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reddwarfslash2010-04-27 12:41 am
kahvi.livejournal.com) wrote in reddwarfslash2010-04-27 12:41 am
Entry tags:
Fic: Perspective - R/L - R
Title: Perspective
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't even own the fictional series IX and X of Red Dwarf. I make no money from this fannish venture.
Beta: The amazing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
roadstergal, who seems to know what I'm trying to write more than I do myself.
Spoilers: Set between VIII and Back to Earth.
Notes: Last year, I promised the very lovelysunny_bexster a story. You'll note that it is no longer last year. I got terribly stuck, and it's not exactly what I set out to write, but it is all for her, with much appreciation and love. You're the best, m'dear!
Lister replayed the conversation in his head, over and over again as he stalked the corridors looking for the AR-suite. Every time the nanos rebuilt Red Dwarf - not that it was a bi-weekly occurrence - its layout seemed to shift, subtly. Well, the little buggers had minds of their own. Unlike some people Lister could name.
"So the only time you won't watch a Christmas movie is actually during Christmas? I shouldn't be surprised."
"I told ya, it's too depressing."
"Too depressing? You keep telling me it's life-affirming and full of hope!"
"Yeah, but it all ends with a happy Christmas. Not much chance of that here, is there?"
The first few years they’d been stranded in space together, Lister had made a great big production out of Christmas and any other holiday he could find on the calendar. When he ran out of British ones, he’d asked Holly for a comprehensive list of major holidays celebrated everywhere from India to Ganymede, and picked out the ones he liked best. Rimmer thought it all was patently ridiculous, especially when – for example - Thanksgiving dinner interrupted his afternoon roll call, in which he called upon all crew members, every single one of whom he knew to be dead. They each had their own way of coping.
After a while, though… Christmas had always been about family to Lister. The huge gaggle of extended family that somehow materialized at his gran’s come Christmas Eve, and stayed at least through Boxing Day, if not until after New Years, and later, when she’d died, he’d spend those late December days in a succession of his friends’ flats, moving from couch to couch like a happy holiday nomad. If anything, he cared more about Christmas after his gran died, because it always reminded him of her, and the happy times they’d had, despite everything. That was around the time he started watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ obsessively too, come to think.
Finding the right door, finally, Lister slammed the Door Open switch with his fist.
"I don't see why you care so much; it's such an absurd premise, anyway."
"What is?"
"The idea that you'll feel better about yourself if you’re shown what happened if you were never born. What utter smeg!"
"It's not smeg, Rimmer; that's the entire point of the film. Everyone has done something important in their lives, even if they don't know what it is. Everyone's made a difference in some way."
“Poppycock! George Bailey made a difference because he's apparently the love child of Mother Theresa and Barack Obama. The average person doesn’t rescue siblings from drowning or build affordable homes for the financially disadvantaged; the average person counts it as a good year if they’ve given spare change to a busker once or twice. And I think you’ll find that contributing to the continued existence of experimental violin-music on the London tube system has a limited effect on space-time.”
Of course Rimmer didn’t get it. Lister grimaced, kicking away some stray bit of machinery that had rolled to the side of the AR-set up, nearly tripping him. Rimmer, by his own admission, had never loved anyone. If any of the people in his life had gone missing, Lister included, he’d probably consider himself better off. That hadn’t stopped Lister from trying to argue the point, though.
“Everyone makes a difference, Rimmer. Look at Kochanski; now she’s gone, and I’m a wreck, aren’t I? That’s changed my life, make no mistake!”
“So what? If Kochanski had never been born, you would have found someone else to pointlessly drool after.”
Jaw set, Lister pulled out the input console, and started clicking through the on-screen options. Now and then, he paused, while painstakingly typing up specific instructions using the impotent little keyboard. It was a simple enough program, really; they used it all the time for prediction and risk-assessment before raiding derelicts, or plotting particularly difficult flight patterns through asteroid fields or dormant Simulant fleets. Kryten had even used it to predict the response to new, experimental recipes. All their personalities and backgrounds were already plotted in, so all that remained was to enter the variables, and run it through the AR-console.
