Double Trouble - Part 2

[felineranger.livejournal.com]

Here's Part 2!

 

Double Trouble – Part 2

 

            Breakfast the next day was a fairly awkward affair. The new Rimmer had finally emerged from his quarters but he wasn’t in a talkative mood. He sat at the far end of the table in a gloomy silence, ignoring Kryten’s desperately cheerful attempts to draw him into conversation. Eventually the mechanoid cast a slightly pleading look at Lister, who sighed inwardly. He really wasn’t convinced that he was the best person to be trying to prise the traumatised hologram out of his shell, but what the smeg. It wasn’t like he could make things worse. “Listen,” he cleared his throat, “Maybe it would be nice if you er...came and sat with us in the cockpit today. What do you say?”

“What for?” he replied stoically. 

            Lister hesitated. This wasn’t actually a bad question. There wasn’t an awful lot their new arrival could do. They had all stations manned and he probably already knew the controls back to front as they all did.

“Well..you know...” he said weakly, “I thought maybe we could all hang out. Get to know each other?”

“I know you perfectly well enough,” Rimmer said icily. Well, that told me, Lister thought. 
“And anyway, there’s nowhere for him to sit,” the original Rimmer chimed in, “He can’t have my chair, I’ve only just got it adjusted properly to suit my back.” Lister threw him a ‘You are not helping’ glare and the hologram went back to eating his toast with a slightly miffed expression. “Okay, well, whatever,” Lister continued pleasantly, “Just so you know you’re welcome to join us if you want some company or anything.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said flatly, then brushed the crumbs off his uniform and disappeared back up the stairs to his quarters.

            “Well,” Rimmer said disapprovingly, “How rude.”

“Thanks a heap for the support, man. Really. I don’t think you could have been more welcoming if you’d tried.”

“I didn’t say he couldn’t join us,” Rimmer protested, “I just said he couldn’t use my particular chair. I think that’s reasonable enough.”

“Face it, bud,” the Cat patted Lister’s shoulder sympathetically as he reached for the last piece of toast, “Nice just doesn’t work with the Goalpost-Head mentality. You’re best off just ignoring them like I do.” He flashed a toothy smile at Rimmer, who bristled, “You weren’t ignoring me last week when you asked if you could use my light-bee for a game of squash, you overgrown moggy!”

“Stop it,” Lister drummed his fingers on the tabletop, “I’m thinking.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Rimmer remarked with false concern. Lister ignored the witticism, “I think you should go up there and talk to him, man.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because he needs someone to talk to and he obviously doesn’t trust us. You two might have something in common. Maybe he’ll open up to you.”

“I’m not a smegging agony aunt! What do you expect me to say?”

“Just do it, will you?” Lister stood up and headed for the cockpit, “And be nice!”

“Who died and put you in charge?” Rimmer muttered.

“You did,” Lister retorted with a grin, “Remember what I said. Be nice!”

 

           Rimmer knocked at the door of his double’s quarters feeling incredibly awkward. Nice, indeed. How was he supposed to be nice to a complete jerk who didn’t want people to be nice to him in the first place? The double opened the door and stared at him blankly, “Yes?”

“Can I come in?” The double shrugged and stepped aside to let him in.  

            The two of them stood restlessly, arms folded, avoiding eye contact. “So...” Rimmer looked around, feigning interest, “Settling in alright? Everything tickety-boo?”

“I suppose so,”

“Got everything you need?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Very good...” Rimmer trailed off. “Anything you want to talk about?”

“Like what?”

“Well, you’ve obviously been through some...difficult experiences. And you’ve been on your own in that pod for a while. I thought maybe you’d like to talk about it.”

“What do you want to know?” I don’t want to know, Rimmer thought bitterly, I don’t even know why I’m here.

            “How long has it been since...it...happened?” Rimmer asked. His double shrugged, “I’m not sure anymore. Years maybe. I lost track of time after the first six months. When you’re alone for that long it stops mattering anyway.” Rimmer thought of a dark cell and lines upon lines of tiny marks scratched into a stone wall.   “Yes,” he said rather more gently, “I can understand that.” At least he had known they were coming for him. And he had known. In six hundred years he’d never doubted it, although he knew he didn’t deserve it. He knew Lister would never let the others desert him.  But to have sat in one of those pods for years knowing that no rescue was coming, that there was nobody left alive to care...He shivered and asked a question he’d never have thought of asking before. “Do you miss them?”

“Miss them?” his double asked as if confused.

“Your crew-mates,” Rimmer said surprised, “Who else?”

            His double shrugged uncomfortably, “What’s to miss? The morons were never much company anyway.” The coolness of the reply shocked even Rimmer, who considered himself the master of contained emotion. “But still,” he pressed gingerly, “To lose them all so suddenly like that...It can’t have been easy.”

“We weren’t what you’d call close,” his double replied casually. Rimmer thought of the matter of fact way the man had relayed the tragic story to them when he’d first arrived. At the time he’d assumed the cool approach had been a defence mechanism, a way of distancing himself from what had happened. Now he was less sure and that scared him a little.  But a couple of things started clicking into place. “I’m guessing things were a little different where you came from,” he said cautiously.

“Why would you think that?”

“Because of Lister.”

            His double looked up sharply, “What do you mean?”

“You tense up whenever he’s in the room. You follow him round with your eyes as if you’re expecting him to attack you or something. It’s like you’re afraid of him. Was the Lister in your universe a real psycho or something?” His double turned away, his mouth compressing to a thin, tight line. “Look, you don’t have to worry,” Rimmer told him as reassuringly as he could, “Maybe the Lister in your universe was nasty or violent or whatever, but he’s not like that here. He could do with showering more often and he can be irritating enough to wind up a whole convoy of clockwork cars, but he’s...” Rimmer had imagined he’d have to force his next words out but after the conversation he’d just had he found they came surprisingly easily, “He’s really pretty okay. You don’t have to be scared of him.”

