Reed's Armory -- A Malcolm Reed Fanfiction Archive ..

Title: Perchance to Dream

Author: Kalita Kasar

Author's e-mail: [email protected]

Author's Web site: http://kalkasar.ussimperator.com

Rating: PG

Category: Slash

Pairing: Tucker/Reed

Series: The Dreams Series

Summary: Malcolm is troubled by nightmares after Shuttlepod 1

Comments: This bunny just won't leave me alone...or wouldn't. I am hoping there will be more of this, but thought I might get the bunny to work more if I posted this one (my bunnies hate to leave anything unfinished).

With thanks for Dream Symbolism to: http://www.dreamloverinc.com

Also, it should be noted that this series is not connected in any way to my other series on this site in the Tucker/Reed Pairing. It stands alone. Please bear that in mind to avoid confusion over events..

This doesn't have a happy ending all tied up in pink ribbons. My bunnies got into MJ's bunnie's toybox and found the Angst-O-Ray Gun...Sorry.
Also, this may bear resemblance to other Vox Sola stories written, but there is not much scope in how to handle the collective mind thing without going all Seven'ish and that wouldn't work here at all. I hope that other writers will understand and not flame me for being too similar.

The title is inspired by Hamlet's Soliloquoy:

"To die--to sleep--No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.
'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.
To die--to sleep.
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub!"
Hamlet, Act III. Sc.I/William Shakespeare

Archived to Reed's Armory on 11/20/2003
First posted June/July 2002

Perchance to Dream

"What're you gonna do, kill me?"

"You're planning to kill yourself; what difference would it make?" He raised
the phaser pistol and tried to steady his shaking hand.

"Don't miss, cause if you do, the first thing I'm going to do if we get out
of this is bust your ass back down to crewman second class."

"Miss?" Malcolm shook his head and smiled. "I don't think so, Commander." He
slowly squeezed the trigger, watching as the bolt of energy struck Commander
Tucker in the side; the force of the blast sending him reeling as blood
sprayed from the wound.

He watched the commander's lifeless body fall from the ladder and land in a
crumpled heap at his feet.


"No!" Malcolm woke with a start and sat up in bed. Shaking his head slowly
to clear away the remnants of the dream, Malcolm Reed swung his feet over
the side of the bed. He sat there for some time, rubbing at his face as he
tried to reassure himself it was just a dream; a recurring dream which he
lived through at least once every week since the incident aboard Shuttlepod 1.

With a heavy sigh, Malcolm got to his feet and made his way into the
bathroom to wash his face. He knew it was useless to try going back to bed;
he wouldn't be able to sleep anymore that night.

As he held his hands under the cool water in the bathroom, he couldn't help
noticing how they shook. The dreams always left him shaken and unnerved. The
thought that he could ever dream about harming a crewmate was abhorrent to
Malcolm. He would never do deliberate harm to any of the Enterprise crew. He
was sworn to protect them at any cost.

True, he had pulled a phase pistol on Trip in the shuttlepod when the
commander climbed into the airlock, but it was not with any thought of
killing the man. Of all his crewmates, Trip was the one he was least likely
to hurt.

Malcolm frowned and then splashed the cool water onto his face; the mild
shock of it was enough to wake him completely, and wipe the gruesome images
of the nightmare out of his mind. He sighed and moved into the other room.
Setting the kettle on to boil he stood by the counter and reached for a cup.
A good strong cup of tea was just what he needed to restore his nerves.

As he set a tea bag into the cup and reached for the sugar, his comms panel
beeped.

"Phlox to Lieutenant Reed," The doctor's voice came over the intercom.

"Reed here," Malcolm replied. "How did you know I'd be awake?"

"Oh just a feeling," the doctor said. "You've had a few disturbed nights
lately, I was working on the assumption it had occurred again."

Malcolm shook his head slightly and smiled. "Well, your hunch paid off; what
can I do for you?"

"Actually, it's more of a social call," Phlox said. "I wondered if you'd
like to join me for an early breakfast?"

Malcolm hesitated for a moment, half inclined to turn down the invitation.
He still felt somewhat rattled from the dream and wasn't sure he wanted any
company. With a small sigh he made up his mind that it might be better than
sitting around brooding in his own quarters and thumbed the comm button. "I'll
meet you in the mess hall in ten minutes," he said.

"Excellent!"

When the armoury officer arrived in the mess hall, Phlox was already seated
at a table and waved him over.

"Good morning, Lieutenant," The doctor beamed at him and waved to a chair.
"Sit...sit." he glanced at Malcolm. "I took the liberty of fetching you some
eggs, I thought you'd enjoy them."

