(please please please don't sue me eeek!!)
JUST A DREAM
"I can feel how much he hurts," said Hoshi tersely, barely keeping Archer's fingernails from digging into his thighs. "What's wrong, Doctor Phlox?"
"You've been a most impossible patient these last few days, Ensign," said the doctor, though his voice belied his calm appearance. "Too many unsolvable problems." He swept the scanner up and down over Archer's forehead and stared at his captain with alarm written all over his face. "This one, however, is all too easy to understand."
"What is it?"
"His synaptic pathways are destabilizing," said the doctor gravely. "The outer cortex is slowly disintegrating. That's what's causing him pain; the nerves in his skull are firing off randomly as the destabilization affects them."
Argh...Hoshi, I'm sorry... came the captain's mental voice, barely making it through the static fuzz of pain that surrounded his consciousness.
"It's me, isn't it?" Hoshi asked the doctor. "Because I'm in here. For some reason I'm causing this." She glanced over at her body, lying still and quiet on the biobed.
"It's an overload. The human brain is designed to work with only one consciousness. Two fully realized personalities using one set of neural pathways is too much for it."
"So I have to leave or he'll die."
"I estimate he has only about twenty-four hours until the damage is too severe for him to recover at all. Forty-eight until he is completely brain dead." The doctor shook his head and went over to the comm. "Phlox to Commander Tucker. Or Lieutenant Reed."
"Yes, Doctor?" The answer came so quickly that Hoshi wondered if Malcolm had even tried to go to bed. It had reminded her uncomfortably of the void that they had been trapped in at the beginning of all this, sitting in Archer's mind as he slept. She supposed it would be worse for Malcolm, unable to do anything but lie there in Trip's sleeping mind. She was sure he hadn't even tried to rest.
"Please come to Sickbay immediately."
Malcolm murmured assent, and the comm went silent.
"What do you think we should do, Doctor?" asked Hoshi.
"Find a way to restore you to your own proper bodies, I suppose," said Phlox.
He looked at them both, lifeless except for the machines, and shook his head.
"I haven't any idea how to do that, though."
"Maybe Malcolm will think of something," said Hoshi. "He knew how to save the others."
"A surprisingly easy solution, too," said Phlox. "Perhaps the answer is right there in front of us, and we simply cannot see it."
Hoshi shook her head and shrugged. The silence weighed heavily on them, but neither wanted to break it, afraid that they would not want to hear the next words to come from their mouths.
She knew what she had to do; the problem lay in finding the courage to do it.
Perhaps the solution was simple, and she could just step right out of the
captain's body and into her own. Deep down inside her, though, she knew it
could not be that easy.
Trip walked in, sidling through the doors with Malcolm's characteristic strides rather than his own, and Hoshi wondered again if the lieutenant had let the commander have any control at all. His face, normally smiling and cheerful, was pale and drawn, with dark circles under his eyes.
"Ah. So he feels it too," said Malcolm. It was not a question.
She heard the weariness in his voice, the sadness, and replied, "They're dying, Malcolm."
"I know."
"You know?"
"Thetik came to me and told me that if we stayed too long they would die."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I had things to do. I had to make sure Enterprise got away."
Phlox stood by, listening silently. Hoshi knew what Malcolm would say next and she had never yearned so much for silence in her entire life. Yet regardless of whether or not he said anything, the truth remained.
"We must leave them," Malcolm said. "Go back Between. If we want them to live."
She felt tears well up in her eyes; she had never seen the captain weep, never, and she knew it must look quite strange to the others. But she could not help it.
"Right now?" she asked, plaintively.
He laughed, a short, sharp bark that sent shivers down her spine. "How long, Doctor?"
"Twenty-four hours until the damage is irreversible," said Phlox quietly.
Damn you, Malcolm... always the damned martyr... came Archer's thought unexpectedly.
"Then leave in a few hours, Hoshi," he said. "Get your affairs in order. Write your farewells. Say goodbye. Don't record them, though, or they'll think the captain's gone mad."
The tears poured down her face. "You know what will happen to us," she said. "What they threatened."
"The void, forever," he whispered, so softly that Hoshi, listening with Archer's less attuned ears, could barely hear him. "I know, Hoshi. I shall go mad in a few centuries. I expect it'll be better then."
"You've already gotten your affairs in order, haven't you?" she cried. "You knew already. You're leaving now!"
He smiled, one last crooked grin, and for a split second Tucker's body shone with a brilliant white light. Then Trip slumped to the floor with a moan. The doctor leapt forward and barely caught him before his head smacked on the hard tile. "Malcolm, damn it, what the hell are you doing?" he said weakly.
The doctor murmured to him and gently maneuvered him onto a biobed. Hoshi turned away; there was Malcolm, back in child form, swirling misty blue and silver. His ocean-gray eyes met her borrowed brown ones, and he nodded at her.
"I'm not afraid, Hoshi," he said, though she didn't believe that for a second. He reared back suddenly, mouth open wide, and vanished instantly, leaving no trace at all behind him.
