reddwarfslash | Erm, hello!

Hello everyone! *waves madly* My name's Carrie, and I have this annoying habit of lurking around communities and never posting anything. But I'm turning over a new leaf! So, erm, here's a drabbley shaped thing. Spoilers for Holoship, SMAC and Ouroboros.

When Rimmer left to go live on that Holoship, Lister knew it was only a matter of time before he came back. Not that the smeghead felt any connection to them or the Dwarf or anything. It was just inevitable that he'd smeg up his new life and he'd have to return to them, pretending he'd never wanted to leave in the first place. So all that auditioning for his replacement was just for a laugh, something to wind Rimmer up before he left. And when he returned, Lister wasn't even slightly surprised, though he never did find out what happened.

When Rimmer left to become Ace, Lister sort of thought it'd be the same thing. Yeah, the smeghead had gotten a bit better over the years, but the minute he ran into anything dangerous he'd be out of there and back on Starbug faster than you could say “what a guy!”. Putting on a blond wig and tinfoil suit wouldn't change the fact that Rimmer was a selfish coward. He'd offload the job to the first person he found and come back to them, to Lister. It was only a matter of time.

Funny thing is, it's been a while now. So, unless Rimmer's now just a shattered light bee in a ring around a planet, it looks like the impossible has actually happened: the smeghead has really left for good. And the ship is oddly quiet without his snide remarks, or those rare moments when he'd show a little of the person hidden underneath. It isn't the same without him.

It's better, though. It must be. He has Krissie now, even if she's not quite the Krissie he remembers, and he doesn't have to listen to Risk stories or hammond organ music. They don't have to rescue Rimmer from whatever mess he's gotten himself into, and they don't have to worry about being abandoned on collapsing Simulant ships. It is a good thing Rimmer left. He should've done it years ago.

Yet sometimes, when it's late at night and he can't sleep, Lister finds himself wondering about it. If he'd known that it was for good, that Rimmer wouldn't come back this time, would he have persuaded him to become Ace? If he could do it all again, would he still let him go?

And on these nights, on these restless nights where sleep is thousands of light-years away, Lister has the horrible feeling that he wouldn't.