Disclaimer: Lalala, we all know what this is supposed to say. I DON'T OWN NOTHING, HONEY!!!

Thank you to those of you who've been reviewing! It's nice to know what people think. (And because zealousgirl asked, I am studying history and music next year at college.)

JUST A DREAM

"Have you ever been here before?" Thetik asked, sweeping his arm out over the red desert of Vulcan.

"Never," Malcolm said. "Am I really here now?"

Thetik fixed a smudged yellow eye on him. "Do you believe you're here?"

"Convenient, isn't it, that people who can control my dreams can also instantaneously transport from planet to planet over thousands of lightyears?" He knew precisely how snotty he sounded. He didn't care. "What's your real motive? Is everyone on Enterprise going to be brought here so you can kill us all?"

"You are very suspicious," said Thetik with a sigh. "Your concern for your shipmates is touching but unnecessary. We shall do nothing to harm them." With Thetik's firm hand on Malcolm's shoulder, they turned away from the cliff and walked towards the rising sun, only just beginning to peek over the horizon. The landscape melted around them and blurred into smears like paint.

"You are one of us now, Malcolm," said Thetik, "the travelers on the great paths between reality. We called to you, and you heard us, because your mind possessed potential for greater things."

"I don't understand," Malcolm whispered as the whirl around them slowed and solidified into starry space.

"Think of it as a separate dimension," Thetik said. "I know your scientists have postulated the existence of such things. Right now your mind is regulating what you see into what you can understand but in time your thoughts will adapt and change so you can see the dimension properly."

His feet rested on nothing; he floated in space, alarmed because no air filled his lungs. Malcolm shook his head.

"There are points where our realm and theirs overlap," said Thetik, and again the scenery shifted and changed into the cave called Falling Rocks.

"We came here," said Malcolm.

"Inside this cave a point exists where all dimensions are one. You crossed it and we helped you through. You nearly fell back again." Thetik squeezed his shoulder and then let go.

Malcolm shook his head. "What if we didn't want to go?" he said. "Did you ask us?"

"We need you," said Thetik. "We could not ask. You might have refused."

Deep in the pit of his new, alien stomach, a cold knot began to form. He shivered, but forced his mouth into a smile. "Why do you need us?"

"We have no way to reproduce other than finding minds with the potential to come Between," said Thetik, and clapped Malcolm on the back. "You are our hope, Malcolm Reed.

He knew, without a doubt, that this smiling alien had lied to him. He had never been so sure of anything in his entire life.

Malcolm said, "I see," and smiled back.

*****************

"What do you mean, you can't do anything for them?" said the captain.

Phlox sighed. He hated this part of the job. "I mean I can't do anything, sir," he said again. "They've responded to none of the treatments. The only thing keeping them alive is the life support machines I have them hooked up to. There's no brain activity, no conscious thought, no dreams, nothing." He glanced over at the two patients, still and silent in their biobeds, and felt a shiver run down his spine. Phlox was a good doctor; he knew it and the crew knew it.

It was therefore unnerving to everyone to be faced with a medical problem that he could not handle, or even begin to decipher.

Archer leaned against the wall and slowly, so slowly that Phlox wondered if it was on purpose, slid to the floor. "Is there any chance," he asked, coughed, and started again, "Is there any chance that they could wake up on their own?"

"I don't know, sir," said Phlox. Not likely. Almost impossible, in fact, but he kept the thought to himself. "What would help, sir, is to have someone thoroughly search that cave to see if there is a pathogen or some kind of radiation that could have caused this."

"Of course." Archer stayed on the floor for a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the two fallen crew members, and then slowly stood up, letting out a long sigh. "I'll get someone on it right away."

"Send them down to me first," Phlox told him. "I'll give them radiation immunizations. They should wear environmental suits as well." The captain nodded and shuffled out of sickbay, absentmindedly running a hand through his hair.

