

"Aw, come on. Where's the fun in that?" The ME looks down from the autopsy table he's standing on and his hands drop from air guitar position.

Stella places a soothing hand on Mac's arm. The head of the lab takes a deep breath.

"Sorry, man. Also about the coffee," Flack points out, "I really wish I had an influence on that." Wish I had an influence on this being a dream and not my afterlife.

Sid still stands on the table, waiting. "Hey, if this is your afterlife, you might as well enjoy it; and if it isn't, it doesn't make a difference, right?" Mac nods. "Cool." Sid gets back in position. "Gonna join the mile high club at thirty-seven thousand feet" he breaks into song.

"I want a new tour bus full of old guitars" Mac finds himself joining in and looks bewildered until he sees Stella giving him thumbs up which makes him smile.

Danny steps up. "Every good gold digger's gonna wind up there, every Playboy bunny with her bleach blond hair" The last line earns him a look from Lindsay. He takes a strand of her hair between his fingers. "I know a beach with that color sand." he whispers.

"Sign a couple autographs so I can eat my meals for free (I'll have the quesadilla on the house)" Flack looks a bit uncomfortable, wondering where those lines came from. Great, I seem to think that people think I think of nothing but food. But then he sees Angell smiling at him and it feels okay.

"And we'll hide out in the private rooms with the latest dictionary and today's who's who" Hawkes continues the song.

"Gonna pop my pills from a pez dispenser"Adam casts a shy look at Kendall who returns a grin.

"Hey, hey, I wanna be a rockstar." Sid finishes off. Another guitar-playing impression earns him a round of applause that he passes on to Flack. "It's his imagination after all." the ME points out. Then he moves into a sitting position and addresses the detective. "What do you want to do next?"

"Much as I'm having fun here, waking up would be great." Flack answers.

"No-o." Kendall's still eating ice cream. "This stuff has calories in real life." The others shoot her looks. "Hey, I was just kidding, okay?" she shrugs. "We all want you to wake up."

"Yeah, we do." Adam agrees.

"True." Lindsay says.

"And you have to tell me about this." Danny says, wrapping his arm around Lindsay. "Tell me how I got her."

Flack looks at Angell. How did he get her? Did he? He doesn't even know why he's dreaming of her. Dreaming of her looking at him like that. Moving closer, full of … anticipation?

"Some people's dreams are really premonitions." Hawkes points out, continues with a smile, "So you should wake up and see what the future holds."

"Yeah," Stella joins in, "as I said before, we'll all be back here soon enough. Wake up."

Flack feels Mac's hand on his. "Wake up, please. I need some coffee."

Sid looks at the people gathered in his morgue. "A lot of people are waiting for you to wake up. They are all out there hoping for you to wake up. And I'm one of them."

Flack looks to Angell. Raising his hand because she seems to fade.

"I'll be waiting for you, some time, somewhere, somewhere other than here." she smiles at him, "Wake up."

Well, this was my first story that didn't focus on Mac and/or Stella, so I don't feel too sure about it, but I hope you liked it and please don't hesitate to let me know what you think of it. All feedback is much appreciated.