(no subject)

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Title: Last Humans 1/25
Chapter: Side part
Pairing: No pairing yet, just a little Rimmer/Lister, but there will be Rimmer/Lister, Kochanski/Rimmer, Rimmer/Ackerman
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Disclaimer: Don’t own, don’t make money.
Spoilers: Everything. Last Human’s is set between Pete 2 and Only the Good. (In a universe where Only the Good never happened. Hmph.)
Notes: Wherein Lister exasperates Hollister, Cat gets punched and Rimmer decides he doesn't like his left side part. (Sorry, I don't have a preview pic for this one... yet.)
Beta-ed: Roadstergal and Zekkass

Previous Parts



Chapter 1 : Side Part

"So what happened, Mr. Lister?" Captain Hollister leaned over his desk, his over-soaked-sausage fingers pressed together at the tips.

"I'm not sure what you want to know, sir." Lister looked at his boots.

"Why don’t you start by telling me how Mr. Rimmer ended up shot, Mr. Lister?" Hollister paused to consult his notes. "And unconscious I might add."

Lister switched his gaze to the ceiling, squinting. "I don't know, sir. I turned around and then, there he was, like… unconscious and shot."

Hollister readied his touch pen. "So that's what I should put in your statement, 'I don't know, sir, I turned around and then there he was, unconscious and shot.'"

Lister shrugged.

Hollister wrote a few words then paused. "Who did it?"

"Who did what', sir?"

"Who shot Rimmer?"

Lister chewed his lip. He looked up at Hollister. He looked past Hollister to a framed vid-portriat of Hollister's wife and two boys. His wife spot spit-cleaned the older boy's plump cheek, then turned to smile accusingly at the camera. Lister glanced back, feeling guilty. "He shot himself…?" As an afterthought he added, "Sir?"

Hollister shook his head, mouthing the word "no." Just above his ear his wife smacked a paper plane out of her youngest's hand.

Lister glanced at Hollister hopefully. "Somebody else shot him?"

Hollister nodded. "Who, Mr. Lister?"

"It wasn't me, sir!" Lister said hastily.

"Who was it then?"

Lister looked back down at his boots, "I don't know."

"Lister. Three men went into the officer suite on D deck at 4:15 this morning. Video surveillance confirms this. You were one of the men, Mr. Rimmer was the second, and the third was Ace Rimmer, hard light hologrammatic copy of Mr. Rimmer. You exited the room at 5:30, calling for a medic. Rimmer exited the room at 5:35 on a stretcher. Unless another person entered the room between 4:15 and 5:30, and we have no evidence of this… and I'll point out that our evidence also includes infrared signature scans conducted at 5 minute intervals in all personnel quarters as per JMC security rules… either you or Mr. Ace Rimmer shot him. So, I ask again. Who shot Mr. Rimmer?"

"I don't know… sir." Lister sighed. "But I didn't do it."

Hollister dropped his touch-pen, throwing up his hands. "And we haven't even gotten to the really interesting bit."

"What's that, sir?"

"Where Ace went."

"He left, sir."

"He left?" Hollister leaned back in his chair; his eyebrows slowly retreated up his forehead as if trying to back away from the conversation without being noticed. “He left?”

Hollister’s wife, finally getting the kids in order, turned back to the camera and sighed with exasperation. Lister forced himself to look away from the photo-vid and catch Hollister's gaze, "Yeah, sir."

"Without our surveillance picking him up? After our infra-scan ceased registering Ace's hard-light emissions at 5:20?"

"Yeah, sir. He left." Lister's stomach churned. He grimaced.

"What's wrong, Mr. Lister?"

"Just a cramp, sir."

The Captain picked up his touch-pen, pressing it to his lips. "So… your official report of the incident is, 'I turned around, Mr. Rimmer was shot and unconscious. And I don't know who shot him despite being one of only two conceivable suspects. Then I witnessed Ace Rimmer leave the room. Got up, walked out and left the room after being registered by the scanners in the room, as, for all intents and purposes, dead.'"

"That's about it sir, yeah." Lister folded his arms over his stomach, bending a bit at the waist. The churning had morphed into a low rumble.

"Do you know the punishment for a false statement, Mr. Lister?" Hollister leaned back in his chair. It groaned under his weight.

"No sir."

"5 years in the brig."

"Erm." Lister remarked, nodding thoughtfully.

