Me, again

[ashilleong.livejournal.com]

I don't have issues, I'm just in a darkfic mood.

Title: Demons Don’t Dream.
Fandom: Red Dwarf
Rating: R (adult themes)
Spoilers: Demons and Angels, Holoship.
Summary: The crew finds out what happened to Lister when he was taken by the Low Selves in Demons and Angels.



He didn’t want to touch it. He could. It was one of the few items the ship had that was both real and hologramatic in aspect, a physical presence in both worlds. He would never touch it.
Rimmer sat and stared, pale and trembling.

No…

**
Lister slapped himself in the face again.
“Hey, what should I make the monkey do next?” Cat asked, his hand twitching on the remote control. Rimmer grinned. What revenge he could have, if only he could touch the remote that was controlling Lister’s body.

Kryten objected, but not very strongly.
Cat was making Lister yank his dreads.

Rimmer rubbed his hands in glee. Payback.
“Right, Listy…” and stopped.

“Cat, stop. Kryten, pull that thing out of him.”
“No way, goal-post head. He’s my toy now!”

“Do it!” Rimmer surprised himself with the force in his voice. He had been the first to notice that Lister was crying.

When Kryten went behind him to remove the device, Lister began shaking violently.
“Sir, we didn’t mean to distress you...”
Lister collapsed.

“Get him into the medical bay.”

**
He counts it as something, that he was the first person to notice. Feels the panic, the sickness in his throat as he did that day and wonders if, somehow, he knew back then. Rimmer forces that thought down, along with the bile.

***

When Kryten lowered him onto the table, no one expected the cry of pain.
“For god’s sakes, put him on his stomach.” Kryten did as he was told, more out of care for Lister’s condition than any authority Rimmer had.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You can’t touch anything, air-for-brains.”

Cat and Kryten peeled off Lister’s jacket and shirt. They hadn’t seen the blood under the leather and curry stains.

The now unconscious man’s back was covered in a lattice of cuts, some red and weeping, others barely breaking the skin.
“What happened?” Rimmer asked, trying to look over Kryten’s shoulder
“Mr Lister appears to have been whipped, quite severely.”
“How far down do those lacerations go?”

They removed his pants. Then all three were silent.

***
He had wondered at the time which one of them had done it. Who among them was capable, at their darkest, of doing such a thing?
Lister was the only one who even saw their low selves, the only one who would ever know for sure. For the first time in his death Rimmer was glad he was a hologram.

It meant that it couldn’t have been him.
He couldn’t touch anything.
***

It was enough to make even the Cat weep. The blood was still seeping, still staining Lister’s thighs.

A few moments. Then Kryten set about repairing the damage done to Lister’s body.

***
There was no DNA evidence, nothing that could tell them more than that their friend had been whipped and sodomised. Lister wouldn’t talk about it. More and more Rimmer had suspected that it was Lister’s own low self who had done the damage.

***
Kryten figured it out when Lister was threatening the hologram from The Enlightenment.
He put the holo-whip on the table for Rimmer to find.

***
He would not touch it. He could, and it could, and that was the problem. It sat on the table, the cylinder handle hinted at its crimes.

Rimmer had nightmares.