Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s not the first time Talia’s thought that maybe, just maybe, deep, deep, down, Arnold Rimmer might just be a decent guy. In fact it’s not even nearly the first time she’s been bothered by the thought, it is however, the first time she’s ever been certain of it.

The first time she thinks it, they’re sat together in the mess hall, astro-nav text books strewn across the table before them, Rimmer looking just miserable.
‘Would all examinees for the Astro-Navigation Exam please make their way to B-Deck.’ Holly chimes throughout the halls, and though it’s a perfectly even, innocuous announcement, Rimmer rises like a man called to execution. Tali sighs. They’d tried, really tried, or really tried for the one single day of genuine revision that Rimmer has allowed himself, but it’s hopeless, they both know it.

“Good luck, Rimmer.” Tali smiles, like there might be a chance, but it just seems to deflate the man even more,
“Sorry I wasted your time, Dr Gardner.” Rimmer replies, glancing at the shuffling of bodies that have started making their way out of the hall, before leaning conspiratorially towards Tali, “I ah, I got you one of these, to say thank you.” And he holds out a pristine honey-comb chocolate bar in his palm.

It makes Tali think that perhaps, the man who’s spent over a month wasting her time by procrastinating this little study session, might not be such a git after all, for two reasons. One; Rimmer has, to put it bluntly, stolen this for her, which is something she knows from the six-or-so months they’ve been on the same ship together, is a distinctly unRimmerlike thing to do, given that he is, after all, a coward at heart. And two; Mercury Munch Honeybars are Tali’s absolute favourite snack on the ship, so much so that she’d eaten her whole trips allocation of them within the first three months of being aboard and she hadn’t been able to have one since. So yes, it gives Tali pause for just a moment to think perhaps, under all that weasel, he’s alright.
“Thank you, Arnold. You’ll smash it.” She lies, and though both of them know it, Rimmer smiles for half a beat, picks up his books, and strides off to the exam.

That’s the first time. Three weeks to the accident.

The second time is a little harder, namely because of the prickling at the base of her neck anytime she looks at Rimmer, not Rimmer, the hologram, and thinks of Cadmium II rending the flesh from his bones, melting him into the dust they’d ejected into space that very afternoon. She can’t believe it is the trouble, can’t see beyond the stocky H that protrudes from his forehead, can’t see Rimmer beneath it. Because if it’s true, if this buzzing light-bee really is Rimmer, then he’s dead, not just gone, not just somewhere else on the ship, he’s dead, and this digital approximation is all that’s left.

And that can’t be true, because he’s standing right in front of her, bouncing on the balls of his heels, waving his hands a little haphazardly, living. Not living, a facsimile. Not dead, right there. It makes her head hurt to even try and parse through her thoughts. She wants it to be him, very badly, because then he isn’t quite dead, but she can’t think of it as him, because then he is. And can it even really be him if the light bee is just working off what it thinks Rimmer was like? Does a break in consciousness merit the same person waking up?

Tali groans and puts her head in her hands, having worked herself into quite the migraine.
“Dr Gardner? Talia?” Rimmer asks to this, voice a little sharp,
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I’m sorry, Rimmer,” Tali responds, which seems to settle him, no one ever really apologises to Rimmer, “It’s just been a long day. My head’s starting to hurt a little.” It had, perhaps, been the longest day of her life. Lister had been revived three days prior, and that morning, at exactly 8:14AM, he’d managed to reconnect her stasis booth to the rest of the ship and revive her too. From Tali’s perspective, the human race had been alive yesterday.
“I see.” Rimmer says, clipped, and she suspects he doesn’t quite.

He surprises her though, strolls a little further into the room and ushers a scutter in behind him, its singular arm balancing a tray and china cup atop it. Then he stands there, wringing his hands behind his back by the looks of his tense shoulders, itching to lean against something and all too aware that he couldn’t, she suspects. He’d always been a leaner.
“I had them make it for you.” Rimmer announces when Tali picks up the cup, the tea was only a little darker than you’d expect milk to be, utterly cold and unsweetened, so all in all, not bad for the scutters. Tali smiles, and Rimmer seems to let out a breath, which is funny, because he doesn’t need to breathe at all, but there’s a distinct Rimmerness to the action.
“Thank you, Arn.” Tali says, and the hologram nods, vacates the room. Yes, Tali concedes, that’s Rimmer alright.