“People aren’t interchangeable! You couldn't just take someone else and put her in Kris's place; it wouldn't be the same!”
“It wouldn't? So the Kochanski that survived in an alternate universe looked and acted exactly the same as the Kochanski that died in the accident in ours?”
‘Kochanski, Kristine’ Lister typed carefully, adding the last few bits of necessary data. Jumping into the small enclosed AR-space, he pressed ‘Enter’ awkwardly with his elbow, and began strapping himself in to the muted ‘bleeps’ of the countdown.
“That’s different.”
“Is it really? Well, I’m sure you know best. But look at it this way, Listy; if you’re right, and every person makes a such a big smegging difference, look how your life ended up with her in it! Are you seriously arguing that it would be worse without her?”
“I’ll show you smegging worse,” Lister mumbled, securing his goggles. Sound and vision abruptly ceased, wrapping him in a cocoon of sensory deprivation that was almost claustrophobic until…
…soft skin surrounded him; hands caressing him, legs rubbing up and down his own, arms wrapped around his waist. Lister’s brain balked at the abrupt influx of sensation, but soon allowed itself to let go, losing itself in the moment. It was only a simulation; a 99,5% accurate prediction of what might have been, had Kristine Kochanski not existed. Lister sighed, pleasure and curiosity fighting to get the upper hand. His cock was buried deep inside something warm and tight; he felt hips moving in concert with his own, skin slapping against skin. A stubbly cheek caressing his own.
Stubbly. OK.
Lister had only slept with one man; Petersen, on an ill-advised planet-leave on Callisto. Well, to his knowledge - there were those five hours during the night of his 18th birthday party that he couldn’t fully account for. And... well, it wasn't important, was it? He’d never even so much as fancied a snog from anyone else that didn’t have tits and a vagina. Fine. OK. So without Kris there, he’d be shagging Petersen. At least that meant there’d be shagging. And maybe, just maybe, Holly would have brought Petersen back then, if they were shagging regularly. That’d be like… Lister fought to think clearly in this mid-coitus sensory chaos… a couple, almost. Yeah! Him and Petersen, shagging their way across the stars… ouch!
Lister shin hit something, painfully, and he instantly realized where they were; there was no mistaking the mind-bogglingly stupid construction of Starbug’s bunks. Well, that confirmed it; if they were on Starbug, this would have to be a hard-light hologram Petersen, or they couldn’t be shagging. Because this was definitely a hologram, Lister thought, leaning back just enough to see the outline of the reflective ‘H’ on Petersen’s forehead, slick with sweat that made his tight curls stick to it… tight, brown… Lister blinked, looking again. Tight brown curls, hazel eyes, flaring nostrils…
Yelping, Lister clapped his hands, ripped the peripherals off, and ran from the room.
“…a merry little Christmas… Let your heart be light….”
A garland of tinsel had been arranged cheerfully around his neck. Sighing, Lister threw the dangling end of it over one shoulder, picking at a mince pie without much enthusiasm. At least Kryten claimed they were mince pies; the pastry looked more like plasticene than anything else. Lister hadn't gotten as far as to the filling just yet, and perhaps that was for the best.
“...our troubles will be out of sight...”
Kryten was shuffling to and fro, throwing tinsel over everything and hanging baubles from various outcropping bits; trailed by Cat, who promptly threw himself at the decorations whenever the mechanoid's back was turned, batting them down and beating them into submission. Lister watched them intently, in the hopes of distracting himself. A good five hours after the fact, and he just couldn't get the AR-scenario out of his mind.
“…merry little Christmas; make the Yuletide...”
He couldn't understand why; it' wasn't real. Just because some machine predicted it, didn't mean he and Rimmer were...
“…gay....”
"Hey Krytes; do we have to listen that song?"
Kryten did his best to frown, a Herculean task with a face like his. "Don't you like it, sir?"
