Ficlet - Gone. R/L ambiguity, R/K oddity.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

I finally got my dad to agree to watch Red Dwarf. I chose Tikka To Ride as the one that would probably appeal to him the most. As I was watching the flashback to Out Of Time, I started to wonder what would have happened if Rimmer had been just a second faster... and I wrote this on the plane on the way home.

Not a happy fic; character death, shower sex that just isn't right, angst. Spoilers through Out Of Time.

The one brave thing he's ever done in his life, and he did it too late.

Comments

[norseblue.livejournal.com]

Wow. Beautiful and painful.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Aw, thankee...

I'm a big TS Eliot fan, and looking at it again, I think I had this (http://www.blight.com/~sparkle/poems/hollow.html) running around in my subconscious.

[roxulasbride.livejournal.com]

*sob*

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Arn makes me cry sometimes, even in the TV show... :(

And poor Kryten is always trying to do the right thing.

[kirke-novak.livejournal.com]

Oh wow. That was so sad and beautiful. I felt so sorry for poor Arnie :(
Very good job on this one!

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Danke!

[swing-set.livejournal.com]

This hurt so much to even read. Lovely. Thank god it's not true though. Well done.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

I know, it's mean of me... but he got into my head, and that's just what happened. :(

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

I know how that is. I've got a really, really bad story inspired by "Last Human" that wants to be written, but I just haven't been able to do it yet. I was away in England this weekend, and I was about to take the book with me. I remember loving the end before I was a Rimmer/Lister shipper so I glanced at the final pages. However, now it just made me so upset I just couldn't re-read it.

Heh, funny what fictional characters can do to us, eh?

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Hey, welcome back! You know, Amazon still hasn't shipped my blasted copy of Last Human... >:(

Ja, this story in particular was an extreme case of Character Getting Into My Head.

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Wonderful, in a sad, quiet way.

Like a computer program set in motion by a long-dead hacker, they follow Red Dwarf.
I liked this analogy.

The whole sequence starting from Rimmer taking Lister's seat and ending with the indeed not-right (yet still right in some odd, awkward way, because what else could have happened) shower-sex is very, very good, and seriously packed a punch.

With no other living beings around against whom to judge the passage of time, Rimmer's hologram no longer ages
*smiles sadly*

And Starbug tears across the broad gaps between galaxies.
Beautiful.

*sob*

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Danke for the comments! Yes, as above, all I did was put Rimmer and Kryten on the Starbug with Cat and Lister dead, and the rest just happened. Kryten and Rimmer are absolutely not the type to be able to work through the emotions surrounding something like that and move on without a little help, and I believe they would actively hinder each other by their very natures. Kryten is a mess of conflict, in my opinion - his desire to serve, his hatred of Rimmer, his desire to experience human emotions, his inability to deal with them, and what I see as an overriding need to Do The Correct Thing at every point - and I think that would all pile together and go to hell in a situation like this.
And Rimmer would just be utterly lost. He understands the need, but whether accurately or not, he would not believe he could work through it properly, or set off on his own initiative as both a literal and figurative moving on.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

And yes, your aging fic popped into my head when I was revising it. ;)