I'm glad you're all enjoying the Colony - creating little worlds and their inhabitants is oh so much fun ^__^ Thanks for all of your lovely reviews, they really do make me smile.
Look! Look what the lovely MaxEvelyn drew! A pic of Ace and McGruder! *loves* Check out her profile on DeviantArt - 'Matirx7' as links don't work on this site, gosh darn it.
And the drama continue-eth... Enjoy!
A night and a day had passed since Rimmer's talk with Ellie, and the evening had drawn in once more; the bright, white lights of the ship's daytime sinking back into the eerie blue glow of night. Now that the glare had dimmed, Rimmer could make out the twinkling of the distant stars through the glass dome of the ship's roof as he crossed the abandoned central square of the Colony. As pretty as the eternal night was, he did miss the beautiful simplicity of the sunsets he'd so taken for granted during his life on Io.
Drawing up a wooden crate as an improvised seat and making himself comfortable in the soothing quiet, Rimmer pulled the screwdriver from between his teeth and set to work on the radio transmitter he'd brought with him. The computer had sounded rather twitchy at not being able to speak with him electronically through his light bee ever since the debacle with the failed comms unit, so Rimmer had soothed her temporarily by promising to try and fix an old radio transmitter he'd found in the dusty hold of Wildfire.
The transmitters were once used by the human Aces that had preceded him in order to keep in touch with the mother hen-clucking mainframe. However, it had been at least 100 years since the last human incarnation of Ace – and as lasting as his own image was, this ever-aging technology was not faring so well. Half of the screws seemed to be missing and the wiring was completely shot. He'd been making feeble attempts to resurrect it for the last forty minutes, and he was rapidly losing patience.
As a tiny screw pinged away and skittered across the deck making the umpteenth bid for freedom, an involuntary growl dragged from Rimmer's throat.
"Argh! Stupid piece of sh - "
The last word spluttered and died in his mouth as he suddenly noticed that he was being watched. A pair of young women in their late twenties stood in the doorway of a sleeping quarters to his left. The brunette with the cropped bob bit back a smirk. The blonde with bounding curls blinked twice, clutching a small boy, about a year old.
Rimmer's eyes flitted down to the tiny child and then back up to the pair, swiftly shifting his language to PG.
" – junk?" he offered, his cheeks flushing red.
The women giggled at his embarrassment and swiftly returned to their hushed conversation. Yet the toddler in the blonde's arms wriggled and grizzled, tired of their talk and impatient to be let free, and she gently lowered him to the ground, allowing him to clutch her fingers to gain equilibrium. Rimmer smiled to himself under the wisps of his fringe before returning to his work.
Fishing up the screw from the floor, he sighed at the mess of wires and plastic in his lap. A master of weaponry and combat he may be after his nine years of training, his mechanical skills still left little to be desired. He was just as hopeless as he was back as a technician during his Red Dwarf days. The only hope for this radio transmitter now was a retirement as a rather decorative paperweight.
"Corin, wait!"
Rimmer glanced up. It looked as though the little boy had made a break for freedom of his own as he toddled excitedly over towards him with gleeful enthusiasm, his mother desperately rushing after him having realised far too late his path of intent.
With his last few approaching steps becoming shaky yet more determined than ever, the little boy collapsed resolutely into Rimmer's lap, propping himself unsteadily upright against his thigh and flashing him a giggling grin punctuated with the odd milk tooth.
Rimmer simply blinked, unsure what to do. "Um. Hello. Corin - ?" he tried.
His mother stopped hesitantly a few feet away. "I'm sorry," she laughed nervously, hanging back as if loathed to approach. "He's got no sense of boundaries, have you mister?" she added mock-pointedly to her son.
The toddler paid little attention to his mother's apologies, instead holding his short, chubby arms aloft to Rimmer. "Egbee!" he demanded.
Confused, Rimmer's brow furrowed as he glanced up to the boy's mother for translation.
"Erm." The woman bit the tip of her thumb. "I think he wants you to pick him up," she explained, a reassuring smile slipping out of the edges of her thumb.
"Oh," Rimmer mumbled nervously. "Right."
Placing the screwdriver and transmitter on the floor beside him, he gingerly picked up the tiny child and held him aloft at arm's length, as if he were wary that this strange contraption may explode, unannounced, at any moment. He'd never had much of a knack when it came to babies. The single time he'd met his brother Frank's baby daughter at her christening, she'd been sick on him within seconds and promptly howled like a banshee until his sister in law, Janine, had rescued her.