"I'll be interviewing Mr. Rimmer as soon as he checks out of the medical bay." The Captain leaned forward again, hands folded over his chest. "If his statement differs, in any way, from yours…" Hollister trailed off, threateningly.

"He'll be doing 5 more years?" Lister asked, straightening up.

Hollister's mouth opened. No words came out. He closed it and pressed his fingers to his temple. "Dismissed, Mr. Lister," he whispered, waving Lister away and watching his computer screen with desperation.

"Cap'n." Lister paused at the door to the office. "Is Rimmer okay?"

"What?" Hollister looked up. "I don't know, Mr. Lister."

"Can I have permission to see him, sir?"

"No, Mr. Lister. You can't have permission to see Mr. Rimmer. For all I know you'll walk into sick bay and he'll get shot again by the same invisible third party."

"But how will I know if he's all right, sir?" Lister frowned.

"Lister."

"Yeah, sir?"

"Just go. Now."


###


Lister shoved his tray under the food dispenser and dialed up his convict number. Following a series of flatulent gurgles, a bowl and a plate clattered onto his tray. He pulled it out and slumped to the table, slipping the tray down beside Kochanski. Soup sloshed over the edge of his bowl onto the table. He tore a bun in half and sopped it up. The bun dissolved into wet sawdust. He stared at the glop congealing on his fingers, not bothering to wipe it off on his jumpsuit.

"What's wrong, Dave?" Kochanski asked.

Lister looked at her and sighed. "I don't know what I've done."

Kochanski picked at her food, separating out the plump, crusty space weevil carcasses and grimacing at the single meat chunk and teaspoon of sauce that were left. "You only told us Ace died at lunch. What else happened?" She inspected the meat. Deciding it was also space weevil, she set it aside and stared at the smear of sauce on her plate.

"Yeah, buddy? What happened?" Cat asked, stripping the weevils of their legs and carapaces, and munching down the insides.

"Ace wanted to patch part of his memory into Rimmer before he died."

Cat dropped his weevil, yowling. "Man, why? That's a fate worse than corduroy! Imagine waking up and being Rimmer?"

"Knock it off, Cat." Kochanski shook her head. "What did you do?"

"I did it." Lister shrugged. "I patched his memory into Rimmer."

"Rimmer agreed to that?" Kochanski's eyes were wide.

"No… not really." Lister turned back to his food, moving it piece by piece from one side of his plate to the other.

"Then why… how?" Kochanski stared at him in disbelief. "You mean you and Ace…?"

"Erm." Lister started laying the foundation for a small weevil-chunk ziggurat on his plate.

"You did a mind patch on Rimmer without his permission?" Kochanski's voice was high enough to draw the attention of a pair of reedy convicts at the adjacent table. One giggled inanely while the other sawed at a fat weevil slowly with an opposable straw.

"Erm. Well." Lister spent a brief moment dangling over an emotional chasm of agonizing guilt. Then his natural defenses threw him a blame lifeline. "Yeah, well. He did it to me!"

"Did what?" Kochanski asked, arms crossed over her chest.

"He swapped me mind for his. When he was a soft-light hologram." Lister sat straighter, pleased to have thought his way out of Kochanski's moral fury. "Without my permission."

"Yes, but that's different, isn't it?" Kochanski leaned on the table.

"What?" Lister deflated.

"Well, if I can remember from the course on advanced psychological algorithms I took for my Freudian discrete mathematics minor…" She paused to smile and flick her hair. "Practically basket weaving one-oh-one it was. Anyway… they talked about the difference between mind swap and patch algorithms. Basically a mind swap is a surjective injective function which makes it a bijection with an inverse. A mind patch, on the other hand, is not a bijective function, which means it doesn't have an inverse."

Lister stared at her, and then looked at Cat, who appeared to be frozen in time. "I didn't understand a word, did you?"

Cat grinned. "I think I can help you, buddy! I understood everything up to the word 'remember'."

Kochanski grimaced, "In my di—"

Lister held up a hand to silence her, "If whatever you gonna say has the words 'my', 'dimension' and 'Dave' innit, I'm gonna to find Mr. Bloopy Bear and put him through a cheese grater."

"Fine." Kochanski unfolded her arms and rolled her eyes. "It means—for those thick heads among us—that a mind swap can be easily reversed. A patch can't. Also, a mind swap is contained; it's like popping a laser torus out of a drive and putting in another. A mind patch is more like…" She paused for a moment in thought. "Taking a hammer, smashing up two LTs, and then gluing the pieces back together to make one."