This time, the definitive time, she’ll come to think of it as, is a little different. They might be about to die, for one, or die again in Rimmer’s case, and second, or no, that’s the main rub really. Imminent death; it puts a damper on the mood.

“Still snowing?” Rimmer asked as Starbugs door struggled to shut behind Tali, he was in the same position she’d left him in, hunched over the comm’s desk with a single, heavy medical dictionary balanced over the ‘broadcast’ button to keep it down.
“Still snowing.” Tali confirmed grimly, “I can hardly stand out there, the wind nearly buried me.” There’d be no digging Starbug out of the ice, and even if she could, the engine was knackered.
“Anything from the others?” Tali sat down on the chair she’d set by the fire, gloved hands outstretched towards the flames,
“Nothing.” Rimmer frowned, moving to sit opposite her. That didn’t worry Tali so much, she decided, Lister would come looking for them the moment he figured something was wrong, they were the last two human beings left in the universe after all, not many things made you closer than that. She remembered, amused, how with dawning horror, Lister had once asked if that meant they were going to have to rebuild the human race together, ‘Definitely not.’ Tali had assured, ‘The genetic bottleneck would make it impossible anyway.’ ‘Thank god,’ Lister had replied, and then ‘Not that you’re not er- you’re just not my type.’ ‘Well you’re not exactly my type either. Besides, it'd be too weird.’ ‘Right’ Lister had agreed, ‘Like shagging me’ own sister.’

“They’ll come looking for us.” Tali assured, glancing sideways at Rimmer, “Lister won’t stop until he finds us. No need to panic.”
And then, naturally, the power cut out.

“You just had to open your smegging mouth.” Rimmer huffed as the humming of electrical equipment stuttered and failed, the room dimmed tremendously, the only sources of light now being the single port window, the fire, and Rimmer himself. Tali shot him a glare as she rose,
“Help me find a torch or something.”

But there were very few supplies left on Starbug that the pair hadn’t already accounted for; a few days rations that Tali had very helpfully thought to bring, their collective small library, both of their most precious knick knacks, and quite frustratingly, a dead battery pack.
“What happens if your bee runs out of charge?” Tali asked the next night through chattering teeth, they’d begrudgingly agreed to take turns burning their books after her fingers had started to turn blue,
“I power off, I suppose.” Rimmer shrugged, he was dressed in a green puffer jacket to match Tali’s purple one,
“But we can turn you back on? Once you’re charged again?”
“I should certainly hope so.”

They were both quiet for a while after that, Tali didn’t often make mention of his hologramatic nature, Rimmer didn’t like to be reminded of it, and she was more than happy to respect that. Tonight though, it was all she could think about, and she needed something to talk about to stave off the gnawing cold.
“What’s it like?”
“Being dead?” Rimmer looked at her, something unnatural in his expression, worry perhaps, just a flash of it.
“Being low.”
“Oh.” He nodded, thinking “Hard to notice at first, everything’s just a little fuzzier, and a bit quieter. Next thing you know I’m in greyscale and my voice sounds like I’m a room over.”
“But it doesn’t… hurt?”
“It’s not pleasant.”

Tali ripped a handful of pages from ‘The Anatomical A-Z’ and let them scatter into the fire, it hissed and she felt no warmer for it.
“I think you should off-line.” She suggested, and Rimmer snapped his head up to look at her, incredulous, “Just for a few hours!” Tali hurried to explain, “A couple hours each day to preserve your battery.”
Rimmer’s tongue darted to wet his lips, his fingers drumming nervous rhythms at his knee,
“I did think about it.” He confessed, “But the cold could damage my light bee, what if it froze up?”
“Oh c’mon,” Tali laughed, smiling for the first time since they’d crashed on this godforsaken planet, “I wouldn’t let that happen. I’d keep you warm.”
Rimmer eyed her, face scrunched up in suspicion, expecting a punchline anytime now. When one didn’t come fast enough he tutted, “Oh? And how do you plan on doing that, because you’re not making firewood out of me, missy.”
“Arnold.” The smile dropped from her face almost instantly, “That’s a horrible thing to say. You really think I’d do something like that?”