"Thank you." Malcolm slipped into a seat and picked up a knife and fork.
"Eggs are just what I had in mind." He smiled at the doctor as he began to
eat.

Malcolm and Phlox had eaten breakfast together frequently since the
beginning of Enterprise's mission. The armoury officer found Phlox to be a
stimulating conversationalist, and he enjoyed listening to the stories the
doctor told of the various species he had studied in the course of his
medical career.

He took a mouthful of his breakfast and gave a small nod. "Delicious."

"Good!" Phlox picked up a spoon and began to eat. "So, another disturbed
night, hm?" he asked. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about what is
troubling your sleep?"

Malcolm frowned slightly and met the doctor's eyes. "Is this another ploy to
try and get me to talk?" His voice was edged with a note of severity as he
gazed at the Denobulan.

"Well, I am your doctor, you know," Phlox reminded him. "But if you prefer
not to talk that is fine; I really do enjoy our breakfast time talks, so
asking you to meet me was not entirely a ruse."

With a small nod, Malcolm continued to eat. He knew that the doctor's
motivation was concern and not nosiness, but he wasn't sure that he wanted
to air all the twisted scenarios his mind could come up with to torment him.
He preferred not to think of them when he was awake, and certainly, when it
came time for sleep he would much prefer that his mind would allow him to
rest.

"You know, talking about it may help." Phlox met his gaze as Malcolm glanced
up sharply.

"I am not sure I want to." Malcolm returned his gaze to his plate.

"Ah, but perhaps you need to," Phlox said, "sometimes talking these things
out can help to...lay the ghost as it were?"

Malcolm relented with a sigh. "I have dreams...nightmares."

"Ah...care to talk about them?"

"You're obviously not going to leave me alone until I do." Malcolm gave a
small grin to take the sting out of his words and then glanced around to
make sure they were alone before he began. "I dream that I am with Commander
Tucker. Sometimes we're back aboard shuttlepod 1 - when we thought
Enterprise was destroyed; other times we're alone in the armoury, or in
engineering." He sighed. "But the end result is always the same. Commander
Tucker is dead...at my hands."

"I see. How do you kill him?" Phlox didn't seem shocked or upset by the
description of the dream.

"Usually, I shoot him...sometimes I use other methods. Always violent,"
Malcolm said. He looked into the doctor's eyes. "I don't harbour any
thoughts of harming Trip when I am awake. I...pulled a phase pistol on him
that day on the shuttlepod, but it was set to stun. I never had any thought
of killing him; I probably wouldn't have used the pistol at all anyway...I
just wanted to stop him."

"Of course," Phlox said. "Dreams rarely mean what they appear to mean on
face value. The subconscious deals in symbolism. I don't think your dreams
mean that you actually wish Commander Tucker any real harm."

Malcolm closed his eyes and nodded. "I just wish I knew what they are about
and how to stop them."

"Perhaps they are a means of dealing with unresolved issues," Phlox
suggested. "Anger...hostility. Traumatic experiences demand that we work
through them, you know, or they will come back to haunt us in some way. Are
you angry with the commander?"

"No...perhaps." Malcolm shook his head with a sigh. "I haven't really thought
about it."

"I have some data chips in sickbay that deal with symbolism in dreams;
perhaps you'd like to take a look at them sometime. It might help."

"Thank you." Malcolm's smile was genuine as he looked into Phlox's sharp,
blue eyes once more. "I may do that."

Their conversation turned to more mundane issues as the first of the day
shift began to trail into the mess hall for breakfast.

As Malcolm left the mess hall and prepared to face his day in the Armoury,
he reviewed the dream that had wakened him earlier. His feelings in the
dream were not anger exactly - more a sense of putting an end to something.

Phlox had told him before they parted company that it was helpful to note
the feelings and the items in the dream that seemed most important.

To his mind, the phase pistol, the blood, and the feeling that something was
finally resolved were important; also, the shooting or killing itself in
each dream seemed to stand out; and there was something else. The
overwhelming feeling of helplessness and loss when Trip Tucker lay dead at
his feet; that was the feeling he woke to every time and it was the fear of
experiencing that emotion again which prevented him getting back to sleep.

Chapter Two

"Dammit!" Malcolm Reed turned onto his back in bed and lay staring into the
darkness of his quarters. He let out his breath with an exasperated sigh and
sat up rubbing at his face. A glance at the small clock by his bed told him
it was 0400; again he had slept only a few scant hours before nightmares
wakened him. This one was different though.