Lister went pale. "Not reversible. For real?"

"Yep." Kochanski smirked. "For real."

Lister thumped his forehead down on the table and pounded on the back of his head with a fist. "Smeg, smeg, smeg…"

"Well, why'd you do it, then?"

He looked up. "It seemed the right smeggin' thing to do at th' time."

"What do you mean?" Kochanski asked.

"I mean, I thought it would… help him. He'd get back those last six years of his life. And Ace said…"

"Said what?"

"That it was the only way we'd have a fighting chance against…" Lister trailed off.

"Against what?" Kochanski watched him.

He couldn't meet her gaze. "He said there was this war—"

"How do you even know that was your Ace?"

Lister shook his head. "I'm pretty sure—"

"Dave, you say you did this because you thought it would help him. Have you ever noticed how what you think is the right thing to do and what you want to do are always so similar?"

"Yeah. Because I want to do good." Lister returned to his plate, picking out a sad bit of stringy lettuce and dropping it on the floor.

"Naw," Cat leaned forward over the table. "It's because you're a meddling do-gooder. Some things ought to be left alone. Like this shirt." Cat pulled the front of his jumpsuit open to reveal a mauve pleather turtle-neck, "You can't accessorize perfection, baby! Yow!"

Kochanski smiled smugly, lifting a forkful of food, pointing it at Lister. "Exactly." She plopped it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed, still smiling. Then she stopped and looked at her plate. "I didn't—"

Cat grinned, "You did!"

Kochanski pressed the back of her hand against her lips, stood bolt upright and dashed towards the cafeteria door.

"Be careful, baby!" Cat called after her. "Weevil does not go with lavender!"
Lister watched her go, laughing a bit under his breath. Then he stopped and looked at Cat. "Do you really believe that, Cat?"

"Believe what?" Cat stripped another weevil. "That mine is the most heavenly body in the universe?"

Lister shook his head. "Never mind, Cat." He fiddled with his weevil ziggurat for a few minutes before giving it up as shite. "I'm goin' back to me cell." He started to stand.

"Sirs! How have you been?" Kryten jerked to a stop behind Lister. His metal carapace stank of fresh WD-40.

"Kryten! How are you, man?" Lister turned round, beaming. "Back to normal?"

"As much as I can be, with a bunch of space bums for friends." Kryten frowned.

Lister paused, looking at him with concern.

Kryten laughed, his chest twitching up and down unsteadily. "Irony mode off."

"Ha ha. Good one, Kryten." Lister stood and picked up his tray. "I'm not feelin' too hungry tonight, so I'm off."

"Wait, sir. Before you go, I have something to ask you."

"Make it quick, okay, Kryten? I wanna go have a lie-down." Lister wiped his face. It felt clammy.

"Yes, I will, sir. I thought you might have some insight. Today after my maintenance was finished, I was called into Captain Hollister's office—"

Lister stiffened, "What for?"

"Apparently, someone had used a remote brainwave hologrammatic simulator and then stuffed it down the garbage chute. He requested me to examine it and tell me if I could speculate on how it had been used." Kryten sat down like an unhinged jack-in-the-box. "I looked at it and it was in an awful state. All the circuits melted."

Lister grabbed Kryten's metal arm. "What did you tell the Captain?"

"I told him that I couldn't determine much, except that it had contained psychological algorithms for someone who was obviously… what is the human term? Barmy, sir. Mad as Aunt Edna's stuffed weasel in pajamas eating toffee."

"You couldn't tell him anything more'n that?"

"Well, no sir. Not without running a diagnostic on the circuits, which was impossible."

"Okay then." Lister stood. "I'm off, Krytes."

"So you can't enlighten me as to why Captain Hollister would request information on a burnt out brainwave simulator, sir?"

"No. Not really." Lister fidgeted, picking at his jumpsuit.

"Where's Mr. Rimmer, sir?" Kryten looked around the table, then inspiration struck and he looked under it.

"He's…" Lister paused. "He's in medical bay, Kryten."

"Not feeling himself, sir?" Kryten angled his head with a grin.

Lister stared at him. Had Kryten just made a joke? A tasteless joke? An impossibly tasteless joke for a mechanoid to make? Or did he just not know? Lister settled on the latter. "Yeah, you could say that." Lister swallowed.

