#I feel so rusty I genuinely havent written or posted anything in so many years and here I am throwing together a couple of little things in

[yaminerua]

Managed to churn out a second little thing today to catch up with Smegtober and it's another sad one. For some reason both of the things I've done today have had such a melancholy vibe to them;;

Smegtober prompts by @a-literal-toaster-wtf

Anyway Day 2's prompt was Lonely, and boy is Lister really feeling it;;;

Words: 1544

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It was strange having Red Dwarf back again, not least because for a long while it had seemed as though it would never happen but also because in the time that it had been missing so much had changed. So much had taken place.

Having free run of the ship after so long confined to The Tank was an odd enough thing to experience. Just like it had been all those years ago when he had first stepped out of the stasis booth to be met with what had essentially become a ghost ship, it was odd to wander around the same old corridors, once again rendered just as cold and empty as they had been after the accident. It wasn’t quite as eerie as it had been back then, though. Instead, Lister found that it was oddly familiar, comforting in a strangely melancholic way. Maybe it just felt good to know that despite how much else in his life had changed and would likely continue to do so, Red Dwarf would remain a constant enduring presence, something that not even nanobots or highly corrosive chameleonic microbes could completely break down altogether.

Even as the roster of crew members changed and fluctuated, as familiar faces came and went, Red Dwarf itself remained, a single solid pillar of stability in an otherwise volatile universe.

That didn’t make the emptiness of its corridors feel any less lonely, however, even with all the time in the world to get used to it.

Wandering aimlessly around the old Z-shift route, accompanied by little more than the constant creaking and groaning of the old ship all around him, Lister hummed quietly to himself, tapping his hands on his legs in time to the beat of an old tune which in bygone days would have earned him an exasperated scolding and a report forwarded to the captain that would likely have just been brushed aside like all the others. He smiled a little at the memory and found that it wasn’t nearly as aggravating to look back on as it had felt at the time. In fact, perplexingly, like most things to do with his old bunkmate did these days, he found it made him miss the infuriating smegger more and more.

That was maybe the worst thing about having Red Dwarf back to normal – it wasn’t actually back to normal. Sure, things were functionally back to some semblance of how they had been before they had been forced into an extended game of catch-up but the absence of one Arnold Judas Rimmer felt magnified somehow, more pronounced than it had been on Starbug and nowhere else on the ship was it felt more strongly than in the old bunk room.

Yawning as he dragged his fingers along the cool metal walls, he dug the heel of his palm into his tired eyes and decided he was probably thoroughly exhausted enough by now to finally call it a night. God only knew what time it was. He’d been wandering the ship for what surely felt like hours, putting off the inevitable. Kochanski and the Cat had long since turned in for the evening and even Kryten hadn’t been able to keep him company for long before he too had had to turn himself in to recharge. Lister had appreciated the company nonetheless. It was better than the alternative but he could only put that off for so long.

The doors opened with a hiss and Lister stepped inside and breathed out slowly, tiredly, casting his gaze across all the familiar old things, the mish-mash of personalities plastered on every wall in the form of polaroids and posters and revision timetables and no smoking signs.

He didn’t like to spend too much time in the old bunk room these days, not since he’d gained access to it again. Maybe it would have been fine if the Rimmer he’d spent the past couple of years imprisoned with in the brig had still been around to stave off the worst of the unease the old room held but he, like the Rimmer before him, had died as a result of his own hubris and this time the ship hadn’t even been capable of bringing him back a second time.

Maybe he could have relocated to one of the many vacant rooms on the ship but somehow that too felt wrong so instead he remained stuck between a metaphorical rock and a hard place, bothered by the empty silence and the ghosts of what ought to have filled the space but too stubborn and indecisive to commit to leaving it behind, held back by a fondness that bewildered him greatly. So much of the time Rimmer had spent here Lister had spent fervently telling him to smeg off and perplexingly now that he had actually gone he found that he missed him more than he would readily ever admit. It was a funny thing that absence did to the heart.

Shuffling over to the old storage cupboard, he pulled open the door and fiddled around inside, flicking aimlessly through a record collection that could render an insomniac unconscious with ease until he found one that looked somewhat bearable.

Setting up the old player, he slotted the disc in place and started it spinning before making his way over to the fridge, procuring for himself a final drink for the night as the sweeping mellifluous tones of violins crackled into life behind him and a sweet feminine voice began to sing her longing little tune, flowing like honey to fill the lonely space.

It wasn’t ordinarily Lister’s kind of music. It didn’t really have much of a beat and there wasn’t a guitar to be heard but it was better than Hammond Organ Classics by a longshot and it filled the otherwise unbearable, hollow silence of the room in just the way he needed it to. Rimmer had played it a few times before, lamenting the loss of any chances he might have had at love. On drunken, miserable nights he would hum sadly along to it until he fell asleep or until Lister had begged him to stop bringing down the mood.

If he closed his eyes he could pretend even now that he hadn’t been the one to put it on, that it had instead been Rimmer pointedly trying to irritate him by playing his sappy music, or his Learn Esperanto tapes, regardless of any protestations Lister might have made against it. He could pretend his presence was still around somehow, still capable of annoying him, of keeping him company in spite of everything about him that might ordinarily make him say he’d rather be stuck with literally anyone else.

Draining his drink and discarding the empty can on the desk, he sat himself down heavily on the lower bunk for a moment and listened to the soothing melody, letting the exhaustion coupled with alcohol blend together in a perfectly sleep-inducing partnership, dulling his senses. The lady on the record sang softly, soulfully, her wistful, longing tones resonating somehow now more than they ever had before. Maybe it was just the tiredness and the drink but he swayed gently along with it and half-mumbled half-sang whichever occasional snippets of the lyrics came to mind.

“There’s a somebody I’m longing to see…”

Distantly, he was aware that he should really be clambering up into the upper bunk right now, but in truth the opportune moment for that had already long-since passed, the bone-deep tiredness settling in his bones making him feel impossibly heavy. At this point he couldn’t reliably trust himself to summon the energy to will his legs to stand so instead he yielded to the tempting pull of sleep, tilting slowly to the side where he sat, letting himself descend slowly, spreading himself out on a mattress that wasn’t his and wishing somewhere deep in the hazy sleep-addled depths of his mind that its owner would come storming in any second now to reprimand him for stinking up the bed, but of course that wasn’t going to happen was it?

He wondered what Rimmer – his Rimmer, the one who had been there from the start and who had left what felt like forever ago now to become the next link in an endless chain of dimension-hopping adventurers – was doing right now. He wondered whether he was still alive – or as alive as it was possible for a hologram to be – and if he was doing alright, if he had succeeded in stepping into Ace’s shoes after all.

He wondered, as his mind sank finally into an uneasy sleep, if he regretted leaving as much as Lister regretted letting him leave.

The music on the record player played on regardless, oblivious to the fact its sole audience member was no longer paying any attention, the violins swelling and blooming as the song reached its emotional crescendo, and as those final sweet notes sang out softly to no-one in particular, they mirrored the longing that nestled stubbornly in Lister’s chest, heavy and cold, and refused even after all this time to budge.

“Won’t you tell him please to put on some speed? Follow my lead, oh how I need someone to watch over me.”