"I like it fine; I'm just... not in the mood for it just now. OK?"
“Is anything the matter, sir?” Kryten paused to shoo the Cat away from the garlands criss-crossing the fuse box. “Why, you’ve hardly even touched your pie!”
“I’ll be all right; it’s just taking me a bit longer than usual to get into the Christmas spirit, is all.”
Kryten nodded uncertainly, flicking a nipple to silence the music, much to Lister’s relief. Selecting a particularly festive-looking gilded ball – which Lister couldn’t bring himself to look directly at – he leaned across the table to affix it to the Esc-key of a wall-mounted keyboard. He coughed, about as convincingly as his facial features. "Of course, the holidays can be such a trying time for those who have suffered... I mean to say..." he faltered, looking guiltier than usual.
“It’s not Kris,” Lister said, hurriedly. "I mean, I miss her still, but it's been nine months."
"That's not very long sir, considering..."
"It's long enough," Lister snapped. "I should know."
“Quite so, sir. I only meant…”
“I know what you meant.” The pie loomed in front of Lister, as menacing as seasonal pastry could manage. He no more felt like eating it than the tinsel Cat was scattering in his latest ambush.
Kryten leaned in, placing a square hand on Lister’s shoulder, awkwardly. “It’s Mr. Rimmer, isn’t it?”
Lister shifted nervously. “What about Rimmer?”
“You shouldn’t let him get to you, sir. He came in this afternoon, positively bristling.”
“Oh eh,” Lister said, carefully, “what about?”
“Truth be told, sir, he wasn’t terribly coherent. Something about ‘uselessness’ and Ms Kochanski.” Kryten lowered his eyes, like he always did when mentioning her. It was beginning to irritate Lister; it wasn’t like the mechanoid had thrown her out of the airlock himself!
“What,” he said, patiently, “about uselessness and Ms Kocanski?”
“Well…” Kryten paused, setting his box of decorations down, “the gist of it seemed to be that if anyone mattered in this universe, it certainly wouldn’t be some piece of totty, and that his own contributions as a second class technician outweighed that of a mere navigations officer, what with the ship almost running itself. He cited the inefficiency of skutter maws in extracting gunk from the inside of coffee dispensers as an example, sir.”
“The reason they didn’t use skutters for that is ‘cause they were too expensive.”
“Precisely so, sir. I attempted to communicate this to Mr. Rimmer, but he paid me no heed. Then,” Kryten coughed, glancing at Cat, who was busy looking uninterested in a corner, “he got a funny sort of look on his face, and asked ‘I’m not insignificant, am I?’”
Lister covered his face with his hands.
“As it happened, Mr. Cat had rather a lot to say on the subject.”
“I told him, if he didn’t wear those shiny, brightly colored uniforms, I wouldn’t even know he was there,” Cat supplied, helpfully.
“I may have added one or two things myself, sir,” Kryten admitted. “Then… well… he ran off.”
Lister pushed his chair back, crushing an ornament. “Where to?”
“He didn’t say, sir, but he mentioned something about ‘seeing for himself’.”
Panting, Lister burst through the door to the AR suite, nearly tripping, once again, over a stray piece of machinery. It was odd seeing clutter again after years on Starbug, where the rarely offline Kryten more than managed to keep everything perpetually pristine. Not even he could keep up with a ship the size of Red Dwarf, however, and as they had done before the mechanoid arrived, things had started piling up here and there.
“Rimmer?”
There was no answer from the corners of the ill-lit room. The loungers themselves were empty. A vague sense of unease slowly rose in Lister’s stomach; something was very wrong here. Rimmer, for all his grandstanding, was his own worst critic. Lister had never met a man who disliked himself more; Lister had even seen him get into an argument with his reflection once. The reflection had won. What sort of a state would a man like that be in when confronted with his own utter insignificance on a cosmic scale? Lister didn’t want to begin to speculate.
“You in here, man?”