“I’m not scared of him,” his double replied scathingly.

“So what is it then?”

 “I’d have thought that you of all people would understand,” he said, as if Rimmer was being dumber than a Page Three girl with concussion.   

“What do you mean?” Rimmer asked, affronted.

“The Lister in my universe...” the double said stiffly, “Was my universe. He was my everything. My whole world.”

            Rimmer was dumbstruck. “But...you just said that you weren’t close,” he protested feebly.  “No,” his alternate self laughed bitterly, “We weren’t. But I wanted to be,” he stared down at his clenched white fists, “God, how I wanted him. But I was always on the outside. Always the queen of Spain to their three musketeers. Just like you.” Rimmer said nothing. It hurt, but to an extent his double was right. Lister and Cat and Kryten had their little club and he was outside it. He knew that in many ways it was his own fault as much as theirs, but he’d never known what he could do to change things. He would rather stand outside with dignity than make a fool of himself trying to gain access to their tight circle.  But either way, he wasn’t going to let this messed-up weasel make this about him. 

            “So let me get this straight,” he said, “If you were in love with the Lister in your universe then why do you hate mine so much?”

“You don’t always have to like somebody to love them. I hated my Lister in many ways...For how he made me feel, for toying with me the way he did...” Rimmer found himself shocked, horrified and yet horribly fascinated, “You mean he knew you were in love with him?”

“Oh, he knew,” the double said bitterly, “He acted like he had no idea, because he knew I’d never be brave enough to confront him, but he knew and he got a kick out of tormenting me!  It was like a game to him! A form of entertainment!”

“What did he do?”

“The same things he does to you.”   

                  Rimmer physically staggered, “What?! What are you talking about?”

“You mean you really haven’t noticed?”

“You’re crazy!” Rimmer exclaimed.

“It’s just like it was in my universe,” the double insisted, “The way he teases you, and banters over every little thing. The way he’s kind to you one minute, then pushes you away the next. The way he always tries to make you jealous by buddying up with Cat and Kryten!”

“But...That’s just Lister! That’s just the way he is. It’s the way things are here.” The double shook his head pityingly, “You’re a fool if you think that. He knows what he’s doing. And he knows how you feel about him, no matter how hard you try to hide it.”

“Look,” Rimmer started to back away, “I think you’ve got the wrong end of the weevil here. I don’t love Lister. Smeg, I don’t even like the little goit most of the time!”

“You don’t have to pretend to me. I’m you! I understand!”

“You really, really, really smegging don’t!” Rimmer said emphatically, “I can assure you that our experiences are utterly dissimilar.”

            His double stared at him hard, “Can you look me in the eyes and tell me honestly that you’ve never longed to be closer to him? That you’ve never opened up and told him things that you’ve never told anyone else hoping that he’d do the same; that it would bring the two of you together somehow?” Rimmer swallowed hard, thinking of those early, empty nights back on Red Dwarf. The two of them alone in that huge echoing space sharing stories of their childhoods, their relationships, their hopes, dreams and aspirations... “Back when we first lost the crew,” his double continued, “We would have these long conversations. We would talk about our lives before we met, about how we grew up. We would spend hours opening up to each other and I would start to believe that he did care about me, that there might be a chance. But as soon as there was anyone else around it was all different.” 

            Rimmer gulped. It did all sound so familiar and yet...he was sure he would know if he was in love with Lister. How could he have spent so many years of his life – or rather death – with somebody and not know how he felt about them? Yes, there had been moments between them of...intimacy? Tenderness? Having never really experienced those feelings with anyone else Rimmer was unsure how to class them. There had been Nirvanah, of course, but that whole experience had been so brief and intense and they’d hardly known one another. He knew Lister better than he’d ever known anyone else – and allowed Lister to know more about him than anyone else. Was that love? Did Lister...Oh God...Did Lister think Rimmer loved him? Had he known Rimmer was in love with him without Rimmer ever knowing it himself? He started to gnaw anxiously on his fingers. 

            “Now do you understand?” the other Rimmer was asking him, “That little bastard tortured me! For years he dangled the carrot of his affection in front of my face only to snatch it away again every time he risked losing face with those idiots he called friends,” the double said with venom. Another memory flickered into life in Rimmer’s head and drove a pang of hurt and self-doubt through his being - (I love you, man. I really, really love you) -  “I thought it was all over with,” the double went on, “ I thought maybe I could finally move on, find some sort of peace. But here he is again, haunting me. And this time I don’t just have to endure it, I have to watch it too. I...I almost wish you’d never found me!”  

 

Comments

[hazeltea.livejournal.com]

This has potential to be really addictive.

[laurenthemself]

Oh Gawd. This one really is a nail-biter. I'll be watching for more of this!

[sariele-eden.livejournal.com]

Wow, I love where this is going... Thanks, can't wait for the next part! :)

[tits-teapot.livejournal.com]

I really like it, it's very nicely written I had no trouble with reading (me and English...). I especially love the second's Rimmer character. I wonder how is it going to continue, it's pretty dramatic! Yay for next one!

[erinptah]

Oh, this is intriguing.

Now I'm curious whether alt!Lister was really that nasty or just as oblivious as our!Lister...whether there's anything insidious in what happened to alt!Starbug...whether our!Lister and our!Rimmer will hook up, and how alt!Rimmer will fit into that.

Keep 'em coming!

[ereshkigal2.livejournal.com]

When is more? Please? Leave it to Rimmer to rub his problems in his own face- like transferring poison.