"Sir, before you go… I'd just like to remind you that, since we are all not clinically insane or absurdly puny, our protective custody status will be revoked tomorrow, and we will have to take meals and recreation time with the general prison population."

"I know, Kryten." Lister sighed.

Kryten leaned close placing a hand on Lister's arm. "Sir, do you have any plan to prevent Cat…" Kryten turned to look at Cat, who was singing, 'I'm gonna eat you little weevil' while batting at his food with his fingers, "from being— to use the human colloquialism– shit kicked?"

Lister closed his eyes. "I'll try to think of something." He pulled out of the mechanoid's grasp. "See ya tomorrow."


###


The klaxon sounded for oh-seven-hundred. Lister lay still in his bunk, just listening to it. It sounded the call to breakfast. The guards hadn't come to escort him to the PC mess hall at oh-six. He'd been awake then, too, listening to guards gather up the crazies and the poofs.

Lister reached up to brush at the rust on the ceiling of his bunk, picking off flakes with his fingernails.

Ace was dead. His Rimmer was dead.

And he had to think up some way of keeping the Cat from getting killed. But he couldn't. Not right then. Not while he felt so numb.

He picked at a large chunk of iron without noticing. It split off, releasing a puff of iron dust right over Lister's face. Lister choked and sat up, his hand over his mouth.

A guard kicked at his cell grating. "Oi. Why aren't you ready to go?"

Lister slipped down from his bunk. "Not feelin' well."

The guard swung his cell door open. "Shall I take you to the mess in your skivvies? Give the other prisoners a right naughty treat?"

"Give it a mo'." Lister stepped into his dirty jumpsuit, zipping it shut. He padded towards the guard.

The guard waved his rifle butt at the boots by the bottom bunk. "You ain't thinkin' of givin' them a miss, are you?"

Lister sighed and walked back, strapping his boots on and slumping back over to the guard and out his cell.

"Right then. Where were we?" The guard pressed his rifle butt hard into Lister's back and shoved him forward. "Move it, scum."

Lister stumbled, grabbing onto the grating before getting his feet under him and walking down the corridor. Behind him the guard bawled out another tardy prisoner. Lister closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself back on the Starbug. Back with his Rimmer, Cat, Kryten and Kochanski. Well, maybe a Kochanski that was a little more naked and a little less of a toffer.

At the mess he saw that Kochanski and Kryten had snagged a table that was strategically located behind a concrete pylon. Kochanski was staring morosely at her weevil bacon and poached egg; Kryten was quietly sewing something beside her. As Lister walked over to them, not bothering with the food dispenser, several convicts wolf-whistled, waving lewdly at him. "Hey, Sally, commin' home wit' us?"

Lister grimaced, his shoulders tensing. Kochanski caught his eye from the table and shook her head.

"Have you thought of anything, sir? About helping the Cat?" Kryten asked, wiping down the mess table with a half-clean rag.

"No." Lister said, sitting down and staring at his hands.

"Sir. Shouldn't you eat something?" Kryten fussed. "You require nourishment thirty times a day!"

"Kryten, it's three times a day. Three." Kochanski corrected.

"Not if you're Mr. Lister," Kryten sniffed.

Kochanski wrinkled her nose at him. "Well, anyway. He can have mine." She folded her arms over her chest, regarding her food with disgust.

"Ma'am, you haven't been eating properly for weeks."

"That's because I haven't had proper food for weeks," Kochanski snapped.

"Well, ma'am, if you don't mind me telling you, if you don't eat, your out bits will shrink even further!" Kryten pulled up the jumpsuit he'd been sewing. "I've already brought in the chest of your suit twice, ma'am."

Kochanski wrenched the jumpsuit out of Kryten's hands. "Shut up! Or I'll shove this down your groinal socket!"

"He's right, Kris." Lister rested his head on the palm of his hand.

Kochanski shielded her chest with her hands. "So what? So what if I've gotten a bit skinny?"

"Ma'am, I didn't want to tell you this, but when I was up fetching my daily oil ration, Mincing Eddie asked me who that boy was at my table. And if I could set him up on a date with you."

Kochanski grit her teeth, waving the jumper at Kryten menacingly. "I told you—"

"He was absolutely crushed when I told him you were a woman. He was so crushed he broke Stabby's wrist, ma'am."

"We're going to have to go into PC again, aren't we?" Kochanski lips thinned. "It's just not working, this."