Corin stared back at him in silent bemusement. His oversized dungarees, crudely yet lovingly cut and hand-stitched from an old pair of JMC khakis, rucked up around his ears as he blinked.
The woman hugged her arms, watching them with a warm smile as her friend joined her. "Hmm - " The brunette mused as she stifled a giggle. "And who says that men don't have a way with babies too, hey Evie?" she muttered under her breath, a little too loudly.
Evie dug an elbow into her friend's side. "Petra!" she scolded with a hiss before turning back to face the awkward pair, her grin growing wider at Rimmer's visible flinch as Corin suddenly burst into a fit of giggles. "Ignore her. He really seems to like you."
A small smile tugged at the edge of Rimmer's mouth. With the beginnings of the same blonde curls, the young boy bore a strong resemblance to the woman before him. And yet - his gaze flitted between mother and son - he sported a pair of clear, green eyes as opposed to his mother's of stark computer-blue. Rimmer's eyes faded for a moment as a thought hit him. This child before him seemed to be an echo of someone else he'd once known; a thought that only stayed with teasing brevity before skittering away into darkness once more just as soon as it had tickled him.
A distant movement caught Rimmer's eye and he glanced up over the boy's shoulder. Sat up on the maintenance gantry high above them, a familiar figure was watching him silently; the pair exchanging a wordless gaze for just a moment before the figure pulled back into the shadows.
Corin giggled more fervently this time, ensnaring Rimmer's attention once more. He forced a smile. "He's cute," Rimmer offered, as he stood to hand the boy back to his mother who enveloped him lovingly in her arms. Fishing up the screwdriver and transmitter from the floor, he flipped a quick, playful salute to the boy who, having embarked on chewing absently on his finger, returned the gesture with a drooling grin. "Nice to meet you all," he added quickly, before hurrying off into the shadows.
Evie stared after him for a moment, as if mulling over something silently, before Corin's cries for attention demanded precedence and she tickled him playfully.
*******
Rimmer was convinced that by the time he'd climbed up to the maintenance gantry, McGruder would have slipped away to avoid confrontation. Yet as he hoisted himself up the last section of the ladder and secured a footing onto the metal gantry, he could see him still sat hunched over in the darkness.
Rimmer approached uncertainly. "Hey."
McGruder didn't turn to acknowledge him, instead continuing to stare down below, almost unseeing. "Hey," he echoed absently, lost in thought.
Reading his lapse into silence as a wordless invitation, Rimmer sank down awkwardly to his haunches beside him. He stretched his long legs through the gaps in the safety rail, allowing his boots to dangle into the chasm below, and tapped his screwdriver thoughtfully against the metal.
"You been avoiding me?" he asked eventually.
McGruder's jaw tightened, his teeth set on edge by the irritating tinny beat. "No."
Regarding him strangely, Rimmer cocked his head to one side, as if to try and snatch his attention. "You can't even look at me when you say that?"
After a pause, McGruder tilted a pointed look towards him, cocked a challenging eyebrow, and then drew back once more to return to his stare below them. Rimmer snorted in amusement. Fair enough.
He followed McGruder's gaze to where he continued to watch Evie below, distantly chatting gibberish to the small boy she held aloft, her words lost against the overriding hum of the Colony's engines. Flicking back the blonde curls from her face, she flashed a smile at her son that seemed to wrench physically at McGruder's chest, drawing forth a silent sigh.
A knowing grin tugged at the edge of Rimmer's mouth. "You like her, don't you?"
McGruder sighed a second time, but this time in irritation. "Not in the way you're thinking, no."
But Rimmer wasn't to be swayed. "Well, well, well," he teased. "Mister oh-so-cool SCM has a secret love."
"Ace, I don't love her that way," he strained, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, his voice edged dangerously with impatience. "Please, just drop it."
Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Oh come on, don't give me that crap. It's written all over your face - "
"Just drop it, ok?" McGruder snapped suddenly, his green eyes flashing with an aggression that Rimmer wasn't expecting. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Rimmer simply blinked in surprise. This was clearly a nerve too sore to tap. He held his hands aloft momentarily, indicating point dropped, before returning to tinker with the transmitter.
McGruder sighed raggedly, expelling his anger with one breath. He'd been trying to gather the stones to speak with him for the last day now, still uncertain whether or not to reveal the connection between them that Rimmer was still blind to. Snapping at him probably wasn't going to be the best method to steer the conversation in the right direction. Even if he never mentioned who he really was, he still felt that in some way, shape or form, he owed him an explanation about Evie.