Lister frowned. If Rimmer wasn’t still here, he was probably off brooding somewhere; diesel decks, most likely. At least that was better than psychotic mania. Lister took a step back, wincing as something went ‘crunch’ underfoot. They had got to get Kryten in here more often. It was more important than spraying fake snow on the viewscreens. Shaking his boot, Lister lifted it gingerly. Underneath lay a slightly dented oblong metal object. At first glance it could have been one of Kryten’s baubles, but it was the wrong shape. And Christmas ornaments didn’t have little LED lights… Dead, dark LED-lights. Lister’s stomach, which had hitherto only been sinking, dropped like a ton of metaphorical bricks.
He couldn't have. Even Rimmer wouldn't have...
Huffing in frustration, Lister held the light bee up to his ear, shaking it, stopping himself when he realized that would probably only make things worse. More gently, he turned the thing over and over in his hands, looking for some small sign of life. If only he knew how to switch the thing on! But this was a highly sophisticated piece of machinery, lightyears ahead of anything Lister had ever used in his lifetime. There wouldn’t exactly an… oh. Somewhat bemused, Lister pressed the raised, red button labeled ‘on’, and threw the bee into the air.
The bee rose majestically, spinning in the air and catching the artificial light before falling to the ground with a dull ‘thud’.
Lister yelped. He’d killed him. He’d killed a dead man; that had to be worse than just regular killing. Killing someone who was already dead was adding insult to injury, surely? When a familiar outline started fading into view, Lister nearly cried in relief.
“Go away,” Rimmer said, the moment his mouth was fully formed. His body, a mismatched set of arms and legs in various uniforms, lay sprawled on the deck like a dismayed starfish.
“Yer alive!”
“Not for the last three million years, give or take.”
“No, but…” Lister swallowed, taking in the patchwork body. Bits and pieces of uniform faded in and out, cycling between red, blue, green, beige and purple. "Did I do that?"
Rimmer snorted. "What; get me drunk? I managed well enough on my own, thank you very much."
"Drunk?"
Trying his best to sit up, Rimmer pointed a finger in Lister's direction. "Yes. Filthy, outrageously drunk. And what of it?"
"I take it you ran the sim then."
Rimmer nodded, the exaggerated action nearly knocking him to the floor again. "Yes. I did. A world without Rimmer. Smegging wonderful."
Torn between wanting to help Rimmer up and wanting to get the smeg out of there, Lister remained nervously put. "Bad, was it?"
"No,," Rimmer slurred petulatly, "I said it was smegging wonderful. Absolutely fan-smegging tastic. You saw it, didn't you?"
"I did?"
"Yes, when you ran off like the little sissy cry... cry... thingy you are; that's what you did, wasn't it? See what the world would be like without Arnold J? Well," Rimmer held out an unsteady hand, and Lister, unthinkingly, grabbed it. "let me be the first to congratulate you on being right, Listy."
Rimmer had meant it as a handshake, clearly, but Lister pulled him to his feet anyway. "You're admitting I'm right? Now there's a first."
"Everyone was alive," Rimmer mumbled, ignoring him. "Everyone. The Captain. Todhunter. That blonde bartender with the short skirts that used to look at me weirdly when I asked for a white wine spritzer. You were alive." His eyes locked on Lister's, and for a moment, everything was skin and heat and tight spaces. "Kochanski," Rimmer pronounced every consonant spitefully, "was alive. You were married, you know. Three kids. Twin boys and a little girl." Rimmer wrinkled his nose, allowing Lister to steady him as slowly found his footing. "Petersen was sober."
Lister patted him gingerly on the back. "Come on then, let's get you to bed." He chocked on the words immedeately, but Rimmer didn't seem to notice.
"You don't wanna know?"
"Know what?"
"What it would be like? A world without me?" Rimmer's hair was a little mussed, and his 'H' shone with perspiration. Elsewhere, that wouldn't be an unfamiliar sight. Elsewhere... Lister smiled.
"Nah, man. It didn't happen. If it didn't happen, it's not important."
