reddwarfslash | "Good Enough" - Rimmer/Lister

Pairing: Rimmer/Lister

Rating: PG

Plot description: Some time after "Set You Free", The newly minted Ace Rimmer does some unpleasant self examination after realizing that by becoming "Ace" he was only running from his feelings for Lister, but now it's too late.

This fic spawned a random phrase...the idea of steampunk versions of RD characters makes me salivate with joy. Maybe I'll have to draw/fic that.

BTW, I originally wrote this between the inspiring lines of the song, but took them out because I find songfics really irritating as they "break the flow".

090. Home. fromfanfic100 set - my table is found here

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Written while listening to "Ugly" by the Smashing Pumpkins
Notable lyrics:
"I don't look in the mirror, I don't like what I see staring back at me , Everything is clearer, I'll never see what you see"
"It's not me so beautiful and free, I'll never be what you need, Can't help at all, I was born so beautiful, But now I'm ugly
"And I rot in my skin, as a piece of me dies everyday, I know I'm nothing"
"I know there's nothing I can say to change the judgement in their ways"
"(I can go anywhere, somewhere) I'm good enough, but I don't care, I'm good enough, but I'm not there, I'm good enough, but I don't care, The sun is out, but I'm not there"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rimmer pulled the wig free of his hologrammatic head. It's not as if he could sweat, but he could smegging well itch. He sank painfully on to the counter in his makeshift bedroom. He'd been stuck in this GELF civil war for what seemed like eons. Normally Rimmer adored this sort of thing, it was all war strategy, the glory of battle.

It had lost some of its charm. Sitting in a bunker day-in day-out, screaming to his troops over the howling wind, rain slashing the electronic particles that made up his skin. At first he'd relished it, the accolades he was given, the reputation that preceded him..... and bit by bit, as he witnessed comrades fall, he felt the part of him that was hidden away struggle for control. In the beginning he had referred to it as the "Ace inside his head". Rimmer sometimes fought the voice, but slowly he was beginning to realizie it was his conscience. Every time he'd smegged off on Red Dwarf, the times he shivered in hiding, somehow managing to holographically soil himself from sheer terror, that voice had been screaming, struggling. And Rimmer had ignored it. He remembered the time he'd endangered his crewmates' lives by using the escape pod in the simulant ship and Lister had tried to talk to that part of him.

Lister had somehow seen the better part of him inside. Lister, the man he'd loathed, the man he detested, the man who he had to keep sane. Rimmer hadn't even been able to be selfless in that. The bickering and jibes were all because he had wanted to pull Lister down, knock him off of that cheery chirpy pedestal where everything and everyone was "okay". It wasn't for any Ace smegging Rimmer-y reason, that was for sure!

But Lister had reached out to him, for affection, for help. Lister was certain that the good in him was not so far from the surface, certain that he could somehow fix Rimmer. Fix him, and somehow find solace in him.

"Heal my mental wounds...Hah!" Rimmer curled his lip, disgusted with himself, "Heal me. Nothing could ever...fix....THIS."

Arnold J. Rimmer raised his gaze to the mirror and ran his hand over his smooth forehead. 'Fraud,' he thought, 'You're so disgusting. If you really deserved any of this respect you wouldn't have to hide yourself like this.'

Rimmer felt almost naked without his H. He'd worn it for so long, he'd come to be...not fond exactly, but accustomed to it. It was his cross to bear, in a way. The symbol of his difference, the difference he'd had his entire life. And in death he'd personified it. And yet, now he was wearing another man's clothes, his very reputation....smeg, even his hair!

It was now all he could see when he looked in the mirror now. All the ways he wasn't Ace. All the tiny ways he didn't deserve any of this.

It was all so clear now. Lister was wrong. There was not enough good in old Arnie J. Never enough. Not to make up for his whole existence.

But Lister was right about one thing. Rimmer wasn't born a failure. He had such promise.... before his family...

Rimmer cringed.

Before his family got their hands on him he may have made it, been an officer, been that bloke that everyone likes... instead of a chicken soup dispenser repairman, whom everyone hated. Hated for good reason, Rimmer knew now, looking back. That night Lister had assured him it was all in the past, and that he understood now. But Lister would never understand. The fetid wreckage in Rimmer's psyche was tangled and torn. It was broken past all help. There may have been a point in the far far past when Rimmer could have been saved, but the chance for that, like the human race, was over. Rimmer knew how ugly he was inside.