He ran; crashing through the jungle as his breath rasped harshly in his
throat. He longed to stop; to rest, but he knew if he did the one pursuing him
would catch him.

He looked over his shoulder, fear gripping at his heart as he heard the
heavy sounds of someone crashing through the undergrowth behind him.

"Leave me alone! Go away!" His voice seemed odd to his own ears, muffled and
garbled as though he spoke through water.

"You tried to kill me!"

Malcolm turned his eyes to the path ahead just in time to see the looming
chasm; too late he tried to halt his headlong flight, but it was to no
avail. He tumbled into empty space.

Malcolm sat up and left the bed. Reaching for his shirt, he pulled it on as
he made his way into the bathroom. He was tired and his mood was becoming
more edgy by the day. He knew he had to do something about this situation
before the lack of sleep drove him insane.

He decided that he would go to the sickbay and look at Phlox's data chips
that day since he was off duty. It was high time that he faced up to
whatever was troubling him. At least if he could find out what the dreams
meant it might stop them plaguing him.

He called into the sickbay after breakfast and found Phlox busy with his
usual never-ending experiments.

"Ahh! Lieutenant Reed," The doctor cried, greeting Malcolm as though they
hadn't eaten breakfast together only the previous morning. "You've come to
look at those data chips I take it?"

"Yes, if you wouldn't mind, I thought today would be a good time to do it."

"Certainly." Phlox moved to a cabinet and took the chips out and then turned
to hand them to Malcolm. "There is a private room you can use," he said,
showing the way to a small consulting room at the back of the sickbay. "Take
your time; I won't be needing the chips any time soon." The doctor smiled,
his faintly triangular grin splitting his face as his blue eyes twinkled.

Malcolm nodded his thanks and moved into the room.

Inserting the first chip into a computer, Malcolm took a seat and began to
read the screen. He found it was a dictionary which described the possible
meanings of various items. Malcolm began to search for the items from the
dream in which he shot Trip on board Shuttle pod 1.

An hour later, the lieutenant shut down the dictionary frowning deeply at
his discoveries. He set both data chips aside, and got to his feet. Making
his way into the sickbay he found Doctor Phlox.

"Well, how did you go?"

"I don't think it was much help," Malcolm murmured. "I think I know what the
dreams mean, but - it doesn't really resolve anything."

"I see," Phlox said. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Malcolm nodded. "I think that might help."

"All right," Phlox set down the data pad he was holding and moved back
through to the room Malcolm had come out of. He seated himself and waited
for Malcolm to speak.

"It's not really told me anything I didn't already know," Malcolm said,
indicating the computer console as he spoke. "The dreams I have about
killing Commander Tucker don't mean that I want to kill him in reality. They
are merely warning me that I need to restrain my temper around him." He gave
a wry smile. "I already know that."

Phlox nodded, "Indeed, the relationship between you two has often
been...volatile."

"Yes." Malcolm nodded his agreement. "The symbolism is fairly
indicative...guns speak of a need to protect myself...shooting speaks of needing
to keep my temper in check."

"Is there anything else?"

"Well, there was another dream.completely different," Malcolm said. "I had
it for the first time this morning."

"Go on."

"This time, I didn't kill Trip. I was - running away from him." Malcolm
moved to a chair and sat down. "He chased me through a jungle. He kept
yelling that I tried to kill him; at the end - I fell into some kind of
empty space... I..." Malcolm stopped.

"Please keep going," Phlox urged.

"It was like - falling into - loss." Malcolm felt his heart begin to pound
as he recalled the sickening sense of loss that he'd felt in those
terrifying moments of free fall before he woke.

It was the same feeling he had when he killed Trip in the other dreams. He
looked up and met the doctor's eyes. "All of the dreams end with that same
feeling," he admitted. "Incredible, sickening loss."

Chapter Three

It was back, the strangling, stifling loss. The grief and the certainty of
knowing something precious and living and needed was gone.

Lost.

Malcolm closed his eyes, forcing his mind to focus on the task at hand. The
force field was almost ready to use; he just had to keep his mind on the
job. This nightmare would soon be over, but there was no time to waste.

And this was no nightmare. This was real. He'd seen it happen before his
terrified eyes.

Watched as Captain Archer was seized and thrown off his
feet; seen him dragged across the cargo bay. Watched as Trip dived after the
captain, desperately grabbing the older man's hands.

Watched - heart pounding and breath harsh as the awful, truth
dawned - as the meaning of the nightmares became crystal clear.

"Get outta here!"