He had to believe that, he thought, herding the rambling, drunken man through the corridors. He had to.
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't even own the fictional series IX and X of Red Dwarf. I make no money from this fannish venture.
Beta: The amazing
roadstergal, who seems to know what I'm trying to write more than I do myself. Spoilers: Set between VIII and Back to Earth.
Notes: Last year, I promised the very lovely
sunny_bexster a story. You'll note that it is no longer last year. I got terribly stuck, and it's not exactly what I set out to write, but it is all for her, with much appreciation and love. You're the best, m'dear! Lister replayed the conversation in his head, over and over again as he stalked the corridors looking for the AR-suite. Every time the nanos rebuilt Red Dwarf - not that it was a bi-weekly occurrence - its layout seemed to shift, subtly. Well, the little buggers had minds of their own. Unlike some people Lister could name.
"So the only time you won't watch a Christmas movie is actually during Christmas? I shouldn't be surprised."
"I told ya, it's too depressing."
"Too depressing? You keep telling me it's life-affirming and full of hope!"
"Yeah, but it all ends with a happy Christmas. Not much chance of that here, is there?"
The first few years they’d been stranded in space together, Lister had made a great big production out of Christmas and any other holiday he could find on the calendar. When he ran out of British ones, he’d asked Holly for a comprehensive list of major holidays celebrated everywhere from India to Ganymede, and picked out the ones he liked best. Rimmer thought it all was patently ridiculous, especially when – for example - Thanksgiving dinner interrupted his afternoon roll call, in which he called upon all crew members, every single one of whom he knew to be dead. They each had their own way of coping.
After a while, though… Christmas had always been about family to Lister. The huge gaggle of extended family that somehow materialized at his gran’s come Christmas Eve, and stayed at least through Boxing Day, if not until after New Years, and later, when she’d died, he’d spend those late December days in a succession of his friends’ flats, moving from couch to couch like a happy holiday nomad. If anything, he cared more about Christmas after his gran died, because it always reminded him of her, and the happy times they’d had, despite everything. That was around the time he started watching ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ obsessively too, come to think.
Finding the right door, finally, Lister slammed the Door Open switch with his fist.
"I don't see why you care so much; it's such an absurd premise, anyway."
"What is?"
"The idea that you'll feel better about yourself if you’re shown what happened if you were never born. What utter smeg!"
"It's not smeg, Rimmer; that's the entire point of the film. Everyone has done something important in their lives, even if they don't know what it is. Everyone's made a difference in some way."
“Poppycock! George Bailey made a difference because he's apparently the love child of Mother Theresa and Barack Obama. The average person doesn’t rescue siblings from drowning or build affordable homes for the financially disadvantaged; the average person counts it as a good year if they’ve given spare change to a busker once or twice. And I think you’ll find that contributing to the continued existence of experimental violin-music on the London tube system has a limited effect on space-time.”
Of course Rimmer didn’t get it. Lister grimaced, kicking away some stray bit of machinery that had rolled to the side of the AR-set up, nearly tripping him. Rimmer, by his own admission, had never loved anyone. If any of the people in his life had gone missing, Lister included, he’d probably consider himself better off. That hadn’t stopped Lister from trying to argue the point, though.
“Everyone makes a difference, Rimmer. Look at Kochanski; now she’s gone, and I’m a wreck, aren’t I? That’s changed my life, make no mistake!”
“So what? If Kochanski had never been born, you would have found someone else to pointlessly drool after.”
Jaw set, Lister pulled out the input console, and started clicking through the on-screen options. Now and then, he paused, while painstakingly typing up specific instructions using the impotent little keyboard. It was a simple enough program, really; they used it all the time for prediction and risk-assessment before raiding derelicts, or plotting particularly difficult flight patterns through asteroid fields or dormant Simulant fleets. Kryten had even used it to predict the response to new, experimental recipes. All their personalities and backgrounds were already plotted in, so all that remained was to enter the variables, and run it through the AR-console.
