Disclaimer: I still don't own Red Dwarf or any of its characters.
Chapter Seven
Rimmer looked around and could hardly believe his eyes. The room looked like it had been hit by a tornado. Everywhere he looked he saw books and papers, stacked and scattered in every possible manner. Dirty clothes hung from lampshades while half-eaten sandwiches and coffee-stained mugs resided on the desk in the corner. He thought he could make out a bed and a few chairs beneath the junk, and if it weren't for a path that cut its way to the door, he wouldn't have been able to see the floor either. A.J. noticed Ace's mouth hanging open and gave an embarrassed smile.
"Erm, sorry about the mess. I don't get much company, so I don't bother cleaning up. I've gotten a bit lazy, I guess."
"What exactly do you do?" asked Rimmer, still aghast of the incredible mess.
"I'm a historian."
Rimmer snapped his head up in surprise. "A historian?"
"Earth history, of course, mainly the Napoleonic campaigns and the World Wars."
Now it was Rimmer's turn to say it: "Incredible. How long have you been doing this?"
"Well I've always been interested in history. It's in my blood." He cleared some papers and some dirty clothes off one of his chairs and sat down. "Quite a while, I guess. It's sort of amusing to think what I could have become. Father of course wanted me to become an officer--"
"Oh yes, I know that very well. Was he constantly drilling you with questions as well?"
"Yes! And the way he ran his household. Always barking orders like he was on the battlefield in the middle of a war."
"Nothing was ever good enough for him," said Rimmer quietly, thinking back to his horrendous childhood. "No matter what I did, or at least tried to do, I could never win his favor."
"Yes well at least you became an officer! I didn't even join the Space Corps."
Rimmer was stunned. "You didn't join the Space Corps?"
"No. I didn't want to." He noticed Rimmer staring at him in shock. "What, you can't possibly tell me that you truly wanted to join the Corps?"
"Well, yes and no. Part of me told me I should go, and part told me I must be crazy. I just wanted to do the right thing."
"So did I." A.J. grabbed his jacket from the coat rack and put it on. "I remember standing on the gantry with father as we waited for the transport ship to arrive. We didn't talk, of course. Just stood there and waited."
Rimmer nodded, picturing the same experience in his head. "I had to watch everyone else laughing with their family, excited and thrilled to be heading to the Space Corps, while I had to stand at perfect attention to please father. 'No silly chat' he told me on the way there. 'No son of mine is going to make me look undignified.' I really don't know why he bothered to show up. I would have gladly gone on my own."
Now A.J. nodded. He was beginning to enjoy this talk with 'himself'. It was so nice to find someone who knew what it was like. "I was so confused. Would joining the Space Corps make my father approve of me at last? Was it really what I wanted to do?"
"What would happen there, would I be any good--the questions kept coming and coming."
"Then the ship arrived and the docking announcement came."
"It was my final chance to say no."
"But did I dare say no to father?"
"I looked at him--"
"--and I did what any good son would do:
"I turned and entered the ship--"
"--I said no."
They looked at each other suddenly, realizing what they had just said.
"You said no?!" Rimmer asked at last.
"Of course I said no! I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to break free! Even when I divorced my parents, their shadow still hovered over me. I just realized that if I joined the Space Corps, I would be under their control forever. Just for once, I wanted to do something that made ME happy."
"You stood up to father," Rimmer said in quiet amazement. He couldn't even comprehend doing such a thing. All his life he had truly understood one thing and one thing only: father is always right. No matter how much he resented the man, hated him for being so cold and heartless to him all his life, despised him for making him into the failure he had to see in the mirror every day--despite all this, he never once could have stood his ground and go against his father like A.J. had. He had been too well conditioned to do something like that.
"I can't believe you actually stood up to him," he said again.
"And you didn't, I take it."
"No. I wanted to desperately, really I did. I wanted to spit in his face and drop-kick the bastard to infinity." His hands had become fists as the pain and frustration returned, and now they slowly released, hanging helplessly over his knees. "But at the same time, I wanted to please him. Just once, I wanted to succeed and do something that would make him proud of me. Just *once*." He reached up to rub his 'H' but remembered it wasn't there anymore. Yet another thing he still wasn't used to yet. "I thought that joining the Space Corps would make him happy. It's what he always wanted his sons to do, and since my brothers had all gone..." He sighed. "I guess I just thought that's where I was meant to be too."