"What are you talking about Ma'am? We've already used up this month's PC allowance."

"He's right, ,” Lister interjected. “Kris. If you don't eat, you're just going to get sick."

"I can't eat. I've already told Choppy that if he doesn't get the weevils out of the food—"

"Look. At some point you're gonna have to accept that the weevils aren't in the food," Lister leaned over the table, pointing at her plate, "they are the food."

"Well… I can't." Kochanski finished lamely. "Anyway, why aren't you eating, Dave?" She snorted, then continued in a grumble, "Although you're hardly close to starving."

"Jus' don't feel well." Lister replied, tracing a non-existent grain in the pressed plastic table top.

"Ah. Feeling guilty." Kochanski picked at her food, a smug smile creeping up the edges of her mouth.

"I am n—"

"Sorry, non-bud!" The Cat's frightened voice carried over the mess hall rabble.

Lister looked up, then leapt to his feet.

Cat was hoisted up against the wall beside the food dispenser. Mincing Eddie's thick, heavily veined forearm was pressed into Cat’s throat, the fist on his other arm knotted in Cat's jumpsuit.

Lister dashed over, tapping Eddie on the shoulder. "Eh, what's goin' on?"

Eddie turned around. "'E breathed on me kit."

"I didn't! I didn't!" Cat scrabbled against the wall. "I swear I haven't been breathing since last week!" The last word came out a squeak as Eddie leaned his weight into Cat's throat.

"Come on, Eddie," Lister pleaded. "He ain't worth your time."

"I've a grudge to settle against 'im." Eddie turned round to look at Lister.

"What for? Breathing on you?"

"Naw…" Eddie turned back to Cat. "'E's turned me love's head, 'e has!"

"You mean…"

"Yeah." Eddie started to tear up and sniffle. "Big Hairy Fat Arsed Henry no longer fancies me. 'E wants…" Eddie let go of Cat, who slid down the wall to his knees. "'E want's 'im!" Eddie regarded Cat with weepy eyes.

Lister looked over to Big Hairy Fat Arsed Henry, who waved cheerfully back. The wave resembled a small avalanche down a minor mountain in the Alps. Lister swallowed.

"He's just waitin' on 'is fight with Shiv," Eddie sobbed.

"Fighting Shiv? Why?" Lister grimaced.

"'Cause the winner gets that lil' home wrecker," Eddie nodded at Cat, dabbing at his eyes with a kerchief. "And the loser gets you!"

Lister went pale. He stumbled back a step and caught the back of a chair to steady himself. "Really?" he squeaked.

"'Less I rearrange this lil' tart's face!" Eddie gathered up Cat's jumpsuit to steady his target and raised his other arm to strike.

Cat whimpered and threw his hands up to ward off the blow.

Lister caught Eddie's raised arm, and was head-butted for his trouble. He fell back, jostling several prisoners on his way before squashing the weevil loaf of Rat Gut Willy. Rat Gut stood, his razor-thin face drawn with disgust, pulled Lister up by the lapels, and threw him down to the ground, following up with a solid kick to Lister’s kidneys. Lister hissed and curled up on his side. Elbows and knees in, chin down. Best way to survive a fight you have no hope of winning.

Rat Gut grabbed Lister by the locks, pulling him around. He then stepped back and circled Lister, looking for an opening. Lister kept his legs between him and Rat Gut, and the convict tested him, moving back and forth to find a way through his guard.

Someone other then Rat Gut stepped on Lister's locks. Lister yelped. Rat Gut dove for him, got his knee on Lister's belly, and slammed his elbow against Lister's neck.

His vision went speckly, then everything became haloed in gray. He spat and pulled on Rat Gut's arm, trying to find room for a breath.

Just as Lister thought he saw his old grandma beckoning him into the light with a rolling pin and a pint of bitter, the pressure abruptly ended. Lister pulled himself to his hands and knees, rubbing his throat and coughing.

"Oi, you are a nancy," said a guard, catching Lister's eye as he pulled Rat Gut off Lister from behind, his billy club against the convict's throat.

Lister coughed and looked over at Cat. Kochanski was helping him to his feet. Eddie had done a number on Cat's face; it was already swollen and bleeding.

Kryten knelt beside Lister, holding a rag to his face. "Sir, I didn't mean for you to sacrifice yourself."

"It's okay, Kryten." Lister said, allowing the mechanoid to help him to his feet. "I've had worse."