No, I don’t, teetered on the tip of his tongue, but instead Rimmer crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “What then?” He asked, deciding fatally to look back over into her bright, sad eyes,
“Do you trust me?”
What an inane question, he thought, but his traitorous mouth spat out an all-too-quick, “Of course I do.”
Tali smiled again, and it made his non-existent stomach flip the same way it had when she’d complemented the watercolour of his revision timetable, before she held out her hand.
Rimmer stood, then fell into Tali’s open palm, projection turned off for the first time in months.
“Don’t worry.” Tali hummed, rising to shuffle into the bunk she’d piled high with blankets and wrapping herself in perhaps half a dozen of them, until she couldn’t physically manage another. She kept the light bee in her hand, bringing it close to her chest, curling around it a little.
“We’ll be alright.”

Being in his light bee was not often a pleasant experience. Rimmer was a person after all, he was not built to exist in such a small, dark no-space, scattering into nothing but data without a form to ground himself, human minds simply detested the experience. That night though, tucked against Tali’s heart, able to hear the soft exhale of her steady breathing, he thought he might just be able to handle it.

It was a few hours later that he was stirred back into hologramatic alertness by Tali’s frantic calling. Aliens was his first thought, but the room was still and dark when he materialised, very dark, actually. The fire had gone out, leaving Starbug only illuminated by… he leant down to look at Tali, who was still wrapped up in blankets, staring up at him, Rimmer could only just make out her face in the dim, warm glow of… it was him.
“Sorry.” She squeaked, shuffling upright, clearly surprised by his appearance,
“Sorry? Why are you sorry?”
“I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“You shouted for me.” Rimmer frowned irritably, folding his arms and standing up straight, “Of course that woke me up.”
“I know! I’m sorry, I just- I panicked.”

“Panicked?” He demanded, voice shrill, “What on Io could’ve made you panic? It’s an empty room for goodness sake!”
Tali shifted, not looking at him anymore, suddenly very interested in the configuration of her blankets.
“You don’t like the dark.” Rimmer grinned, smarmy and accusing, pleased to suddenly find himself not the biggest coward onboard. “You’re scared of the dark!” He could be frustratingly adept at picking up on little insecurities like that, Tali might've been impressed at his observational skills if she weren't on the receiving end of them.
“Smeg off, Rimmer.” She snapped back, imbuing a vitriol in her voice that Rimmer hadn’t often found himself on the receiving end of, from Tali at least, “Go back into your stupid light bee and go to sleep.”
Rimmer would’ve, really, but without Tali protecting the device from the cold he didn’t want to risk it, so he sat weightlessly at the foot of her bunk, leg bouncing. Tali flipped over with enough force to send blankets whipping through Rimmer’s hologram, making him tut.

“Why would you shout for me?” Rimmer asked, twisting a little to look at the woman, trying and failing to not be too obvious.
Talia turned back over, propping herself up on an elbow to look at the hologram, careful now not to let anything clip through him, as she almost always was. She seemed to deliberate over her answer for an age, and then, “You glow.”
“I glow?” He repeated, overenunciating the last word,
“Just a bit, I hadn’t noticed it until last night. You’re like a nightlight.” Ordinarily, Rimmer would’ve taken offence to her comparing him to such a childish device, but she said it with such fondness that he couldn’t bring himself to willfully misconstrue the meaning.
“I could stay on.” He suggested without thinking, it’d been funny at first, a nice ego boost to know that the last woman alive wasn’t totally infallible, but the thought of Tali frightened and alone in the darkness made his stomach twist into knots.

“Your battery.” Tali reminded, “We still don’t know how long the others will be, we might need to make it last weeks yet.”
“I could off-line in the morning, when it’s lighter.”
Tali stared at him, expression unreadable, it wasn’t some grand gesture of friendship, but it was something far more tangibly kind. Kind was not a word that particularly sprang to the forefront of her mind when describing Arnold Rimmer, but it was quite quickly working up the ranks from ‘totally irrelevant’ to ‘a not completely inaccurate descriptor’, or perhaps she was developing Stockholm Syndrome.
“Come here then.” She finally smiled, shuffling in the bunk until there was just enough space for some lanky git to lay beside her.
“What- in the bed with you?” Tali could’ve sworn he was blushing, could holograms blush?
“Why not? We’ve still gotta keep your light bee warm.”
“Won’t- won’t it be too light if I’m right beside you?” He was inventing reasons to deny himself the chance, but Tali could see him inching up the bed towards the space she left for him.
“Rimmer. Lie down.”

