A/N: Welcome! I'm happy to finally be able to share this and I hope you will enjoy it!

A few words upfront:

This fic grew out of eight lines of dialogue that just popped into my head into a multi-chaptered story bridging the gap between series 8 and BTE. There are therefore no direct reference to series 10, but I have seen it and taken it into account - especially considering that we more or less have official confirmation that the hologram-Rimmer of BTE and series 10 is the one who left to become Ace. I'm aware that this has been done before, but I hope I will be able to offer my own original take on it and that you will enjoy it, of course. Oh, and while I take the name of Ace's ship from the novels, I am basing the story entirely on what we have seen in the series and ignoring the novelisations (particularly where they contradict each other).

Also, this story does have an actual plot, but it is also very much a character study for Rimmer. This has resulted in me slightly adapting the way Ace is represented (particularly since my first reaction to him was almost identical to Rimmer's). You will know what I mean after the first chapter, and even if you don't agree with me I hope you will enjoy the story for what it is - a tribute to plain old Arnold J. Rimmer.

Disclaimer: Copyright with Grant Naylor Productions. No infringement intended.

Dimensions

by

Jaelijn

Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I. Ace Rimmer

The Wildfire's computer calmly matched the sound of her ventilation unit to the soft – and unnecessary – breathing of the ship's sleeping occupant, settling in for a night of relaxation. She didn't need to sleep, of course, but she still enjoyed the downtime – it was something Arnold had taught her. Not Ace – not the first Ace, anyway. Oh, she had been young then! Young and foolish, completely smitten with her first and only pilot, right amongst the ranks of the 'What a guy!'s. She had been infatuated with him, so deeply that she never knew it wasn't love. And then Ace had died, and the first Arnold Rimmer had replaced him. Then, she had finally seen Ace for what he really was. Had finally seen all the things he had always hidden from her – the torture he had suffered as a child from his brothers, his parents. The boiling deep anger and insecurity. The ego so puffed up that he had buried it under a smeg-load of humility to turn it into self-confidence. The lack of true connections, the social awkwardness he had covered up with superficiality. The sexual attraction he abused shamelessly. She had finally seen Ace for the pompous, puffed-up git he had been.

At the same time, however, she had realised that the multiverse needed someone like Ace. Needed a hero who was too good to be true to fight evil that would have no match without him. A daredevil who would rush even into the pits of hell to save the innocent, who would stare down a Simulant and not even bat an eyelash. Because, in his own way, Ace had been a force for good saving millions of lives. She later learned that Ace only passed his legacy on because he felt sorry for his alternate selfs – because he could identify. He had thought that by leaving them this legacy, by giving them the opportunity to become Ace, he was doing them a favour. Making them better. The Wildfire was no longer sure if he was right, but, back then, she had supported his decision.

The first Arnold was still fairly close to the original. He had managed to become a pilot, but had still ended up bunking with a Lister who was just as mean, just as nasty to him as his brothers had ever been. Rimmer had fought back in the only way he knew when his sex-appeal would not work – with sarcasm. In a way, his relationship with Lister was far closer, far healthier than the superficial admiration-friendship Ace had shared with Spanners. That Arnold had been successful, but damaged. He still became a damn good Ace, flourishing in the new role with no Lister to drag him back down. By the time he died, he had been Ace. And afterwards, the Wildfire had begun to think that something, somewhere was lost whenever an Arnold embraced the role, whenever an Arnold disappeared and she was once again flying with Ace. She had always felt a thrill of excitement when the change occurred, the joy of freedom, of not being bogged down by the various struggles and neuroses that came with Arnold J. Rimmer, but the feeling had become ambivalent, and more and more so as time went on. Hundreds, thousands of Aces later, she had accepted it as an inevitability. All these Rimmers, laying down their lives for the greater good, some only lasting a few weeks, others flying with her for months, years – they all eventually embraced the role, enjoyed it, became someone else and, instead of healing their neuroses, left them behind, ran from them – because running away was always something a Rimmer did best. There was never any real growth. These Rimmers stepped into someone else's shoes and disappeared, shamelessly exploiting this persona. No one ever called them to their hypocrisy, because the only one who could, the only one who knew, was the Wildfire. And she, though she had come to love Arnold, with all the neuroses and mal-adjustments, and despise Ace as much as every Rimmer did when they first met their predecessor, knew that she could not risk challenging Ace. She could not risk him falling back into his cowardliness, his insecurity, his feeling of inadequacy – not if she wanted Ace's work to be successful, and she did. Because, in the end, it was for the greater good, and none of the Aces seemed to realise what they had lost.