"WAIT!!" cried another voice from Between. Pyrrih burst into Sickbay, materializing right in the middle of the doctor's body (though Phlox didn't seem to notice) and zoomed right to the place Malcolm had been standing. He turned to Hoshi, the shock and fear evident on his golden countenance.
"I am too late!" he cried.
Too late for what? spat Hoshi. I'll be along shortly, don't you worry.
He turned to her, holding out his hands in despair. "I would have saved you. Made a bargain with you, Hoshi Sato. Kept you from eternity in the void. But he was quicker than I thought, both Malcolm Reed and Thetik, for I see that Thetik has already snatched him away."
Thetik wanted revenge, said Hoshi bitterly. What would you have offered?
"I saw you do it today," he said. "Six times you murdered one of us. And none of the six have returned Between. They have truly died and escaped this eternal watching."
You want to die, Hoshi said, and remembering saying the exact same words earlier.
"No," said Pyrrih with a bit of a bitter smirk crossing his features. "I want to live, experiencing the universe as it ought to be experienced, touching and tasting and talking and smelling and feeling everything. I ask that you allow me to live in your body for a day and then you expel me as you did the others, so that I can finally rest. I wanted one more chance at life, but I cannot have it in full."
What must I do? asked Hoshi. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the doctor and Trip, now not so pale, watching her intently. She ignored them for the moment, grasping at what she hoped was a chance to save herself and of course Malcolm.
"Bring back one of your smaller ships. The shuttlepods, I believe they are called. Come back to Falling Rocks. Bring your corporeal body, too. I will fend off Thetik and the others. It will be difficult, of course, but I am sure that I can do it."
What about Malcolm?
"I do not know if I can save him. Thetik was very angry. He will cast Malcolm Reed far into the void, so deep that I fear I cannot get him out, and he will trap him in his own delusions, so that he cannot ever get himself out."
Leave that to me, then. I got him out once before.
"Very well. I shall travel with your ship and keep all the others away until you can return to Falling Rocks."
That will work, said Hoshi. I'll tell Trip and the doctor and the others what to do.
Pyrrih nodded. "I will begin to prepare," he said. "I will return to help you when you reach the planet."
Pyrrih, Hoshi called. He looked at her over his shoulder. Thank you.
***************
T'Pol did not like this plan one bit. "There must be another way," she stated to the body that was not Captain Archer for the moment. "There are too many risks to both you and the captain."
His face remained grave and stubborn, as impassive as most stoic of Vulcans. "I have thought this through, T'Pol. Once we are close enough to the planet, I will leave the captain's body and go in search of Malcolm. I would rather have simply beamed our bodies down into the cave, but the doctor has refused to stay behind, so he and Travis will take us down in a shuttle. Phlox wants to be there if there is a chance of something going wrong."
T'Pol, not being human, did not shudder at the sound of Archer's voice used for Ensign Sato's inflections. She did not shudder to think that an entire race of people existed just outside the fabric of space-time, looking in at them at all times because there was nothing else to do.
That didn't mean, though, that she did not feel unnerved.
"There is no other way, T'Pol, and we're very lucky that we found someone to help us," said Sato flatly. No emotion revealed itself in her borrowed voice, and T'Pol wondered if she had actually suppressed them or merely could not manifest them in someone else's body.
A chime sounded on the captain's chair, across the bridge. Ensign Mayweather looked up. "We're there, Hoshi," he said. T'Pol started, and immediately chided herself for loss of control.
"You made the course change without authorization," she said.
"I have authorization. The captain knows what is going on," said his body, smiling grimly.
T'Pol rose from her chair. "That is an offense suitable for court-martial," she told the ensign. "Your actions are insubordinate. You will desist at once."
"T'Pol, I do not care," Sato replied bluntly. "Travis, you know what to do. T'Pol, you might have a more pressing concern on your hands for a while. The doctor has instructions in Sickbay. I suggest you follow them."
T'Pol fumed inwardly. Humans. Archer's head turned to the side, staring at what was apparently only the empty armory station, and nodded.
"I've got to go. Travis, start down to the planet now. Pyrrih says he can protect you on the way down, but be careful anyway."
The ensign nodded and stood. He made it to the turbolift before T'Pol regained her scattered wits and said, "Ensign, stop at once." He only shook his head and stared at her as the doors closed.
A hand touched her shoulder. "Remember, instructions are in Sickbay," Archer's voice said. Then he slumped against her, with a slight moan. T'Pol looked around wildly and beckoned to one of the crewmen monitoring the rear stations. She held the captain's shoulders as Crewman Mitchell maneuvered his feet around and toward the lift.
"We must get him to Sickbay," she said. Mitchell nodded, and huffed as she shifted around to get a better grip.
Just for a moment, before the lift doors closed, T'Pol thought she saw a child standing where Archer had been, only a smoky, vague image of a little girl with shining pink and lavender skin like the petals of some rare flower, looking at her with great limpid golden eyes.
But when she blinked there was no one.
*****************
Whew... nine chapters... I've never written a Star Trek story this long before. Hope you are all enjoying it.