So he did, flattening beside her, stiff as a board, and Tali had to resist the overwhelming urge to wrap one of the blankets around him too.
“Goodnight Arnie.” She yawned, and Rimmer swallowed before whispering back,
“Goodnight Tali.”

Chapter Text

“So calculators go to Heaven?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Coffee machines?
“I guess so.”
“What about- “
“What about Alphabet Head?” Both Lister and Tali stopped, they were cross legged on the floor, struggling through a solid mass of wires, each brandishing a dismembered chromium limb. The Cat was standing on a box across the room from them, sticking pins into an entirely undeserving mannequin, a ream of measuring tape adorning his shoulders.

“What about ‘im?” Lister asked, he’d managed to untangle a fairly substantial clump of the wiring, only to somehow retangle it right back into one of his locs, which Tali had now taken to delicately trying to free.
“Well where’s he headed?” The Cat asked, not bothering to glance over at them, “He’s a machine too, ain’t he?”
“What? ‘Course he’s not. Ow!”
“Baby.” Tali scoffed, tapping Lister's shoulder to indicate she was done.
“But he is!” The Cat insisted, his head shooting out from behind the mannequin, “He’s just a computer buzzing around in that eyesore of a suit, it’s not like he’s real.”
“Well by that logic, neither is Kryten.” Tali frowned, handing Lister a screwdriver, mechanics had never been her strong suit, but Lister was getting pretty handy with them. He was learning it all for Kryten she knew, or he had been, and she had to shake away the pang of sadness that came with the thought, it wasn’t fair that the mechanoid would have to leave them so soon.
“Hm. Touche lady bud.” The Cat conceded, whipping out some more fabric with a flourish and returning to his work, never having been particularly interested in the argument to start with.

Talia stood up, sighing at the mess she’d made of Marilyn Monroe’s right arm and announced her intention to go and help with the decorations, they’d left Rimmer and the scutters in charge of it a few hours ago and judging from the amount of yelling that could be heard echoing down the corridors, it was not going well.
“Cat.” She said quietly as she passed, resting a hand on his arm, “Do me a favour and don’t say things like that around Rimmer, alright?” He narrowed his eyes at her, frighteningly perceptive and then, deciding he was expending far too much effort on something he didn’t care about, shrugged.

The party was upon them soon after that, the entire Red Dwarf crew dressed to the nines; Tali in a dark evening dress she’d borrowed from one of the officers, Holly with a sparkly, digital tiara, and the boys in their suits, all toasting to the ‘most rockinest last day ever!’ as Lister had phrased it. Naturally, this ‘most rockinest last day ever’ was to consist of every one of them getting extremely, paralytically drunk and going through the full spectrum of emotions from sharing funny stories, right through to crying about their mothers, and lack thereof. By the end of the festivities, they somehow wound up in the bunkroom, Kryten sniffling over ‘poor Mister Lister, oh sir how could anyone ever abandon you?’ which had earned some admittedly quite amusing remarks from Rimmer, while Lister himself tried to comfort the mechanoid with pats on the metal casing, and the Cat muddled through his skincare routine, drunkenly smearing his face with shaving cream at least twice. Tali had taken that as her queue to wander back to her own room, bidding them all a giggly goodnight and gifting Kryten the pink feather boa she’d somehow adopted during the course of the party as a parting gift.

“Off already?” Rimmer asked, beside her suddenly. He’d taken to doing that recently, following her up to the lab without any real reason, pretending to read his hologramatic books with her in the library, even once insisting on shooing away a Polymorph that’d swallowed her courage whole, not that Tali could remember that particular incident.
“Can’t deal with sad drunks.” She explained, running a hand through her hair, “You walking me back?”
Rimmer blanched at that, as though he could’ve been walking to the other side of the ship from his room for any old reason, “No.” He denied, “I’m just… walking. I’m allowed to walk, aren’t I?”
“You’re acting senior commander- commanding ofish- officer.” Tali giggled, “You can walk where you like.”

