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reddwarfslash2009-04-12 10:24 pm
Back to Dwarf (PG)
BEFORE YOU READ FURTHER!: Back to Earth Spoilers in this fic.
Back to Dwarf
Rating:PG (for a bit of suicidal ideology)
Pairings: Lister/Kochanski (ugh), Lister/Rimmer (yay!)
Notes: Who is there to pick up the pieces after...y'know...stuff? (so much for not posting spoilers...)
SPOILERS: BACK TO EARTH!!! (you've been warned)
Life had been a struggle before, now it was just hell. Loving someone who wasn’t interested in you wasn’t made harder, or easier, by the absence of other humankind. It caused the same amount of pain, with perhaps a dash more inadequacy. If you were the last man alive, and she didn’t want you, well, you must be a loser.
She made his days brighter with her presence, and his nights darker with her absence. Kochanski. His love for her grew more desperate with each passing year, as did his despair over a life spent alone, in the company of the one person he wanted and couldn’t have.
There wasn’t an endless supply of alcohol on board, but certainly enough to keep him drunk for the rest of his life. Not that he much cared how long that would be. Ten days, fifty years – it would all look the same as today, which didn’t bear thinking about. Her face would still look as beautiful, as untouchable. Many times her eyes would dwell on him from across the room, he knew. Pity was the last thing he needed to see in that face, and he drank more to blur the edges of such a painful view.
She couldn’t give him what he needed, and without it, he had no joy in life. Only the reminder of what he wasn’t; what he could never be. The guilt tore at her insides. This man; this sweet, loving man had lost his will to live. It was her fault, though her intentions were as innocent as the darkness in deep space was vast. Her dear friend, tortured by her very nearness-- it was unbearable to witness. He would never be her Dave. If she could fall in love with this Dave, of course she would. She had tried. It would solve everything, she reasoned. But love was illogical, and her heart was already spoken for. Painfully so.
Over the last few months, concern over the pathetic drinking binges and drunken sobbing fits had given way to a larger fear for his safety. Lister, it transpired, was a passive danger to himself. The skutters had found him multiple times passed out by airlocks (too many times to be coincidence). Kryten believed he was working up the courage to flush himself into space, but thankfully so far had been too much a coward (despite the level of alcohol in his blood).
He’d begun to take baths. This alone sent off alarm bells in the crew’s heads. He would fill up the tub, get in, and drink marijuana gin until he passed out crying. Not one of the other three souls on board wanted to broach the subject, lest it put ideas in his head, but they had discussed the probability that he could drown in such a way. And the fact that he didn’t seem to care, in fact, he might invite such an eventuality.
Kryten panicked whenever his charge disappeared from view. They would find him wandering the supply decks, swaying precariously close to the stair railings with a far-off look in his eyes. Or lying on the floor in the observation dome that held the communal grave, pictures of the dead crew in his hands (their peaceful circling of the gravestone disturbed). Or sleeping in the deserted bunks of his lost friends aboard the vessel, mumbling to himself, too blind drunk to know where he was.
Kochanski knew she had to leave when she found him one frantic night on the landing deck. He had been missing for hours, and Kryten was almost convinced Mr. Lister had finally managed to do himself in. He was checking the airlocks while she thought to take a peek in the unused floors. Nothing down there but Starbug 9, with a faulty engine, and a few Blue Midgets. It was so unlikely, but she needed to be sure they’d checked everywhere before they decided he was truly gone.
Lister had been inside the Starbug, sitting next to a fire lit in an empty barrel.
“Dave!” She had exclaimed, elated that he was alive and on board. “Dave, we’ve all been so worried!”
He hadn’t responded.
She noticed something burning in the fire.
“Dave, what have you been doing? What is all this?”
His eyes were glassy, and they stared into the fire without acknowledging her voice at all.
She looked closer into the flames. And her heart sank.
“Your guitar? Your guitar! Oh my god…” her eyes were suddenly swimming in frustrated tears as she sank to the ground, searching his face for any sort of response. Nothing. He was burning his most prized possession, yet his countenance remained dull and lifeless. She wondered if he would even feel the fire on his skin if she pushed his hand into it. An empty bottle of THC Gin was lying next to the chair.
“Why?” She asked, after minutes had passed. “Why?!” this time angrier. “What is wrong with you?!”
He had passed out.
Once he had been safely delivered to the medibay, Kochanski had told Kryten of her decision. She wouldn’t watch this happen anymore. Surely with her gone, he would have a chance at happiness? She couldn’t see how, but anything had to be better than the current state of affairs. Her being around was killing him. And she was suffering the dreadful guilt of unwittingly hurting someone she cared for.
A Blue Midget, a huge stock of supplies, and a heavy heart had carried her away from what was perhaps now the loneliest Red Dwarf in any dimension.
When Kryten told him the love of his life was dead, the last tether holding him to this world snapped. He finally had the last push he needed, and now a certainty that he no longer wanted to live.