“People aren’t interchangeable! You couldn't just take someone else and put her in Kris's place; it wouldn't be the same!”
“It wouldn't? So the Kochanski that survived in an alternate universe looked and acted exactly the same as the Kochanski that died in the accident in ours?”
‘Kochanski, Kristine’ Lister typed carefully, adding the last few bits of necessary data. Jumping into the small enclosed AR-space, he pressed ‘Enter’ awkwardly with his elbow, and began strapping himself in to the muted ‘bleeps’ of the countdown.
“That’s different.”
“Is it really? Well, I’m sure you know best. But look at it this way, Listy; if you’re right, and every person makes a such a big smegging difference, look how your life ended up with her in it! Are you seriously arguing that it would be worse without her?”
“I’ll show you smegging worse,” Lister mumbled, securing his goggles. Sound and vision abruptly ceased, wrapping him in a cocoon of sensory deprivation that was almost claustrophobic until…
…soft skin surrounded him; hands caressing him, legs rubbing up and down his own, arms wrapped around his waist. Lister’s brain balked at the abrupt influx of sensation, but soon allowed itself to let go, losing itself in the moment. It was only a simulation; a 99,5% accurate prediction of what might have been, had Kristine Kochanski not existed. Lister sighed, pleasure and curiosity fighting to get the upper hand. His cock was buried deep inside something warm and tight; he felt hips moving in concert with his own, skin slapping against skin. A stubbly cheek caressing his own.
Stubbly. OK.
Lister had only slept with one man; Petersen, on an ill-advised planet-leave on Callisto. Well, to his knowledge - there were those five hours during the night of his 18th birthday party that he couldn’t fully account for. And... well, it wasn't important, was it? He’d never even so much as fancied a snog from anyone else that didn’t have tits and a vagina. Fine. OK. So without Kris there, he’d be shagging Petersen. At least that meant there’d be shagging. And maybe, just maybe, Holly would have brought Petersen back then, if they were shagging regularly. That’d be like… Lister fought to think clearly in this mid-coitus sensory chaos… a couple, almost. Yeah! Him and Petersen, shagging their way across the stars… ouch!
Lister shin hit something, painfully, and he instantly realized where they were; there was no mistaking the mind-bogglingly stupid construction of Starbug’s bunks. Well, that confirmed it; if they were on Starbug, this would have to be a hard-light hologram Petersen, or they couldn’t be shagging. Because this was definitely a hologram, Lister thought, leaning back just enough to see the outline of the reflective ‘H’ on Petersen’s forehead, slick with sweat that made his tight curls stick to it… tight, brown… Lister blinked, looking again. Tight brown curls, hazel eyes, flaring nostrils…
Yelping, Lister clapped his hands, ripped the peripherals off, and ran from the room.
“…a merry little Christmas… Let your heart be light….”
A garland of tinsel had been arranged cheerfully around his neck. Sighing, Lister threw the dangling end of it over one shoulder, picking at a mince pie without much enthusiasm. At least Kryten claimed they were mince pies; the pastry looked more like plasticene than anything else. Lister hadn't gotten as far as to the filling just yet, and perhaps that was for the best.
“...our troubles will be out of sight...”
Kryten was shuffling to and fro, throwing tinsel over everything and hanging baubles from various outcropping bits; trailed by Cat, who promptly threw himself at the decorations whenever the mechanoid's back was turned, batting them down and beating them into submission. Lister watched them intently, in the hopes of distracting himself. A good five hours after the fact, and he just couldn't get the AR-scenario out of his mind.
“…merry little Christmas; make the Yuletide...”
He couldn't understand why; it' wasn't real. Just because some machine predicted it, didn't mean he and Rimmer were...
“…gay....”
"Hey Krytes; do we have to listen that song?"
Kryten did his best to frown, a Herculean task with a face like his. "Don't you like it, sir?"
"I like it fine; I'm just... not in the mood for it just now. OK?"