So they did, they walked all the way to the science deck where Tali’s quarters were, Tali on purpose, and Rimmer completely by happenstance, no other reason whatsoever, as he made sure to regularly assert. When they finally arrived at room 22-BIO, he lingered by the door as Tali strode in and kicked off her heels.
“Coming in?” She asked, tying her hair up in the mirror,
“Uhm.” Rimmer said, and Tali could picture the way he was wringing his hands and glancing around her room. Unlike the bunks the technicians had to do with, Science Officers, even low ranking ones such as herself, were given private quarters, granted it was supposed to be as a place to store equipment and the like, but Tali had taken to decorating it with various mementos of their adventures, as well as books and a record player she’d pilfered from Captain Hollister himself.
“Come in.” She rephrased when the hologram didn’t move, which finally prompted him to step inside.

Tali rubbed her eyes beneath her glasses, and turned to see that Rimmer had awkwardly perched himself at the very edge of her bed. She sat beside him, staring with narrowed eyes at his face, weighing something.

“I know how you feel.” She said finally, “My first kiss was terrible, too.”
Rimmer cringed beside her, whole face screwing up as his brain's steadfast attempts at repressing the earlier conversation were unraveled; he might’ve tried to shove his whole fist into his mouth if he had the energy for it.
“I was 13,” Tali continued, “I was at school, back on Earth, and a boy in the year above me cornered me behind the bikeshed and made me kiss him.”
“What a smegger.” Rimmer frowned, and he thought of the pictures he’d seen of a young Talia, all teeth and freckles, what a nasty goit to do something like that. “Did you tell on him?”
“I socked him. See this?” She grinned and raised her hand, pointing to a thin, pale scar down her index finger, “Got this knocking out his tooth.”
Rimmer looked from the scar to her face, then exhaled a laugh, “Of course you did.”
“If we ever see your Uncle Frank, I’ll sock him for you too.” Tali assured, collapsing back so that she was lying in the bed, legs dangling over the edge, Rimmer did the same, not entirely sure why.

“You don’t have to count it, y’know.” Tali said after a while, “I don’t.”
“Well it’s different for you.” He sighed, not his usual irked-at-Lister sigh, but something truly dejected,
“Different for me how?”
“You’ve got other kisses to count.”
Tali turned so that she was facing Rimmer, who rather pointedly did not turn to face her. “That’s- that was the only time someone’s kissed you?”
“You don’t have to rub it in.” He muttered, still looking up at the grey ceiling,
“That’s not what I meant!” Tali shook her head, “I wasn’t making fun, I was surprised.”
Rimmer did turn to look at her then, expecting some sucker punch of a line to finally land, but Tali was quiet, staring at him with sad eyes. “Yes. Well." He cleared his throat, "A bad kiss is better than no kiss.”

“Arnold?” Tali asked, “Do you trust me?”
The question took him, awfully, right back to a freezing Starbug, watching as Tali peeled her shaking hands from her leather gloves and held the blue fingertips out to the dying fire. It made him think of sitting in his bee, cradled close to her heart, of lying beside her in the dark of the night, hearing her breathing become weaker and weaker, so his voice trembled a little when he whispered, “Of course.”
“I could kiss you. Then you’d have something else to count.”
Rimmer swallowed, fiddling with the loose tie around his neck. She could kiss him. She could kiss him. Only she couldn’t, of course, she couldn’t because he’d missed his chance three million years ago. Was that why she was offering in the first place? To mock him? Would she do that?
“I’m a hologram,” Was all he could think to say, “You can’t touch me.”

Talia sat up and leant over Rimmer, miming a kiss at the place his cheek ought to be, careful not to go too far and pass through him. He bolted upright, a hand going to where she should’ve made contact as though he might be able to catch the kiss and press it into place.
“There.” Tali smiled, laying back down, “I’d say that counts.” And though he had not felt it, Rimmer had felt it, had known it was there, had appreciated that willingly, and to the best of her ability, Tali had kissed him. So, suave and collected man that he was, he nodded. And ran away.

Chapter Text

Fundamentally, Talia Gardner was not someone who embarrassed easily. So she'd gotten absolutely shitfaced and tried to kiss a guy made entirely of light, whatever. And sure, it'd spooked said guy so badly that he'd literally fallen through a wall in his haste to get away from her. And yeah, sure he hadn't spoken to her in days. Sure, cool, she could handle that. What she could not handle however, was Rimmer yelling pleadingly for her as the Justice Machine forced him to stagger down some sinister looking corridor, ‘9,328 years’ ringing in her ears.