What was the smegging point? There wasn’t one. They were never getting back to Earth. He was never going to have Krissie and a family. He was a miserable remnant of a long-extinct species. Time to die.
Luckily his two remaining friends had considered this outcome, and been very careful to remove any harmful elements from his surroundings. No knives, no glass, no medications, or even bathtubs (after a close call the day he’d heard the news). For a week they even confiscated his clothes, to be sure he wouldn’t try to hang himself. He might have a will, but there was no way. Not on their watch.
Cat and Kryten did not let him leave the medibay for a month. He was on suicide watch every second. His movements were tracked on the mainframe. They didn’t know how they could keep him alive, but they knew they had to stop him from becoming dead.
It was entirely unexpected for the Wildfire to appear, seemingly out of nowhere (and just avoiding a collision with the Dwarf) asking for docking privileges, but wholly welcome. Once landed, even as the reverse thrusters were noisily powering down, the cockpit opened and Ace emerged.
His walk was hurried, his posture significantly more weasley than the character demanded, but the two greeting him barely noticed.
“Where is he?” were the first words that he spoke, his eyes worried.
“In the medibay, sir,” Kryten responded, surprised that Ace knew of their predicament.
Ace said not a word more, but hurried on foot to the room where Lister was being kept (door locked from the outside). Cat was impressed that the man knew the way, but then, he expected Ace had a kind of special sense for these things (as a Cat would), that made him superior to other monkeys.
Once the unlock sequence had been entered and the doors opened, Ace rushed forward to the bed where Lister lay, wrists held apart by straps on the bedframe, asleep.
Once near, Ace was totally still, taking in the scene.
“What the smegging hell have you done?” He asked of the sleeping man (whose eyes fluttered at the sound of a voice nearby, preparing to awaken). All pretense of his voice had gone. By all aural accounts, he was Arnie J.
Ace reached up to his head and pulled off his wig. Cat and Kryten both began to ask questions at once. Rimmer turned to them slightly, “Shh, I’ll explain later.” He then turned purposefully back toward Lister, whose eyes were now open and questioning.
The unruly brown hair. The concerned eyes. The epic nasal passages. The…shiny silver jacket?
“Rimmer?” he questioned.
The hologram smiled, then frowned as he eyed the restraints. He leaned over to untie them.
“Don’t worry, Lister,’ he said as the right hand was freed from its strap, “I’m back now.”
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give me time. please! i want to beg you, oh (plotbunny) Creator, for more time!
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and smut(after the lawls filled one they gave) of lister and crew.(btw, lister pretty much gave up his dream krissie for "real krissie", but we all know it's really RIMMER, after all, she's been gone for ages! =DD)
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obsession is *like* love...but it's not the same.
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Either way, I'd love to see some snarkyness and whatnot and possibly even inclusion of that "sounds like the last time you had sex" bit =DD
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but..but..*sleep*...
nah, who needs it! i'll sleep when i'm dead.
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You're going to need a dream machine if you don't sleep sometime....though hey, maybe you could have it show you psycodelic R&L luff that you could write about later! THAT SOUNDS AWESOME.
Oh PPS
Re: Oh PPS
incidentally, i think you should clarify what is *too* angsty, because i am obviously quite an angstophile. don't want to disappoint.
the ceiling for me is not killing them or making them long-term psychologically scarred (and that second one may be malleable...).
Re: Oh PPS
And I'll leave the scripts so long as I can keep the smut collection luv. xDD
Re: Oh PPS
(hee...lovers' tiff)
Re: Oh PPS
(oh for sure =D they're a bitter married couple- I've pointed this out many a time and again to my friends while watching even the oldest eps)
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Yay! Thanks!
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Lister has broken slightly before, can't remember the episode though, he just was fed up with everything. It makes sense that he'd break without Rimmer.
Also, reading comments, and yay possible moar!
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lovely fic, helps to explain a lot of loose ends in BTE.
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ANGST! i'd be lost without it. :)
blarg! i toss aside your well-reasoned arguments, and counteract with "yes, but for most of that they were in a hallucination, so it was all bollocks". a (bit) crap retaliation, i know.
hmm. i have yet to coax plotbunnies out of the shadows to explain some of it, though. but it *will* be done!
(incidentally, i did throw in an homage to 'Marooned', which i was hoping people would pick up on and then question -- huh? but if he's moping about kochanski, why is he recreating a moment when he betrayed Rimmer, but this time he's trying to do it *right*?? 'course, marijuana gin can be quite a bizarre experience, i'm sure...)
Yay! glad you read it. Love your feedback, always.
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I'd love to read more.....
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The Lister angst is so sad and so well done, and the ending is so sweet. Perfect. I choose to believe that is what actually happened. *nods*
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this IS what actually happened.
;)
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I did notice the Marooned bit as well, that was a nice touch. Love that episode.