“Is anything the matter, sir?” Kryten paused to shoo the Cat away from the garlands criss-crossing the fuse box. “Why, you’ve hardly even touched your pie!”
“I’ll be all right; it’s just taking me a bit longer than usual to get into the Christmas spirit, is all.”
Kryten nodded uncertainly, flicking a nipple to silence the music, much to Lister’s relief. Selecting a particularly festive-looking gilded ball – which Lister couldn’t bring himself to look directly at – he leaned across the table to affix it to the Esc-key of a wall-mounted keyboard. He coughed, about as convincingly as his facial features. "Of course, the holidays can be such a trying time for those who have suffered... I mean to say..." he faltered, looking guiltier than usual.
“It’s not Kris,” Lister said, hurriedly. "I mean, I miss her still, but it's been nine months."
"That's not very long sir, considering..."
"It's long enough," Lister snapped. "I should know."
“Quite so, sir. I only meant…”
“I know what you meant.” The pie loomed in front of Lister, as menacing as seasonal pastry could manage. He no more felt like eating it than the tinsel Cat was scattering in his latest ambush.
Kryten leaned in, placing a square hand on Lister’s shoulder, awkwardly. “It’s Mr. Rimmer, isn’t it?”
Lister shifted nervously. “What about Rimmer?”
“You shouldn’t let him get to you, sir. He came in this afternoon, positively bristling.”
“Oh eh,” Lister said, carefully, “what about?”
“Truth be told, sir, he wasn’t terribly coherent. Something about ‘uselessness’ and Ms Kochanski.” Kryten lowered his eyes, like he always did when mentioning her. It was beginning to irritate Lister; it wasn’t like the mechanoid had thrown her out of the airlock himself!
“What,” he said, patiently, “about uselessness and Ms Kocanski?”
“Well…” Kryten paused, setting his box of decorations down, “the gist of it seemed to be that if anyone mattered in this universe, it certainly wouldn’t be some piece of totty, and that his own contributions as a second class technician outweighed that of a mere navigations officer, what with the ship almost running itself. He cited the inefficiency of skutter maws in extracting gunk from the inside of coffee dispensers as an example, sir.”
“The reason they didn’t use skutters for that is ‘cause they were too expensive.”
“Precisely so, sir. I attempted to communicate this to Mr. Rimmer, but he paid me no heed. Then,” Kryten coughed, glancing at Cat, who was busy looking uninterested in a corner, “he got a funny sort of look on his face, and asked ‘I’m not insignificant, am I?’”
Lister covered his face with his hands.
“As it happened, Mr. Cat had rather a lot to say on the subject.”
“I told him, if he didn’t wear those shiny, brightly colored uniforms, I wouldn’t even know he was there,” Cat supplied, helpfully.
“I may have added one or two things myself, sir,” Kryten admitted. “Then… well… he ran off.”
Lister pushed his chair back, crushing an ornament. “Where to?”
“He didn’t say, sir, but he mentioned something about ‘seeing for himself’.”
Panting, Lister burst through the door to the AR suite, nearly tripping, once again, over a stray piece of machinery. It was odd seeing clutter again after years on Starbug, where the rarely offline Kryten more than managed to keep everything perpetually pristine. Not even he could keep up with a ship the size of Red Dwarf, however, and as they had done before the mechanoid arrived, things had started piling up here and there.
“Rimmer?”
There was no answer from the corners of the ill-lit room. The loungers themselves were empty. A vague sense of unease slowly rose in Lister’s stomach; something was very wrong here. Rimmer, for all his grandstanding, was his own worst critic. Lister had never met a man who disliked himself more; Lister had even seen him get into an argument with his reflection once. The reflection had won. What sort of a state would a man like that be in when confronted with his own utter insignificance on a cosmic scale? Lister didn’t want to begin to speculate.
“You in here, man?”