"/Well, Hoshi, I didn't think those nightmares were anything to worry about,/" Phlox said softly in Denobulan. "/I thought you both were exaggerating./" Gently he adjusted the monitors and looked down at the two pale faces. "/I'm so sorry./"

He'd lost patients before, of course, but it never really got any easier. Carefully, he lifted the bat out of its cage and stroked its furry back. It purred, reminiscent of a human feline, and spread its wings out so he could pet it more easily.

"/I'm so sorry,/" he said again, and shook his head. The bat chirruped.

It never did get easier.

*****************

Malcolm sat on a grassy knoll in Earth's New York, in the middle of Central Park. He'd never been there before; he'd never really thought about going, either, until Thetik showed him how to melt the currents of space and go anywhere he wanted. The painted Betweener (Thetik's name for his fellow denizens of the realm) had hinted at a further direction, in which one could travel back and forth in time.

Yet Malcolm could already see that he would be tired of this very soon. He pulled his swirly silver knees up to his chin, and thought that this would be so much better if he could feel the grass beneath him, and the chilly wind nipping at his cheeks. He only knew the frosty bite of the wind existed because the passerby shivered and clutched at their coats, and wrapped their scarves more tightly about their necks.

It would have been better if he could have smelled the meaty aroma of the hot dogs cooking in the street vendor's cart, or the coffee in the hands of businessmen striding quickly by. It would have been better if he were a tourist walking through the city with Madelaine or Trip or Hoshi or Travis or any of his friends, laughing and chatting about nonsensical little things.

He saw this all immediately, and wondered at it. All his life he'd been someone who just sat on the fringe and watched, preferring the part of observer rather than participant unless it was something that truly mattered to him, like weapons or explosions. Or Enterprise; he'd only begun to really come out of his shell in the past few years on the ship he called home.

Suddenly repulsed by the living city, he stood and reached out for more familiar surroundings: Starfleet headquarters in San Francisco. This offered little solace, since he still couldn't interact with anything. He was a ghost, nothing more, and ruefully he wondered if anyone could see him.

An old acquaintance of his from Academy days walked past him in the hall, and Malcolm could not bear it any longer. Even if they could see him, they would not know who he was; all they would see was a little boy with silver skin and blue hair. He swished through Between and let the currents take him where they would, thinking of Hoshi and musing on what she was doing.

"Malcolm?" said a voice, and he stopped. Hoshi stood next to him, shining pink and gold, and bemusedly looking at him.

"Ah...I was looking for you," he floundered. She grinned and waved a hand at their surroundings.

"This is Amagad. It's out in the Gamma Quadrant. It's a pretty large empire," Hoshi said gleefully. "I've almost learned their entire language, excluding a few odd regional dialects. Do you know they've managed to standardize their language, so that the entire empire speaks only one tongue? Of course it's different in little ways everywhere, but basically they have the same language for all their people."

"Vulcans did that," Malcolm said. He didn't care, really, but she seemed so excited.

"No, they have a standard tongue that they use for common things and for diplomacy and science, but there are at least fifty different languages still spoken on Vulcan, despite all the logic and teachings of Surak and everything," she said. "I would love to watch this develop and see how they did it. Pyrrih said it's possible to move back and forth in time, too."

"Thetik said that, too."

"I could see how they managed to standardize their language if I watched," said Hoshi, face tinged with excitement. She grinned and moved closer to the Amagadan, listening intently.

"That's good," said Malcolm, not really knowing what to say, but she wasn't paying attention to him anyway. This was the wonderful Between, was it? Doomed to an eternity of exclusion. He swished the currents back and forth again, and felt his way to Enterprise.

He knew it was a mistake as soon as the walls swirled into view. He saw crewmembers walking up and down the hall, speaking in quick, harried undertones, and wished with all his heart that he could be seen, be noticed, be anything as long as someone else acknowledged his existence.

Trip walked by, and the look on his face sliced right into Malcolm's heart. We're dead, he reminded himself. We died in that cave to come here.
He followed the engineer down the hallway, calling out Trip's name, but the man kept right on walking.