"Have you, sir? I can't recall."

Lister looked at him. "I've had me arm cut off, Kryten. That was worse."

"Oh, right, sir! Of course. It was less messy, though sir."

Lister yanked his jumpsuit straight and shrugged off Kryten's hand, "I'm gonna go to me cell."

"But, sir!"

"Leave it, Kryten." Lister walked towards the door to the mess, stopping before he passed Kochanski and Cat. "Is he okay?" Lister asked her.

"I think so." Kochanski said. "I don't think anything's broken."

"My face! My beautiful face!" Cat wailed. "It's ruined!"

"It'll heal." Lister patted Cat on the shoulder, moving off towards the exit to the mess.

"Where are you going?" Kochanski asked, standing..

"Just back to me cell."

"That's it?"

"What can I do?" Lister shrugged. He'd never felt so helpless. Even against simulants, GELFs and Polymorphs. Stuck in a tin can with a bunch of nutters and nowhere to go. He drew his brow. Well, violent nutters.

He didn't feel like dealing with any of it. Hell, he didn’t think he could deal with any of it.


###


Lister lay in his bunk, watching the rust spots, too tired to even pick at them. He'd tried to sleep. Still couldn't. He closed his eyes, imagining Ace dying and trying to spit out a last word.

He pressed his fingers against his eyes, trying to make the darkness darker, too dark to see the blood.

He heard the sound of boots scraping against the pressed metal floor. The door opened. A guard barked "Get in there, you."

Lister opened his eyes and turned towards the door. It took a moment for Rimmer to come into focus.

"Hi, Listy." Rimmer said. His left arm was in a sling, and the sleeve of his jumpsuit was cut off.

"Rimmer!" Lister bolted upright, clapping his hands on the edge of the bunk. "You aren't dead!"

"Why would I be dead?" Rimmer sneered. "It was just a gunshot." He pulled off his boots and sat down on his bunk. "I see things around here are just as top-notch as always. Service is excellent. The guards don't ever shirk on random beatings and abuse."

"So… did you talk to Captain Hollister?"

"Yes, I did." Rimmer stripped off his sling and then his jumpsuit, grimacing as the fabric scraped over his bandaged wound.

"What'd you tell him?"

Rimmer squinted, his nostrils flared. "What could I tell him? I don't remember anything apart from those ridiculous bacofoil trousers."

"What? You don't remember getting shot?"

"No, Listy. Although I'm sure you had something to do with it." Rimmer glared at him.

"Huh. Nothing ,then? Not even when you pleaded for Ace to have his way wit' you?" Lister rolled back on his back, grinning.

"I did no such thing!" Rimmer stood up, nostrils flared like parachutes.

"Ah. How would you know?" Lister turned over, his face pillowed on his arm. "You don't remember."

"Because I'm not interested in men, Listy. Unlike some people I could mention, I look for more traits in a partner then just a regular pulse." Rimmer sniffed. He stepped into the common area and stripped off his wife beater.

Lister watched him. "Eh. Let me see that arm."

Rimmer glared at him. "What for? Make sure you did the trick the first time?"

Lister swung his legs over the side of the bunk, "I didn't shoot you, Rimmer. Come 'ere." He waved the man over.

"Then who did? The gunman on the grassy knoll? John Wilkes Booth?" Rimmer walked over unwillingly, lifting his wounded arm for Lister to look at.

Lister leaned in, catching Rimmer's arm and unwrapping the bandage. The wound was uneven and red at the edges. "Whew! Deeper then I thought. Ten stitches, eh?"

"Yes, well." Rimmer looked down.

"That's going to look way brutal when it heals." Lister re-wrapped Rimmer's bandage, nodding at the man.

"I've had worse." Rimmer muttered.

"What, man? When? You mean that metal sliver you got when you re-tapped that screw hole?"

Rimmer shook his head. "Never mind."

Lister watched him, lying back in bed. "I've missed you, man."

"I've only been gone two days. Hardly enough time to get all squidgy," Rimmer snapped.

"You really don't remember anythin'?"

"Not a thing. Everything's a blank after we left the prison." Rimmer stripped out of the rest of his jump-suit, down to his boxers. Then he looked at himself in the polished metal wall panel they used as a mirror.

"Somewhat scrawny, I suspect," he muttered, tensing his muscles. "Have to work on that."