Lister frowned. If Rimmer wasn’t still here, he was probably off brooding somewhere; diesel decks, most likely. At least that was better than psychotic mania. Lister took a step back, wincing as something went ‘crunch’ underfoot. They had got to get Kryten in here more often. It was more important than spraying fake snow on the viewscreens. Shaking his boot, Lister lifted it gingerly. Underneath lay a slightly dented oblong metal object. At first glance it could have been one of Kryten’s baubles, but it was the wrong shape. And Christmas ornaments didn’t have little LED lights… Dead, dark LED-lights. Lister’s stomach, which had hitherto only been sinking, dropped like a ton of metaphorical bricks.
He couldn't have. Even Rimmer wouldn't have...
Huffing in frustration, Lister held the light bee up to his ear, shaking it, stopping himself when he realized that would probably only make things worse. More gently, he turned the thing over and over in his hands, looking for some small sign of life. If only he knew how to switch the thing on! But this was a highly sophisticated piece of machinery, lightyears ahead of anything Lister had ever used in his lifetime. There wouldn’t exactly an… oh. Somewhat bemused, Lister pressed the raised, red button labeled ‘on’, and threw the bee into the air.
The bee rose majestically, spinning in the air and catching the artificial light before falling to the ground with a dull ‘thud’.
Lister yelped. He’d killed him. He’d killed a dead man; that had to be worse than just regular killing. Killing someone who was already dead was adding insult to injury, surely? When a familiar outline started fading into view, Lister nearly cried in relief.
“Go away,” Rimmer said, the moment his mouth was fully formed. His body, a mismatched set of arms and legs in various uniforms, lay sprawled on the deck like a dismayed starfish.
“Yer alive!”
“Not for the last three million years, give or take.”
“No, but…” Lister swallowed, taking in the patchwork body. Bits and pieces of uniform faded in and out, cycling between red, blue, green, beige and purple. "Did I do that?"
Rimmer snorted. "What; get me drunk? I managed well enough on my own, thank you very much."
"Drunk?"
Trying his best to sit up, Rimmer pointed a finger in Lister's direction. "Yes. Filthy, outrageously drunk. And what of it?"
"I take it you ran the sim then."
Rimmer nodded, the exaggerated action nearly knocking him to the floor again. "Yes. I did. A world without Rimmer. Smegging wonderful."
Torn between wanting to help Rimmer up and wanting to get the smeg out of there, Lister remained nervously put. "Bad, was it?"
"No,," Rimmer slurred petulatly, "I said it was smegging wonderful. Absolutely fan-smegging tastic. You saw it, didn't you?"
"I did?"
"Yes, when you ran off like the little sissy cry... cry... thingy you are; that's what you did, wasn't it? See what the world would be like without Arnold J? Well," Rimmer held out an unsteady hand, and Lister, unthinkingly, grabbed it. "let me be the first to congratulate you on being right, Listy."
Rimmer had meant it as a handshake, clearly, but Lister pulled him to his feet anyway. "You're admitting I'm right? Now there's a first."
"Everyone was alive," Rimmer mumbled, ignoring him. "Everyone. The Captain. Todhunter. That blonde bartender with the short skirts that used to look at me weirdly when I asked for a white wine spritzer. You were alive." His eyes locked on Lister's, and for a moment, everything was skin and heat and tight spaces. "Kochanski," Rimmer pronounced every consonant spitefully, "was alive. You were married, you know. Three kids. Twin boys and a little girl." Rimmer wrinkled his nose, allowing Lister to steady him as slowly found his footing. "Petersen was sober."
Lister patted him gingerly on the back. "Come on then, let's get you to bed." He chocked on the words immedeately, but Rimmer didn't seem to notice.
"You don't wanna know?"
"Know what?"
"What it would be like? A world without me?" Rimmer's hair was a little mussed, and his 'H' shone with perspiration. Elsewhere, that wouldn't be an unfamiliar sight. Elsewhere... Lister smiled.
"Nah, man. It didn't happen. If it didn't happen, it's not important."
He had to believe that, he thought, herding the rambling, drunken man through the corridors. He had to.
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And... yeah. It's a bit... late. :)