The latest Ace had been different, a bit. He, though flourishing in the role of Ace, had never quite forgotten where he had come from. He, much closer to the Rimmer Ace had met on his first dimension jump, had been awestruck by the legacy thrust upon him, and though he embraced Ace as much as all before him, he always, again and again, had to prove to himself that he was worth it. He never took being Ace for granted. He never exploited his status as a hero. He never forgot who he had been, and what he had thought of Ace when he first met him. He had been a difficult Ace – prone to melancholy, and profoundly lonely, because he could not find solace in the countless women who threw himself at his feet. He was aware of the sacrifice, and the Wildfire had felt closer to him than to any of the other Aces before. When he was fatally wounded, she was devastated, and so she took him to the first dimension other than her own she had ever been.

Ace was once again replaced by Arnold. She had known this Rimmer was different when he had first stepped into her cockpit – maybe even as soon as his predecessor had transferred his role to him. This Rimmer was the flipside of the coin – only one single occurrence separated him from the original Ace, one single incident of his childhood had taken Ace down the path of success and smuggery, and had left this Rimmer with a self-loathing large enough to swallow a planet and a mess of neuroses that nearly short-circuited her psychology banks when she had taken over hosting his hologram from Starbug's basic, personality-less computer. He bore his faults on his sleeve. True, he had tried to hide them behind a façade of sarcasm that was familiar to the Wildfire by now, and had pretended that he was the way he was by choice, when, in reality, all he wanted to do was change. His death, being resurrected as a hologram three million years after everyone to whose expectations he had ever wanted to live up to was dead had been a devastating blow to this Rimmer. Removing the only way of self-betterment he had ever known, the only way his parents had ever shown him – becoming an officer – had left this Rimmer reeling, and even after years and years, he had not caught his balance. And yet, his personal connection to his crewmates, though dysfunctional and askew, was deeper than anything the Wildfire had ever witnessed with any of the previous Aces. And that was why, when he attempted to leave without a proper goodbye, anxious to get on the way because he was, like every Rimmer, afraid, because he thought that his fear would get the better of him, she speedily reprogrammed her circuits, and instead of starting the ignition sequence, he activated the ejection seat.

Half of her RAM was worrying that he would throw it all down, then and there. Declaring that he could not even push the proper buttons, that he could not possibly become Ace, that he was just a failure and that nothing had ever gone right for him, so why should this? But Rimmer lived up to her expectations and more. He had a proper goodbye with his friends, even though they believed him to be Ace. And then, he had gotten the phrase wrong. "Stoke me a clipper; I'll be back for Christmas!" Where had that come from? It had thrown the Wildfire for a loop – none, none of the thousands of previous Aces had ever gotten the phrase wrong, not once, not even the first time. She had not known what to say, she had not known how to react – she hadn't even had a proper conversation with this Rimmer yet. It was only when she heard him mutter "Whatever." and he started her up with the sure hands of someone who knew precisely what he did, in a clinical way, though he'd never had the practical experience, that she relaxed. Because this Rimmer was different, and for once, she could see the potential for real growth. More, she could see the desire for growth. This Rimmer did not slip into the role effortlessly. This Rimmer struggled with it, fought it, because he had met the original Ace and had been the first one, the only one to loath him, even before the Wildfire caught on. And it was not only because this Rimmer felt that Ace had gotten all the breaks that had been denied him. It was because Rimmer saw Ace for the pompous, overbearing, repulsive git he had been. Because he knew that What a Guy! Ace might be popular, might be attractive, brave, successful – everything he was not – but saw that he was not better. He was the flat, stereotypical hero right out of a B-movie without depth, because when he had 'buckled down', as Ace had called it, he had merely found a more efficient way of escaping. He had become someone he was not, someone he should, by all rights and purposes, not even like. Because suffering maketh man and Ace was too superficial to feel real emotions.

She had planned to take Rimmer to a quiet dimension, to have a nice, long talk. She needed to fill him in on his predecessors, what they had done, whom they had met, she had to make him practice Ace, because if he wasn't convincing, he would be dead within the minute they ran into trouble, but most importantly, she had to show him that there were ways he could change, could become better, that did not involve rising up the echelons of command. She had to show him that he had been on the right track, that he just needed a chance to feel needed, to be successful, to have something he was good at, and that he could burn his self-loathing out in a true effort to change, without the trappings of an officer career which he was not cut out for, nor did he, in his heart of hearts, believe he deserved it.