9,328 years was a long time. That wasn’t a ‘I’ll be dead by then’ time, it was a ‘I’ll be spacedust, scattered in the nebulas by then’ time. And Rimmer? He’d spent a week sulking when Lister had accidentally left him behind on a derelict for an hour, 9,328 years would kill him stone-dead. Again.

“Don’t fret, Dr Gardner.” Kryten said, rubbery hand coming to rest sympathetically on her shoulder,
“Yeh, he’s right, that whole thing was a total kangaroo court.” Lister muttered, and Tali wondered vaguely what her face must be doing for both of them to have immediately jumped to comfort her. Even the Cat was trying, given that she could physically see him working to hold back some snipe about ‘9,328 years of peace and quiet’.
“Precisely sir, and I do believe that any entity concerned with achieving true justice, would approve of an appeal.”
“An appeal?” Tali groaned, both hands in her hair, “That could take months, years!”
“Gardner.” Lister said evenly, “We’re the last humans alive, I don’ think there’ll be much of a queue.”
“Oh. Right.”

✹

Getting a hold of visitors passes to the justice zone was not too hard, getting Rimmer to agree to their plan, Tali knew, was going to be considerably more difficult.
“Hi, killer.” Grinned Lister, which prompted quite a hard jab from Tali right square into his ribs.
“Nine thousand years, nine!” Rimmer complained, not looking at either of his visitors.
“Brought you a book,” Lister tossed a glorified magazine onto the bed beside him, useless to him not just in light of being a hologram, but because it also just so happened to be a cat book. Written in cat. Tali sighed and took a seat,
“Oh thanks. That’ll really help the centuries fly past!”
“Don’t panic, we’ll get you out.”
“Why bother, I’ll be up for parole in another couple of ice ages.” Rimmer drolled, eyes rolling.
“We’re going to appeal.” Tali cut in, “The computers agreed to a retrial, all we have to do is prove you're not responsible for the accident on Red Dwarf.”

“Quite right, Dr Gardner.” Beamed Kryten as he stepped inside the cell, “What the mind probe detected was your own sense of guilt about the accident. You convicted yourself. I must simply establish that you are a neurotic, underachieving-”
“Yes, Kryten, thank you. I think he gets it.”
“You’re going to prove that I was innocent of negligence on the grounds that I’m a half-witted incompetent?”
Kryten was still beaming as he went on, “Well no sir, more like a total buffoon.”
“Man,” The Cat purred, “There ain’t a jury in the land that wouldn’t buy that.”

✹

“Name?”
“Talia Gardner.”
“Occupation?”
“Biologist.”
“Would you consider the accused a friend?”
Tali’s eyes darted to Rimmer, catching the green sheen of his suit, he wasn’t looking at her, “Unfortunately yes.”
“Who would you say then is the person who thinks of him most fondly?” Oh but he was looking at her now, and Tali swallowed, not sure what to say.
“Well,” She started, stretching out the word a little longer than it could quite sustain, “Well we are.”
“We, Dr?” Kryten clarified,
“Us, y’know, the crew of Red Dwarf. He’s one of us, of course we think of him fondly. He’s our friend.”
The Cat made a noise like a scoff, and Lister’s eyebrows had raised so far that they might’ve vacated his face entirely, but no one disagreed.
“In your opinion as a science officer, could you imagine any scenario where Mr Rimmer would be responsible for preventing a ship-wide radiation leak?”
“No, I could not.”

Kryten nodded, crossing the podium solemnly, he was wasted as a cleaning-droid, Tali thought, perhaps she’d try and introduce him to the concept of politics when they were back on the Dwarf.
“And his character, Doctor? How would you describe him as a person?”
“He- he was- “ She started, immediately floundering. How to describe such an uptight, mentally unwell, weasel of a man in a flattering manner? How to express that he was not, a total gimboid without sounding disingenuous?
“He was very committed.” Tali found herself settling on, “To Z-shift, to becoming an officer. He worked very hard, granted not necessarily on the right things, but he did try.” Rimmer’s eyes were still very much on her, his chest rising and falling with heavy, pointless breaths.
“He can be, y’know, abrasive, and thoughtless, and selfish. He can be terrible sometimes, actually. But I have no doubt that if he was tasked with fixing the drive plate, he would’ve done it to the best of his ability, and done it by the book. If something went wrong, it wasn’t Rimmer’s fault.”
“The defence rests.”