"Trip!" howled Malcolm as the turbolift doors closed, and sank down to the floor when no response came. How could Hoshi see this as such an opportunity?

This is hell, Reed thought bitterly. So curious that Hoshi, who was always such a people person, would not recognize the terrible emptiness of always watching and never doing, while he, the loner, saw it at once and hated it. Then again, perhaps it was not so curious. She didn't know how it felt to walk through life without waving and smiling at people. She was so caught up in her excitement that she hadn't yet noticed the absence of something that she took for granted.

And he, of course, he had walked through his life watching all the time except in the case of weapons and security, and then he participated only to the extent of furthering knowledge.

"I should bloody well fit in perfectly here," said Malcolm and looked down the empty corridor, gray and sterile and utterly devoid of life. He stood up and wandered aimlessly towards the turbolift, but of course the doors did not swish open for him. He could wait for a crewman to exit and hop on, but that would take too long. Closing his eyes, he pictured the bridge, and opened them to find himself staring Travis Mayweather in the face.

To Malcolm's great surprise the ensign blinked and shook his head slightly, peering right at the spot where Reed stood. "Travis," he said, and then said it again, louder, when Travis glanced around and swept his gaze over T'Pol at the science station, Ensign Jado at communications, and Lieutenant Ayala at tactical.

Malcolm remembered suddenly that Travis had complained of the nightmares; he'd only overheard the conversation in passing in the gym, and he'd been too embarrassed to ask the ensign about it in further detail. He'd only heard him mention it once, though, despite fervent eavesdropping from then on.

"Travis? Can you hear me? Nod if you can!"

But the ensign seemed to have decided that he was merely getting drowsy, because he stood up and addressed T'Pol, "Ship's in stable orbit, Sub Commander. I'm going to take ten."

"Thank you, Ensign," she said, without looking up. Travis nodded to her, rather unnecessarily Malcolm thought, and quickly walked off the bridge. Reed sighed as he left.

"You can't contact them," came Thetik's voice; Malcolm jerked around in shock and found the painted Betweener standing right behind him.

"He had the potential to become this, too, didn't he," said Malcolm, jabbing a finger at Thetik. "Why not him?"

"You really want to ask, why me?"

He didn't answer, gritting his teeth in annoyance. They saw through him so easily.

"Because he has only a little. He would truly die and not be able to come Between," said Thetik, and took Malcolm by the shoulder. "Come out of here, child. The Betweeners must have a certain mental fortitude. I do not know whether it is biological or magical. It simply is a fact. We can feel it when someone approaches one of the crossing points, like in Falling Rocks."

"He almost saw me for a moment," said Reed, and fixed his eyes on Travis as he came back out of the turbolift. "He almost heard me."

"Did you ever see a ghost, Malcolm Reed?"

"No," said Malcolm. "Maybe once but I was probably imagining it."

"That's all we are to them. Ghosts. Spirits. If you spent your life close to a crossing you would see them more. There have been a few on Earth over the years, but they move around and are very weak. None so strong as Falling Rocks, of course, so no one could pass through them like they can here."

Malcolm swung his gaze away from Travis and glared at Thetik. "Why do you need us?" he asked abruptly.

"We wish to increase our numbers, like any species," said Thetik. "You are a child of the Betweeners. Come away now and I will teach you more. You have only just begun your education, Malcolm Reed." He tightened his grip on Malcolm's shoulder as the fabric of space bubbled away.

But as Malcolm vaporized into the current, he saw a figure like Thetik and Pyrrih, like Hoshi and himself, standing behind Travis Mayweather, watching him with great black hooded eyes. Before he could get a better look, though, the figure disappeared along with the rest of the ship.

He wanted to call out a warning, but Thetik's grip tightened even more, and he was swept away Between, far from Enterprise.

******************

Heehee, you know me too well. Something sinister?... of course! You don't think I'd let Malcolm and Hoshi get off that easy, do you? More to come... (more action, too. Lots of explanation and angst this chapter. Poor Malcolm.)