"What?" Lister leveled a stare at him.

"Nothing at all, you scoucer git. Go to sleep," Rimmer snapped, then caught sight of his hair in the mirror. "What happened here?"

"Where?" Lister half sat.

Rimmer pointed at the side of his head. "This. This thing? This ghastly side-part? Who did this to me?" He turned on his heel, nostrils flared. "Is this your idea of a practical joke, Mr. Lister?"

"You did it to yourself, Rimmer." Lister chuckled. "You've been wearing it like that since we met."

"Like this? It looks like it was done with a child's geometry set." Rimmer snorted. "You're daft. I wouldn't do my hair like this." He ran his fingers through his curls until the part was mussed beyond repair. Then he looked at himself, side to side, in the mirror. "Better."

Comments

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

No art? Awwww...

One of the most deftly plotted pieces it's been my pleasure to beta. And I still love the interaction between Lister and Hollister.

"I've had worse." Rimmer muttered.

"What, man? When? You mean that metal sliver you got when you re-tapped that screw hole?"

Dunno why that makes me giggle as much as it does...

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Thanks again for beta-ing it.

And I'm glad I could make you giggle. :) Perhaps there's something innately funny about tapping screw holes?

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Oh damn, this is good. As in intimidatingly good. I do have some concrit if you want it, but overall, fantastic. Excellent ennui!Lister - you've captured that VIII hopelessness very very well.

The "who shot him sequence" in the Captain's office is probably one of my favorite bits in this. So well done.

Cat eating the weevils happily - such a great image.

Fate worse than corduroy - *snigger*

"Rimmer agreed to that?" Kochanski's eyes were wide.
"No… not really."
D'oh! Hehehe...

Ziggurat! :D

Lister spent a brief moment dangling over an emotional chasm of agonizing guilt. Then his natural defenses threw him a blame lifeline.
Lovely writing.

"I think I can help you, buddy! I understood everything up to the word 'remember'."
Pure Cat. Love it.

Have you ever noticed how what you think is the right thing to do and what you want to do are always so similar?"
"Yeah. Because I want to do good."
Yep. That's Lister right there. Hm. Yes. This fit so well into a story roadstergal and I are writing too. He Does The Right Thing, doesn't he? Or he tries. *sigh*

Heh, weevil bacon.

Nourishment thirty times a day love.

I have a bad feeling about that side-parting thing... There's a host of bad possibilities there. Kochanski's analogy made me think - if it really is a matter of merging two personalities into one, that could create an entirely new one. One that certainly may not be benign... Furthermore - as was pointed out (again by Kochanski); what if it wasn't Lister's Rimmer who was Ace? He did say he didn't remember Lister pushing him into being Ace, and of course, that could simply mean that he didn't think Lister did. But it could just be that he doesn't remember because in his dimension, Lister didn't push him. Heh. But that's how I would plot it - I'm eager to see where you will go with it!

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Interesting speculation. ;)

BTW, thanks for the review. Feel free to send me whatever criticisms you have. It's particularly good when people help me out with grammar and spelling as I'm terrible at both.

So far, everyone seems to like the interaction between Lister and Hollister. Even my evil writers group offered me up a few giggles when I read it.

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Oh! I forgot to say, of course I'd love to get your con-crit. :)

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Oh wait... I *did* ask for it.

I'm such a doofus. *runs off and hides.*

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

No, it's my fault - I completely forgot about it! Shall I put it here, or would you like it e-mailed to you?

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Emailed is best for me. My email is: typhonblue@shaw.ca

[laurenthemself]

Everyone's so in character!

Why 'Kat', though?

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Er. Oopsie!

It's fixed now. I was just being a goof.

[lady-draco.livejournal.com]

"Where's Mr. Rimmer, sir?" Kryten looked around the table, then inspiration struck and he looked under it.

Oh, how I giggled. ;) Classic.

Keep it up mate. I'm enjoying myself. And the side-parting.

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Thank ye.

I'm glad you're enjoying it.

[erinptah]

"...the course on advanced psychological algorithms I took for my Freudian discrete mathematics minor."

Cracked me up. And that was just the beginning.

Loving it. Twenty-five parts of this? This is going to be fantastic =D

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

I'm glad it did, I was wondering if that reference would be a bit too obscure. Particularly the rant that Kochanski followed it up with. Maybe it'll just be an in-joke for the math and science majors among us. lol

Yep, 25 parts.