reddwarfslash | Half The Battle

Brief fic inspired by the recent conversations about Rimmer's hard-light capabilities and his 'entaglement' with Lister.

Keeping Lister sane is only half the battle. Keeping the little smegger alive is another mission altogether. Kryten’s arrival had made the task more manageable, Rimmer no longer needed to rely on the help of the skutters or worse, the Cat, to assist him when Lister required physical help. The hard light-drive made it easier still. Now he could act on his own, instead of having to run or shout for someone to deal with any problems. In theory, trying to keep a grown man out of harms way should not be a full time job. But when that man was David Lister, with all the self-preservation skills of a slug with a penchant for sunbathing, nothing was as simple as it should be.

It wasn’t just that he was accident prone, although his utter lack of grace had been the cause of any number of trips to the medi-bay. Lister was both curious and careless by nature, a perilous combination. If Lister found a button, he’d push it. If presented with a lever, he’d pull it. If there was a door marked ‘Do Not Enter’, Lister could inevitably be found on the other side of it. He dismissed Rimmer’s constant pleas for caution as fretful cowardice rather than common sense and, no matter how many times they found themselves fleeing from mortal danger, each new threat they encountered found him assuring Rimmer with unshakeable buoyancy that this time, nothing could possibly go wrong. Rimmer wasn’t sure if terminal optimism was a recognised medical condition, but Lister surely had to be a textbook case.

In all fairness, given their situation, Lister’s happy-go-lucky approach ought to have been justified. There should be very little to trouble them out here in the emptiest regions of deep space. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that the derelicts they came across would be deserted, that the moons they passed by were uninhabited. They should be. But somehow, for some inexplicable reason, they never smegging were. It seemed like wherever they went there was a rogue simulant, a breed of vicious GELFS, or a dormant virus waiting to be unleashed. Every time. If there was just one asteroid in the cluster with a ravening mutated beast lurking in its dark caverns, you could bet that would be their chosen stop to refresh their water supplies. It was as if Lister gravitated towards danger like a moth to flame. In his frequent moments of paranoia, Rimmer sometimes wondered if it was the other way around; if danger stalked Lister the way a hyena will trail a lone gazelle, as fate tried to eliminate this pesky anomaly, this single remaining human who just would not die. If that was the case, Rimmer could almost accept it. What he couldn’t accept, was Lister’s apparent determination to help fate along with this exercise.

Rimmer had lost count of the number of times he’d had to grab Lister by the collar to stop him walking blithely into the darkness of a mysterious derelict, or thunking a heavy-footed boot onto the top step of a rusting stairwell clearly on the brink of collapse. He’d put out more fires caused by carelessly spilled drinks and badly-extinguished cigarettes than any normal, sane person should ever be capable of starting.

At some point over the years, once he’d gained a physical presence of his own, he’d gradually given up nagging. Lister never listened to warnings. It was quicker and easier to just step in; like when he caught him about to bite into one of those genetically-modified chillies they’d discovered. He’d quickly snatched it out of his hand and stomped on it. Lister’s indignant protest that he could have handled it was undermined by the fact that Rimmer’s shoe half-melted and didn’t stop smoking until he rebooted his projection. The hard light drive had other advantages too. On the frequent occasions when he saw Lister getting ready to plunge a knife into the toaster, he would move him back and simply stick his hand in to retrieve the troublesome bread product with his fingers. It hurt, but at least the resulting electric shocks charged up his battery pack. When Lister managed to set fire to his bedding yet again, Rimmer could venture into his quarters to pluck him from the smoke and flames without any need to worry about his own safety. When he found Lister, just days ago, about to take his spacebike out for a drunken joyride around an asteroid belt, he’d twisted the handlebars into a knot and wrenched out the fuel pipe. Not strictly necessary, but satisfying all the same; and Lister’s expression of hungover bewilderment when he surveyed the damage the next day had made it all the more rewarding.