✹

"You didn't really mean it, did you?"

It couldn’t be Lister, they’d left him in the hole to figure out his existential feelings, Tali having dropped in a copy of Rawls 'A Theory of Justice' to help pass the time, while the Cat, still seeing double, had stalked off to the med-bay with the intention of finding a suitably fashionable cold compress, and Kryten... well Tali would've heard Kryten coming a mile away. Which left only Rimmer.
“Didn’t mean what?” She frowned, spinning around on her chair, still clutching the holomag that had engrossed her,
“What you said about the drive plate not being my fault. That was just to convince the justice machine to let me go, wasn’t it?”
“Come off it.” Tali scoffed, rolling her eyes, but Rimmer was silent, whole body tense, incredibly interested in the shine of his boots, “Rimmer,” She went on, a little sterner, “Don’t be silly, the driveplate wasn’t your fault, you said it yourself.”
He was silent for a moment, Adam's apple bobbing, thinking. Rimmer did not usually think this long before opening his mouth, it was starting to concern her.
“Arn-”
“IthoughtIkilledyou.” He said, eyes closed, hands balled into fists. Truthfully he looked a little sick, or sick as an unchanging hologram could, “Just those first two days, before Holly told us about your pod, I thought, a little bit, that I’d killed you. A little bit.” And by the time he finished the sentence he sounded out of breath, like it was all one continuous exhale of non-existent air.

“But here I am.” Were the only words that came to Tali, because here she was, at the end of time with her unfortunate choice in bestfriends, doing more with her life than she’d ever managed with the Science Corp. “Which isn’t so bad, you know.” She almost went to nudge him, almost, instead she tilted her head, sure to catch his eye, “There are worse people to be trapped in deep space with.”

Chapter Text

Games night aboard Jupiter Mining Corporation’s Red Dwarf goes a little something like this.

Lister and the Cat pair up immediately, locking eyes across the bunk room like school boys told to find a partner, Rimmer snarks at the both of them, nursing hurt that he hasn’t been picked (this is the 152nd Game Night Friday in a row that they’ve done it, and he still takes it just as personally as the first) until Talia offers to be on his team instead. Kryten, still finishing that week's laundry, watches as he folds.

This arrangement only tends to last a round or two; Tali and Rimmer are disgustingly good at most games, Rimmer’s obscure historical knowledge and Tali’s pretty much everything else makes them deadly at Trivial Pursuit, far too long hanging out in the confined space of Starbug has them practically psychic when it comes to Charades, and somehow they even manage to crush at Yahtzee. Uno is banned after their brutal +36 card teamup leaves Lister with a week long eye twitch.

“This cannot be fair!” Lister complains every time, “You get ‘er and I get the Cat? No way, swap.”
The Cat, unable to contend with that, simply nods and swaps seats with a grousing Rimmer, reorganising them into teams of Tali and Cat, and Rimmer and Lister. Together, the two technicians are good enough to beat Tali at the game of Monopoly they inevitably play next. Nearly.

Granted, they have a number of factors working in their favour: 1) Tali lets the Cat make their every other move, 2) They are cheating, horrifically, 3) Talia lets them win. Their cheating is blatant and gleeful, and Tali lets it go without comment; the truth is she’s just glad to see them working together, Lister is surprisingly good at coming up with clever ways to manipulate the rules, and Rimmer is unsurprisingly good at talking him into using such unashamedly underhanded tactics. It makes her think that perhaps, in another universe, they would’ve taken the Space Corps by storm together.

Even with the Cat destroying her every carefully laid plan, and the boy's evil teamwork, Tali wins. Or she should, were any of them interested in a fair game. Alas, her most favourite part of the evening comes right at the end, when she fixes her final play to let the other team win by just the slightest, fraction of an inch, and the both of them whoop with delight, turn to one another, and attempt a high five that doesn’t connect as their hands sail through each other. It’s electric, for just a moment, to see them so at ease with each other, grinning and laughing and being the group of friends that Tali knows they can be, knows it because of moments like this.