Of course, it had all gone horribly wrong. She had navigated them right into a volatile hostage situation between two rival spacefaring GELF tribes, and Rimmer had been thrust head-on into his duty as Ace. She was just as terrified as he, fearing for his life more than she had feared for any of the Rimmers before him, because it would have been such a waste. This one was the first who had any change of becoming the best Arnold 'Ace' Rimmer there had ever been, and she would never have been able to forgive herself if she had gotten him killed before she could tell him – or, even worse, if he became Ace like all those before him, and stopped being Arnold all together. He screwed up the voice a bit, but otherwise managed the situation nicely – there were no blazing guns, but he got the two GELF tribes together at the same table, and in the end, the hostages were released on both sides, and the GELFs parted in peace – not a drop of blood spilled. He could have had the pick of the captain's daughters of both vessels, who were both incredibly attractive, having evolved from model-GELFs. The Wildfire had brazed herself for meeting them both, and had scaled up the privacy setting of Ace's small bedroom, and she had felt sick at heart. The elation she had felt when an Arnold became Ace was gone. So was the ambivalence. She was grieving for a chance lost, for destroying something so precious.

Rimmer had stepped back into the Wildfire to a chorus of "What a guy!" he had been alone, and as soon as the hatch had shut behind him, his placid smile had turned into a disgusted sneer and he had torn off the wig. "What a load of smegging nonsense! What a guy!" he'd mocked. "What's with this ridiculous costume that it turns people into puddles of goo – it's smegging disgusting! Did you see those women? It's like they don't see me at all – all they want is to jump in bed with some pompous git of a hero! Seriously, what's wrong with them? They can't be that desperate for sex with those looks."

The Wildfire had silently rejoiced. She knew that this was the Rimmer she had been searching for for such a long time – ironically, the first Rimmer she had ever met who was not Ace. Ace had met hundreds of his duplicates, even apart from those that had become his successors, and he had never met someone quite like this Arnold J. Rimmer. And while Ace had thought that it was a good thing, not being able to bear seeing another version of himself so broken, so pathetic, the Wildfire now knew that he had been wrong all along.

True, life was anything but easy with this Rimmer. He was truly struggling with being Ace. He was terrified half of the time, and when he was successful, part of him insisted that he did not deserve it. His hatred of Ace was as much of a hindrance as it was an asset – it took him longer than anyone before him to get the mannerisms right, and even then, he could not resist infusing them with a touch of sarcasm, a speck of overacting. No one but the Wildfire noticed, of course, but then she was always there for him. There when he got into the dumps, when he ranted about how he had screwed up his life, about how much he hated the fuss made around Ace, when he was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to rest but had to keep going, because Ace was needed. He was the first Rimmer who enjoyed being called Ace, but at the same time insisted that she called him Arnold, or Arn, or even Arnie when they were alone, because he was 'sick and tired of the pompous, arrogant, smegging tin-foil-wrapped goit'. He stood in his own way, still trying to come to terms with the fact that he had no one left to make proud but himself, and denying himself to be just that – his favourite argument being that it was not really him, but Ace, that he had just slipped into a role like a bad actor. But the Wildfire knew that, deep down, the acknowledgements, the successes did him good, that they began to heal his self-confidence, that his remarks became less sniding, that he laughed more often, relaxed more easily, that the anxiety headaches became less, that his priorities began to reassert themselves, that he was becoming a better man.

Like the Ace before him, he struggled with the loneliness. The Wildfire tried to be as efficient a companion as she could, but Rimmer was missing his friends – the crewmates he had hated and liked at the same time, the people that had accepted him back when he had nothing but loathing for himself, despite his shortcomings, though they had lied and insulted and mocked him, anything to hide how much they cared – the people he could not show how far he had come. He occasionally brought women back, but never formed any real connection, since, for them, he had to be Ace. He had tried to drop the act, once, but had changed his mind after trying to explain for five minutes and meeting only with a blank, and, frankly, disgusted look by the woman. He had thrown her out without even so much as a goodbye kiss after that and had fled back into the loneliness of space. Because, and that was the strangest thing, he needed the loneliness as much as he despised it. It gave him an opportunity to truly be himself, and to truly relax in a way he never could as Ace.

He had made it. He had proved to himself that he could be Ace. But it all meant nothing without someone who could acknowledge the enormity of that achievement. He wanted to do something as Arnold J. Rimmer and get the credit as Arnold J. Rimmer, not Ace, nor anyone. And the only achievement that he believed to be truly his own was that he had been Ace for ten years now, not that it seemed all that long when he had spent nearly 600 years on Rimmerworld, all on his own. But, considering his lifestyle and the many, many times his lightbee had been damaged, it was impressive. This Rimmer, this Ace, often survived on damned luck, and that made him more like himself than he realised.

The Wildfire enjoyed the quiet, the respite, but she knew it couldn't last. Just as she knew that the one Arnold J. Rimmer she had come to love like none of his predecessors could not remain with her forever.

A/N: Hope you enjoyed it, and will have the time to drop me a review! :) The plot will really start of in the next chapter!