One afternoon, as he kept a cautious eye on Lister carrying out some maintenance, something happened. He was watching from the top of the stairwell and Lister, absorbed in what he was doing and singing along tunelessly to a song on his headphones, had no idea he was present. His front half was buried inside the wall vent and Rimmer had to assume from the cheerfully swaying buttocks and amateur karaoke that everything inside was going fine. Above them, Rimmer suddenly heard an ominous creak. He looked up apprehensively but saw nothing. He returned to supervising Lister. A few minutes later, there was another creak, louder this time. He looked up again, annoyed, just in time to see one of the brackets holding up the lighting gantry above Lister’s head give way. The small piece of metal tumbled downwards and chimed as it hit the ground. Rimmer froze.

Lister shuffled backwards out of the vent, and for a moment Rimmer thought he must have heard the sound, but it quickly became clear that wasn’t the case. He could still hear the music blaring from Lister’s headphones even at this distance. There was another creak from the ceiling, longer and louder, followed by the painful screech of slowly tearing metal. Lister pulled the vent cover back into place and scooped up his tools. Rimmer gulped. If Lister left now, quickly, it might still be okay. He didn’t dare shout to warn him. He probably wouldn’t hear anyway; and if he did, he’d be more likely to either stand there and pull his headphones out to ask Rimmer why he was yelling, or look up and see, then freeze like a rabbit in the headlights as the gantry crashed down. Go, Rimmer prayed, heart pounding, as the creak overhead became a roar, get out.

Lister was about to walk away, when the bracket on the floor caught his eye. He bent down to pick it up, puzzled. Noooooooo! Lister paused, tossed the small clip up in the air and caught it again, then shrugged and turned towards the door. Rimmer heard a sharp cracking sound, and as Lister walked away, another clip fell through the air and hit the floor behind him, and half of the gantry came away, swinging loose. Rimmer started to run.

He hurled himself down the stairs, focusing on Lister’s back as he ambled towards the door. If he could get to him, if he could give him one good push forward and out into the next corridor, it might still be okay. But there was no time. He heard the crash as the gantry gave way, and Lister was still a good five feet away. In the few seconds he had, he realised there was only one thing to do. He flung his arms up and braced himself, as he caught half a ton of metal, sparking light fixtures and loose wires and held it up. His shoulders sagged under the weight and he staggered, but held fast. His arm muscles screamed.

He watched silently as Lister stepped obliviously through the doorway ahead, still whistling merrily, and disappeared. Rimmer let out a long sigh of relief. As he relaxed, his knees began trembling and he crumpled under the weight of the gantry. As he fought to drag himself out from under the wreckage, cursing that smegging scouse disaster magnet and swearing that one of these days he was just going to let him get squashed, incinerated, electrocuted or otherwise permanently wiped from existence, Cat uncurled gracefully from under the stairwell and stepped over him indifferently. “That was a nice trick, goal-post head,” he remarked, smoothing his hair.

Rimmer stared up at him, apoplectic with rage. “You were there all along?”

“Sure.”

“Why didn’t you get Lister out of the way?”

“And risk ending up like you?” Cat asked incredulously, not offering to help Rimmer out of the tangle of warped metal and wires, “My suit is perfect, it does not need any further flattening, thank you!”

“He could have been killed!”

“Does it say anywhere on my Facebook profile that I give a crap about anyone else?” Cat asked, “No, it does not. Because I don’t.”

“You have a facebook page?” Rimmer asked in disbelief, still trying to drag himself out.

“Yep. And I have two friends,” Cat proudly held up his fingers to emphasise the point.

“Well, if I hadn’t been here just now, you would have been down to one, you idiotic self-centred imbecile!” Rimmer raged.

“Still one more than you, grease-stain. Why do you care so much what happens to Dormouse Cheeks anyway?” Cat slunk off, yowling, leaving Rimmer pondering that very question.

It came as something of a relief a year or so later, when Kryten revealed how he and Lister were ‘entangled’. Oh, the thought itself was horrifying, but it explained so much. On some subconscious level, Rimmer had clearly always known that his continued existence hung on Lister’s survival. It was the only explanation that made sense. He had spent years shielding Lister from the universe and his own clumsiness and stupidity, because he had known deep down that what he was really doing was looking after good old number one – Arnie J Rimmer. Obviously he’d never actually cared about Lister. Of course not.

Half The Battle

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