Often at that point, frustrated with his loss streak, the Cat suggests they pay strip poker, which is Tali’s cue to tag out, not because she was particularly against playing, but because she’d been banned for counting cards during one of their earliest games.

Tonight, exiled from the bunkroom until the boys moved on to Guitar Hero (which she was actually also banned from, after crushing Listers dreams with a 96% accuracy rating against his 12%. But she liked to sit with Rimmer and watch) she found herself wandering.
“Alright, Tal?” Holly’s pale face asked from the screen across her, “They being sore losers again?”
“Sore winners, actually. Winners got to pick the next game, they decided on strip poker.”
“Oh, I see. Can’t believe they still won’t let you play that, want me to stage an asteroid strike so the cards go everywhere?”
Tali grinned, considered the offer, and then shook her head, “That’s alright, thanks though. Have you seen Kryten?”
“He’s in the Bot Gardens.”
Tali cringed, she hadn’t been down to the botanical gardens in months, years maybe, she’d tried to maintain them in the early days when they’d first woken up, but it seemed no amount of biology booksmarts translated into a green thumb. It was probably awful down there, overgrown or rotting, she doubted even Kryten would be able to restore it now, but he’d certainly stress himself out trying.

She thanked the computer and departed for the gardens, taking the elevator down a half dozen floors before stepping out into the simulated sunlight of the ‘greenhouse’. Immediately she was confused, it looked more like her single trip to Kensington Gardens than the Day of the Triffids nightmare she’d left it as, with bright, beaming flowers lining every box, a whole rainbow of colours present. Violet, roses, carnations, all of them not just growing, but thriving, absurdly healthy given that they were three million years removed from the planet they belonged to.
“Kryten?” Tali called as she walked, weaving between different planters to admire the flora they supported, “Kryten are you out- er, down here?”
“Dr Gardner?” Came the mechanoid's thundering voice somewhere vaguely to the left of her. Tali wound through more plants, flowers giving way to little collections of thyme and rosemary, giving way to trees that dwarfed her. She rounded a corner and spotted Kryten with a watering can, staring at her with that shrinking look of guilt that’d grown familiar.

“What did you do to this place?” Tali asked, amazed, “It’s beautiful! Like a mini Eden Project, I didn’t know you gardened?”
“Oh,” Said Kryten, clearly not expecting that reaction, “Well I don’t, it’s not part of my programming but- “ He smiled, as though about to confess a mighty secret, “I’ve been reading about it, and Mister Lister said I should pursue my passions, so I thought I’d give it a try.”
“You worked out how to do all this from some books? Does Lister know about this place?”
“Just one book Dr, and no, I thought perhaps it’d be safest for the flora not to tell any of you.” He shifted, and Tali could practically see his guilt chip engaging, she patted him on the arm,
“You’re probably right about that,” She agreed, “But one book? Aren’t there any others you would’ve liked to read?”
“Well certainly, Dr, but that was the only one I’ve been able to find on the ship.”
“Kryten,” Tali laughed, “You git, I was a biologist, I’ve got plant-y books aplenty, you should’ve just said!”
“You mean you’d let me borrow them?”
“You can have them, I was never much of a gardener back when there was an actual planet to garden on, consider it any early birthday present.”
“You’re too kind Dr Gardner, how could I ever say thank you?”
Tali shrugged, halfway to assuring him it was nothing, only to stop mid gesture. Hanging around with Rimmer for so long must be starting to rub off on her, because there was something, and what was the point in wasting a perfectly good ‘I O U’?

–

Later, long after the games had ended, and the boys had wandered down to Parrot’s to celebrate their respective losses and victories, Talia stole into the hologram simulation suit with an agenda most conspiratorial. It was a dreary room, all wires and sleek screens like a dentist's office, which was exactly why everyone avoided it, everyone except Rimmer of course, who had to spend several hours there each week charging his bee, which was perfect for Tali’s plan.

At first she’d intended to leave it in their bunkroom, but Lister might’ve seen and made some smart arse comment, so she’d racked her brains for somewhere that just Rimmer would see, and come up with the suite. It was a good idea she thought, it was certainly a room in need of sprucing up.

When Talia was done, a single potted Lily of the Valley sat atop the centermost console, right where the light bee’s charging port was located, and beside it, written in her neat cursive, a note that read, ‘To Arnie, try not to kill anything this time.’