And worse, Rimmer himself knew, and also knew in the part of him that was Ace, that he didn't deserve help. Didn't deserve what Lister was offering him. And when the Liverpudlian had offered him an out, a way to avoid it.... Rimmer had snatched it. A way to avoid saving himself.

Rimmer groaned and chewed on his fist. This was all wrong. Slinking to his bunk, Rimmer fell into an uneasy sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Months later, after the GELF civil war had come to a truce, both sides co-operated to build a 10 foot tall likeness of Ace Rimmer out of dung. Rimmer couldn't help but admire the suitability of the medium. After leaving the GELF world, he hopped through dimension after dimension, helping random droids and GELFS.... sometimes helping alternate versions of the Dwarf crew. Female versions, amphibian versions, steampunk versions, mechanoid versions... every sort of variance on reality that was available. Rimmer preferred to avoid the Red Dwarf crew, overall. They reminded him too much of what he'd lost. And seeing the alternate Rimmers was always agonizing. He saw himself as he'd been before, as a part of him still was. He remembered the smeggy attitude he'd aimed at the first Ace they'd encountered. God, had that Ace been struggling with the same part of his personality every time he looked at Rimmer? Are all Aces huge colossal fakers like me?

And yet, Rimmer longed to choke each and every Rimmer he encountered. Break the cycle indeed, Listy. We all deserve to die. We're all just as smegging broken, just as unfixable....just as ugly inside.

With every dimension he felt more and more hollow, as if a part of him was being emptied out. He felt it echo late at night, with no way to control the thoughts careening around inside him. He clutched at his stomach when he slept, curled into a fetal position. Technically he could have just turned himself off and set the computer to reactivate him in the morning. But he hated the way "not existing" felt. He was still conscious in his light bee, could still sense. As bad as the sleepless nights were, it was better to be able to hold himself, feel something. If there was a way for a dead man to feel more dead, he'd found it. He hadn't even felt this disconnected when he hadn't been able to touch anything. No matter what dimension he was in, he always knew that he was a fake, a bad copy. He was wearing Ace's form, with none of the function. And he was lonely. Yet, for some reason this damned bacofoil suit, poofter hair, aviators and that git voice were an instant panty remover. And briefs remover, come to that.

He always found some way of politely declining. Not that he didn't WANT to, god, it'd been ages since that last decisive tumble. But some part of him felt that he was lying. They wanted to have sex with Ace Rimmer. And there was no way he could be that for them. It was bloody hard enough leading troops into tenuous death traps, but to have a lover gazing at him with trust in their eyes... well, it reminded him of Lister.

Lister, who had wanted HIM, Arnold Rimmer, not smegging Ace.

Lister, who had told him he was "worth it".

Lister, who had pulled Rimmer's lower lip into his own mouth while mumbling "S'alright, y'kno-"

No, it was no good thinking of that.

Rimmer pushed the thought away, drawing up his shoulders and squinting as if to help.

'This is how things are now, Arnie boy', he told himself coldly, "You've made your bed, so lie in it. Lie in it..lying is the only thing that you're good at."

Rimmer knew that he was never going to be good enough. Not even if he went to his father now, impossibly resurrected from millions of years past, somehow brought here to pass judgement on his youngest son, Rimmer wouldn't measure up. His father would see right through to the fraud Rimmer knew he was hiding. His mother would say something impossibly cruel, and probably bugger off to shag a GELF bloke or something. To his parents, even Ace Rimmer would never been good enough. He knew there was nothing he could do about it, yet it rankled within him. Worse, he knew that they had set him up to never be good enough for himself either.

Rimmer realized he may be "good enough" to pretend to be Ace, but he knew in his heart that it wasn't truly him. He ached. He wanted to stop. He wanted to grab a new Rimmer, and send him off dimension jumping instead. One day, Rimmer knew the emptiness inside him would swell to gargantuan proportions and not only would he break the chain, he would have broken his soul. It was time to try and fix the pain that grew in him, time to ask for help. Rimmer knew he could go anywhere he wanted with this ship, but there was only one place he wanted to go right now. Home.