reddwarfslash | Fic: Dear John - R/L (imp) - PG

Title: Dear John
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister (implied), other
Rating: PG, for this part
Disclaimer: I don't even own the fictional series IX and X of Red Dwarf. I make no money from this fannish venture.
Notes: This is part 6/? - part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here,part 4 is here and part 5 is here. Dedicated to

smaych, who is both an Arnold and a John. <3

Sorry for the ridiculously long wait guys; I'm on vacation in the US right now, and I haven't had a lot of time to write. I'll get the next installment up sooner!

“No way.” Rimmer stumbled backwards, hands flailing protectively in front like a pair of neurotic nunchucks. “No way in smegging hell.”

“Look,” John followed him, looking deceptively innocent. Rimmer wasn’t falling for it. “It’s perfectly safe. I’m a scientist. I invented it, for smeg’s sake!”

“Not the one inside me! Not my bee!”

“No, and that’s exactly the point. If I can get a look at it, I might be able to tell you how to modify the one inside me to make it work independently of an external power source, just like yours.”

“No smegging way! You managed to goit up all the others, so I’m not letting you anywhere near mine, thank you very much.”

John’s jaw set. His eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, Rimmer heard the faint echo of their father’s voice. “Arnold, you have to do this. If you want me to keep existing…”

“I want to keep existing too!”

“Stop being such a twonking coward! You said you wanted to save me; this is your chance.”

“Why do people always say it’s wrong to be cowardly? Cowards survive.”

"And that's worked out wonderfully for you so far, hasn't it?" A massive ruuumble shook the station, making John's voice tremble towards the end. When Rimmer tried to steady himself, the floor vibrated ominously.

“What’s below this floor?” Rimmer asked, weakly.

“Storage. Mostly lab equipment. Why?”

Rimmer nodded, swallowing. “So nothing particularly soft, then.”

John grabbed his arms. “Arnold, if you won’t show me your bee, you’ll have to turn me off. I must have been wrong about the lights; that sounded like the artificial gravity about to give in. The threads are in the floor; they’re very fragile. If they go, they’re likely to short out the surrounding circuitry.”

He was right. Of course John was right. It was the sensible, logical thing to do. Rimmer was good at logical and sensible, he’d always felt. So why was this so hard? “But you look fine.” He did. He looked like Rimmer had always hoped he’d grow up to look like when he was young. Their features were the same; John just looked calmer and more determined. Somehow, it made for an entirely different face.

“That’s a bad sign!” John slammed his fist against the pedestal behind him. Rimmer flinched, like he’d felt the impact. “If I look good, that means the station is prioritizing my projection, for some reason. Maybe the Last Man Standing algorithm has kicked in, if I’m the only employee left.”

Like me, Rimmer thought, back on Red Dwarf. I was supposed to be in charge; I was chosen, for once in my life. And I managed to twonk that up royally, didn’t I? “Would it help if you switched to soft light?”

John looked at him as if he’d suggested he’d strip naked and do an interpretive dance. “Oh, right. I’ll just do that, then. And while I’m at it, I’ll make a cheese and onion sandwich out of carbon atoms!”

“I just thought…”

“You can’t just switch between light states; soft and hard light projection are entirely different things. It’d be like turning an apple into a set of Irish bagpipes.”

“Irish bagpipes?”

The floor vibrated again, making them both stumble. Rimmer grabbed John for support, yelping. John was just a little taller, he noticed. Why hadn’t he noticed that before? Father must have loved that about him. Oh, hang on; the floor was slightly sloped. Suddenly, John’s hands were on Rimmer’s face, forcing him to look straight at him. “Turn me off, Arnie.”

John’s eyes were brighter. The same wishy-washy brown-green color as Rimmer’s, just brighter, like they’d been digitally enhanced. Rimmer looked into them. His body felt like it was coming apart at the seams. It couldn’t actually do that, could it? He couldn’t reply. There was nothing to say. He couldn’t turn John off, because there’d be no way to turn him back on again, and it’d be Rimmer’s fault. Enough things were Rimmer’s fault already, without him having to add to the pile. John was still looking at him, holding them both steady as the floor rumbled again, actually shaking, this time. John's eyes were on him, and it hurt, and something in Rimmer split wide open; raw.

He grabbed John’s hand, and pressed it to his chest.

“No,” Rimmer said, and switched to soft light.

“Now what?” Lister grabbed the handle of the nearest door with both hands to keep himself from floating gently off the floor. The mainframe was getting hysterical; Kryten couldn’t make heads or tails of the directions on the erratic maps it fed him, but they were fairly sure that they were getting closer to the laboratories reserved for the hard light project.

“The artificial gravity is failing, sir. Like the lights, it should stabilize itself shortly.”

“Yeah, unless some twonk goes and activates a hologram that sucks up everything from the grid!”

“We can’t be sure that’s what happened, sir…”

“Of course it’s what’s happened!”

“I know,” Kryten wailed, abruptly in near hysterics, “I was trying to keep it together so you wouldn’t panic!”

The radio clipped to Lister’s belt crackled into life with a feline voice. “Hey; where is everybody? I don’t think this landing bay’s gonna hold it together much longer!”

Kryten’s wide open, lashless eyes met Lister’s, pleading wordlessly.

“No. We’re not going unless all of us are going.”

“Mister Lister; please. There’s no time to argue the point!”

There probably wasn’t. Contrary to popular opinion – if Rimmer’s opinion could be considered popular - Lister wasn’t stupid. Reckless and impulsive, yes. Stubbornly optimistic, certainly, but not stupid. Never stupid. Even so… “No!” He looked around, ignoring the urgent waggling of Kryten’s lack of eyebrows. Nothing leapt to mind. No conveniently placed Deus Ex Machina here. “We can’t just leave him,” he ended, lamely.

Kryten shrugged, having the decency to look a little embarrassed. “It’s what he would have done.”

“It’s what he DID do,” Cat supplied from Lister’s belt. “When he went into that swirly thing, to that place, with those guys? For hundreds of years? He left us to die! Were you even there??”

“It doesn’t matter.” Gravity slammed back with a gut-wrenching ‘thunk’, and Lister made a move for the corridor – or tried – Kryten’s hand was on his arm, holding him back.

“Begging your pardon sir, but it does. You’re a human being in my care; quite possibly the last human being in existence, and I am hard-wired to protect you at any cost.”

Lister looked back, and nearly yelped; gone was any trace of the sniveling, desperate mechanoid of moments ago. In its place was a pillar of plastisteel, filled with the kind of determination Lister had only ever seen him employ when dealing with a particularly difficult clogged toilet.

“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t let you go.” Kryten’s grip was like steel. Which it probably was, come to that.

“Oh yeah?” Lister pulled on his arm, surprised when Kryten stood firm. “What’re’ye gonna do; wrench my arm out of its socket? Ye can’t hurt me. Ye said it yerself; it’s in yer programming.”

“Guys? ” Cat’s voice sounded smaller, like he was trying to curl up on himself. “What’s going on? ”

“It would pain me to hurt you, sir,” Kryten’s voice barely shook, “but I could do it, if it prevented greater harm.”

Gaping, Lister pulled on his arm again. “Kryten man; let me go!”

“No can do, sir.”

“Guys? Guys; I think the roof’s stating to cave in…”

“Just let me go!”

“Sir; this is your final warning. I must notify you that any damage I sustain as a result of incapacitating you will not be covered by my warrantee, for which I apologize in advance.”

“Yer bluffing!”

“I’m so sorry sir!”

Thwack.