He looked up to A.J., who looked back with understanding eyes. "I guess it's pretty obvious where our destiny's split, right?" He motioned for A.J. to continue. "So come on, what happened after you broke the news? Father must have been irate."
"Well he was. In fact, he didn't speak to me for five years. So I took the opportunity to discover what made me happy, not what made him happy. I realized my love for history could be put to use, and I got a job working for a small publication. I was 'discovered' soon after that, got a book deal, and the rest, as they say, is history."
"And father never intervened?"
"No. His silence was enough to make me insecure about my decision, but I kept going. I didn't hear from him until after the publication of my second book. He called me one day, completely out of the blue, and told me how he'd read both of my books." A.J. crossed the room and began digging through a stack of books and yellowed papers. "It was so weird, we actually had a normal conversation for once. He talked briefly about what the rest of the family was doing, but mostly he just wanted to hear about me. What was I up to, was I happy--imagine that, father talking about happiness. It was so bizarre."
"Indeed," muttered Rimmer. He couldn't help but feel a twinge of envy. A.J. found what he was looking for and handed it to Rimmer. It was a photograph of A.J. and his father standing in front of what Rimmer presumed to be A.J.'s publishing office. Both men had an arm around each other and sported broad grins. Rimmer was speechless.
A.J seemed to read his thoughts. "It's strange, I know. I wouldn't believe it myself if I were you. Which I sort of am, I guess." He scratched his head and sat down next to Rimmer, who was still staring at the photo. "After father apologized--"
"Apologized?!" Rimmer repeated, running his fingers through his hair. This was getting to be too much.
"Yes, he apologized to me. Not for everything, mind you--I don't think he could ever say sorry enough times to make up for that so-called childhood of mine--ours...;" he looked to Rimmer to verify his feelings, but Rimmer replied with a stunned look. A.J. went on, "but he did apologize for not speaking to me for five years. He said he was glad that I was happy and successful." A look of subtle triumph came across him as he realized for the first time that his father had approved of him. Truly approved of him.
"He was proud of you," said Rimmer, still unable to believe it.
"Yes, I suppose on some level, he was. Anyway, after that we became quite close."
"You and father were close."
A.J. nodded. "He came with me on several research assignments. I got to know a lot about him. He also knew a lot about history and his assistance was quite useful. For a while, things were simply fabaroo between the two of us. Then he had to have that heart attack..." his voice trailed off as he remembered when he first heard the news. It still hurt.
Rimmer snapped out of his trance when A.J. mentioned the heart attack. "My father died peacefully in his sleep, if I remember correctly. All I received was a letter from mother."
"After the funeral, I was a hopeless wreck. I couldn't concentrate on my work and I didn't care. I stopped eating, drank way too much, and basically sat around in my apartment, waiting to be taken away by whatever evilness it was that had taken my father from me." He looked down and said quietly, "It was an awful place I found myself in."
Rimmer nodded with sympathy. Whatever hints of jealousy he felt before had disappeared, and he looked at A.J. with quiet wonder.
"Finally I woke up one day and realized that I couldn't go on like this. I decided to pull myself together, but I knew I couldn't do that in a place with so many memories. So I bought land on this little planet with the money I had earned off my first book, and I've been living here ever since. No one ever comes here. I'm free to conduct my research in complete and utter privacy. I guess that's why I acted so crazy before. You're the first person I've seen in almost six years; I didn't know what to think." He stood up and faced 'himself.' "Sorry, my babbling must have been incredibly boring."
"No, not at all! It's been most educational, to say the least." Rimmer had given up any hope of keeping up his Ace persona, not that A.J. would have noticed. This development was simply too fantastic for even Ace himself to bear.
A.J. smiled. "So come on. You've heard my tale, what's yours? Judging by your flashy appearance and that fabulous ship you piloted here, I take it you were an incredible success in the Space Corps?"
Rimmer smirked bitterly. "Hardly. I couldn't become an officer no matter how hard I tried. In fact I spent most of my career on board a mining ship called Red Dwarf, cleaning out clogged chicken soup nozzles in food dispensers and failing the astro-navigation exam every time I took it. Not really a success story if you ask me."
"But look at you! You're so confident, so smooth. You must have done something right to end up like that."
"What, this?" he asked, gesturing to his hair and uniform. "No no, this is a completely different story. See, it all started when--"
He was cut off by the sound of a large explosion coming from outside the cabin.
"What the smeg was that?" they yelled in unison, and headed for the door when another explosion bellowed. The cabin began to quake from the impact tremors from the blasts.
Whatever it was, it was getting closer.