Malcolm couldn't move. He was frozen to the spot, staring at the man who had
filled his every sleeping moment for so many weeks. He stared, horrified, as
the slimy tendrils wrapped around Tucker's chest and arms.

"Go!"

Malcolm shook his head, muttering as he pushed the horrific images from his
mind. He could not afford for anything to cloud his thinking now. He had no
time to examine his feelings. He made an adjustment to the settings and
activated the EM barrier. Glancing at the crewman who assisted him, he
nodded.

The crewman fired a phase pistol at the barrier, which held for a moment
before it flickered and allowed the energy beam to penetrate. Malcolm shook
his head and sighed in frustration as he deactivated the field.

"The particle density's still fluctuating - I think the problem's in the
lower left quadrant."

"I've got it, Sir." The crewman made a small adjustment to one of the
emitters.

"Try again," Malcolm said as he reactivated the field.

This time the barrier flickered, but it held. "Better." Malcolm glanced at
the crewman and was about to start another test when the comm panel chirped
and T'Pol called him.

Malcolm felt his heart sink as the Vulcan told him that there was not much
more time to complete his simulations. He stood for a moment, staring at the
emitters.

"Understood." He looked at the crewman. "We've got to get moving," he said,
once more pushing his feelings aside.

Chapter Four

'I'm dying.' The thought echoed through the collective mind and was gone.

"We're not gonna die here." Trip was not sure who had thought it. He had
been unable to identify individual voices for some time. They were melding
into one mind; he could feel it. "We're not dyin'," he repeated, his voice no
longer carrying the edge of defiance it held mere hours before.

'Not dying,' they thought. 'Not dying.' They took strength and encouragement
from it.

'Not exactly,' Trip closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift. He was
tired of fighting. Weary of trying to shield his mind - his soul - from us.

Us.

It was no longer 'them;' not 'I' anymore. Them and I didn't exist. 'Us. The
One.' There was a strange comfort in it. Trip sighed, let his body go limp
in the supporting web. "Cap'n."

There was no reply. It didn't matter. 'We are well. Sleep.'

Someone came. One of the single ones - Alone - it was wrong. We reached for
him, we wanted to embrace him; we wanted to take away the singleness. but we
could not touch him. He stopped us when we tried. He did not want to be one.

Others came. We watched, we saw them, but we could not touch. They were
separate, alien to us. We did not comprehend. We gathered ourselves closer.
We were afraid.

'Home!' The thought crashed through the consciousness causing the whole to
stir.

'They sang to us.'

We sang - The ancient song of origins. They heard it and they understood.

'They will take us home!'

"We release you."

Trip heard the thought, but for a moment he didn't quite understand. The
concept of separateness didn't seem to register in his mind. He felt the
slow separation, a leaving almost a loss. 'Farewell.'


"Commander Tucker's heart rate is increasing," Phlox said.

Malcolm glanced at him, keeping his feelings carefully concealed. "Is that
good or bad?"

"It's good!" Phlox met his eyes and nodded as a moment of understanding
passed between them. "Crewman Kelly's vital signs are stabilizing as well."

Malcolm looked away, his eyes seeking Trip's form as the tendrils and
webbing slowly receded. He watched as the life form withdrew. Trip was
lowered gently to the deck as T'Pol ordered him to lower the forcefield.

As the others moved forward, Malcolm stayed where he was. He saw Trip stir,
heard him groan, as the commander seemed to come out of a deep sleep. With a
sigh of relief, Malcolm turned to look at the crewman.

"Let's get these emitters back to the armoury," he said as he heard Phlox
call for a medical team.

He took one last look at Trip. Hoshi was with him, bent over him and talking
softly. He met hazy blue eyes for a moment as Trip glanced in his direction.
Malcolm smiled slightly and turned to remove the EM emitters from the wall.

The sense of loss subsided. He could think again. The lieutenant sighed as
he walked out of the cargo bay with the emitters in his hands. Trip was
safe. He had saved the life of the one he had repeatedly dreamed of killing.
Perhaps now he could get some sleep. Maybe, just maybe the ghosts Phlox had
mentioned were finally laid to rest. He now understood the meaning of the
nightmares. He knew why he had them, and what the sense of loss meant.

He knew and understood that his heart - subconscious, whatever it was
called, was trying to warn him that there was something precious he stood to
lose. The knowledge was cold comfort to him. Malcolm knew it was impossible
to lose something one didn't even possess. He smiled wryly at the thought.
He would never have Charles Tucker. It was impossible. But if he could just
get a good night's sleep, he would settle for that.

Continued in A Waking Dream

~the end~

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