"I was in love once," McGruder muttered, a voice under his breath still loud enough to catch Rimmer's attention. "Many, many years ago." McGruder flashed him an embarrassed smile. "Selina." It was a name he hadn't uttered for such a long time, yet even now it was etched with a sense of bittersweet memories that reflected in his tone. Memories he had to swallow before he could even continue.
"I rescued her from her ship, the SS Viola, and brought her back here to the Colony." He closed his eyes to picture her once more. "She was achingly beautiful," he breathed. "Piercing blue eyes. Dark brown curls that stretched down her back." McGruder opened his eyes once more. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd had girlfriends back when I was in Cadet School on Miranda." He shook his head loosely. "But when I met her, it all felt completely different. I just knew it was love. The real deal." He turned to face Rimmer. "It just caught me off guard, you know?"
Rimmer nodded wordlessly in agreement, although he wasn't overly sure if he did.
"We kept it a secret around here, just between us. But the time we spent together was mind-blowing." McGruder picked at the peeling paint from the safety rail, his face clouded in embarrassment. "I guess we were fooling around and weren't being overly careful. When she told me she was pregnant I was ecstatic." Remorse pinched McGruder's brow. "She was crying."
McGruder examined his boots silently and Rimmer looked away.
"It would have been too complicated, me being involved. I can understand that," McGruder conceded, albeit with a definite degree of pained resentment. "Babies don't know any better. But when they grow up, they ask questions. They'd want to know why their father doesn't change or grow older like everyone else. Why they have to grow old and pass on and I don't."
Rimmer nodded, understanding. "You have no ageing gene." When McGruder glanced at him surprised, he shrugged. "Ellie told me," he explained.
"Before the Mayflower project, they made us go through all these therapy sessions about it." McGruder snorted bitterly, and shook his head. "It was only when I had something to lose that immortality suddenly felt more like a curse than a blessing." He cast his eyes up to the glass dome where the eternal stars twinkled distantly. "They're swept away as time moves on, getting older, and you're just left standing there, unable to follow."
McGruder drew up his long legs, wrapping his arms around his knees. "It was for the best really," he nodded vacantly. "But it's hard when you can't just step in and join them. You're just left behind." He rested his chin on his knee. "To sit and watch."
Rimmer noticed McGruder return his gaze to Evie once more. Crouched down, she beckoned to Corin to toddle over towards her open arms, sweeping him up in a tight hug and praising his ever-strengthening steps. A warm, reminiscent smile tugged at the edges of McGruder's mouth.
"She has her grandmother's eyes," he murmured.
Rimmer's eyes flitted between McGruder, the woman below, and back to McGruder again. "Is she your - ?"
A sharp look stopped Rimmer in his tracks, and he immediately knew this was a door McGruder didn't want to open. He nodded, understanding and fell silent once more, picking ineffectually at the transmitter with the screwdriver.
"Have you ever been in love?"
The question stopped Rimmer short. Since his time as Ace, he'd been with women of all shapes, sizes, races and species. Over the years, yes, emotions and feelings had flared up to the surface on a couple of occasions. But love? He genuinely wasn't sure. Besides, he knew and understood that it was best to keep them all at arm's length, not allowing anyone to get close to him. No matter how he felt, he had to keep in mind that in order to survive as Ace, he had to be the man with nothing to lose. With no ties.
Rimmer shook his head. "I don't know," he said simply.
As soon as his glance met McGruder's, he turned away; his non-committal response clearly not what he wanted to hear. Rimmer gazed up to the sparkling stars. It had been many, many years for him too, a memory that he tried not to dredge up too often, for fear of how long the ache took to fade.
Rimmer opened another door cautiously, one that even Lister had not been privy to. "There was this one woman," he mumbled nervously. "Many years ago."
At the words, McGruder's heart began to pound so hard, he was certain it was trying to make a break for freedom. He stared at him expectantly, his eyes begging to be let through. "What was she called?" he ventured quietly.
Both men stood in the doorway, teetering on the verge of revelation. After McGruder's admission, Rimmer had every intention of returning the gesture. Unfortunately, unknown to Rimmer, rather than opening up a new level of trust, he managed to inadvertently slam the door in McGruder's face with a name. The wrong name.
"Nirvanah."
A host of unreadable emotions flashed across McGruder's face, his eyes quivering in the low light. He blinked slow and heavy, his head nodding vacantly, no-one home.
"Right," he mumbled eventually. It was all he could manage. "Right."
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