Thanks for waiting for this. Sorry it took a few days, but things got busier than expected, and now I have the most awful cold. Hack, hack. Cough, cough. Poor me!

x-x

He woke in sickbay with movement all around him, and a distinct sense of having just been elsewhere, and of something being wrong. But it was sickbay. He could tell it was sickbay, because it... because...

He tried to focus.

...because the smells, and how it sounded, and...

Voices overhead, around him, scattered, snatches of conversation.

"Malfunction, couldn't get him out."

"...before they resuscitated him."

"...O2 levels..."

He'd drowned. Someone on the planet must have got him breathing again, somehow, and... and...

"Lieutenant?"

He opened his eyes and stared up at nothing. Something was wrong; he was losing track. He'd lost track of... something, and he couldn't remember.

"Mr. Reed?"

All he remembered was pain. No, that wasn't true. He could remember the water, the panic as he had struggled. Then nothing.

Someone flashed a light.

Someone said his name.

He closed his eyes.

Time skipped, and Trip was there beside him, sitting in a chair, reading something from a padd held in one hand.

"Trip?" he tried to ask, but nothing came out.

Trip's head remained bowed over his padd.

"I drowned," he said, or thought, because all was silence. His eyes slid closed, and he knew he was going under again. "The dreams were telling me," he mumbled, feeling their tug even as he spoke.

Trip's voice came from somewhere in the distance. "Dreams?"

And then he was gone.

Hours passed, or days, and it was Hoshi beside him in the chair, her dark hair for once hanging loose and falling in front of her face as she read. Malcolm could see her lips soundlessly shaping the words, and he imagined her translating some Celadonian text, the words coming from the padd, into her thoughts, flowing out her mouth and into the water that surrounded him.

Later it was Hoshi and Trip, talking nearby. Too tired to open his eyes, he let their words speed by him, the current taking them past too quickly for him to catch more than bits and pieces. "Phlox said...", "Makes no sense..."

He broke the surface.

"He was cold before that, though. All the time." That was Hoshi, her soft voice distinct despite the water around him. "Did you notice?"

"No. But I did notice he wasn't sleeping." That was Trip, his accent stronger than normal, like it got when he was upset. "And with that incident on the bridge... Shit's gotta be related, somehow."

"But Phlox said -"

"I know what Phlox said," Trip said quickly. He dropped his voice, and a certain note of resignation entered his tone. "I know. I know that whatever's wrong with him, the reason why he's so out of it, is probably due to the oxygen deprivation or something." He almost sounded plaintive. "I know that. I know it's been weeks, and that, if he..." He exhaled, and the rest of his words came out in a rush. "What Phlox said makes sense, damn it, but I don't - I can't - "

Malcolm wasn't sure he was following. Weeks? How could that - it had been hours, maybe, or days, or... He heard soft shuffling, and the sound of cloth on cloth. Footfalls, and then Hoshi's voice, closer now.

" 'Cause that'd mean it's permanent?"

"Yeah," Trip answered, sounding lost. "And I'm not ready for that."

Hoshi hesitated a moment, and it was as if the world went silent around her, waiting. "Were you..." She stopped, then started again, stronger this time. "Were you and Malcolm...?"

After a beat, Trip said, "No. We were friends, of a sort." He gave a soft chuckle. "Or at least, I was trying. The man wasn't exactly making it easy."

And Malcolm could imagine why. They'd been on this mission for a few months, now, and all that while, Trip had been making overtures of friendship, which he'd rebuffed. In his quest for professionalism, he'd not let himself get close with anyone on the ship, never mind Trip, who ostensibly was his superior. God, it had taken his being pulled off duty, for there to have been something wrong with him before he'd even managed to call Hoshi by her first name. What chance did Trip have, against all that?

There was silence, or maybe Malcolm lost the thread of the conversation. It was just voices; Hoshi's, Trip's, call and response, serve and volley, ebb and flow. He'd be swept up on a crest, only to go down again, and all he could hear was the crashing of the waves around him, and their voices, always their voices.

He was on a crest when Trip murmured, "If this is somehow connected to what was going on with him earlier, then maybe it can be fixed."

"Phlox'll think we're nuts."

Footsteps, and Trip's voice came again, closer this time. He must be standing beside Hoshi. "No he won't."

Malcolm lost track for a while after that. It was hard to stay focused on the things in sickbay - the water kept tugging him down, and each time, he found it a bit more difficult to find the surface again. But there was something about hearing his friends nearby. It helped.

x-x

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