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The second Lister realised what was going on, when they landed Starbug and he saw Red Dwarf teeming with life again, he knew that things wouldn't be the same as they had been before. Ten years is a long time. He's a different person now than he was when he first came out of stasis, he knows that. Sometimes he can't even remember who he was before the accident, before all these years as the last human.
Seeing Chen and Shelby again is weird. He thought about them a lot, in the early days. Missed them like mad. He would have given anything to see them again, to get pissed down at the Copacabana and talk about nothing. They’re just like he remembers, young and hungover and full of life. He hugs them, introduces them to Kryten and the Cat, but it isn't the same as it used to be. There's no urge to go on a bender, just the vague fondness you'd feel towards an old school friend. They were his best mates once upon a time and they always had a laugh, but what was just a day ago for them was a decade for him. Hell, he's known Rimmer now for longer than he knew them. Still, it's good to see them again. Good to see anyone again that aren't just the same three people he sees every day.
Walking down now-unfamiliar corridors to Hollister's office, he has to be nudged forwards by their escorts more than once. Faces he hasn't seen for a decade are suddenly within touching distance. A ship the size of a city filled with people again. He can hardly believe his eyes. Even seeing Hollister, a man he was never particularly close to, has him grinning and fighting the urge to reach over the desk and hug him.
On the walk to his old bunkroom to await his hearing, he stopped fighting the urge, brushing up against everyone he passes and smiling wide at the familiar faces of the other technicians. People he hasn't thought about in years - people he hasn't wanted to think about, lest he spiral into a depressive funk - suddenly alive and real in front of him.
Even being confined to his room can't dull the warmth much. Hearing the low thrum of people as they pass in the hall outside is incredible. Scraps of conversation, mundane chatter and hushed gossip, fill the silence he's gotten so used to. Even as he stops jerking his head towards every sound he still feels aware of it. A little part of his brain grabbing every sign of life and holding it tight.
Of course, he doesn't realise the implications of everyone being resurrected until he feels a presence behind him, hears a familiar nasal voice, and turns to the sight of Rimmer looming above him. Lister smiles. He can't believe he'd ever be so pleased to see Rimmer again but there he is, in the newly-resurrected flesh. He's blathering on about something, the same smug tone and the same puffed up posture. Lister's smile softens and he opens his mouth to speak when- he freezes, his eyes locked on to Rimmer's face.
His young, freshly thirty face.
Lister knows, of course, that Rimmer died. It's kind of the requisite of being a hologram. He knew that Rimmer was barely past thirty when the accident happened, that he only ages because Lister does, to keep him sane, but to be confronted with him like this, just as he was when he died… Well, Lister is suddenly very aware of how the last decade has aged him. The lines around his eyes, the way his face has slimmed. Living as he has been is hard. He's barely five years older than this Rimmer in front of him but he feels the years like nothing else.
This Rimmer, untouched by death, by long years alone in space, looks younger than Lister ever remembers Rimmer being. It's odd, being confronted with the fact that the Rimmer he knew wasn't really real. Well, okay, he was real, but this is what he should look like. What he does look like, under his programming.
God, is that really what Rimmer had looked like all those years ago?
Rimmer is staring at him oddly, his nose slightly scrunched as he surveys him. He rolls his eyes, those ridiculous curls that he spends every morning trying to gel into submission bouncing as he shakes his head.
“Smeg, Listy, you look terrible. What exactly were you doing?” Even his voice sounds different. Lister can't remember the last time Rimmer sounded like this. He could never fully remove the smug tone and general smegheadedness from his voice, but Lister can remember the undercurrent of something else too. Something warm and almost fond, although Rimmer would have denied it to death. Or, well, deletion.
He bribes Rimmer, knowing exactly what carrot to dangle to get him in on the plan. He bites, expectedly, and then betrays him, also expectedly. Even so, Lister can't help the hurt that fills him as Rimmer struts his way out of the holding cell. And then he figures out that he's messing with the virtual trial and Lister vaguely wants to wring his neck. But when they figure out how to get out and he sees Rimmer standing there, looking so young, he lets the familiar routine takeover and just rolls his eyes and drags him along with them. Like before, he knows exactly what to say to get Rimmer to come with. Cat complains and Kryten pulls a face but Lister just smiles over at him. He could have left him of course but, in the privacy of his mind, he can admit that he's missed him. Holly had it right all those years ago, who would have thought?
In the end, of course, it doesn't matter. Hollister sends the lot of them to the Brig and the two of them get pushed into the same cell. They fall into routine quickly. This Rimmer isn't quite the same, quicker to anger and somehow even more insecure than he remembers, but he manages. It's been a year, or thereabouts, since he last saw his Rimmer, but after nearly a decade of knowing him, of reading his diary and swapping bodies and walking through the physical manifestation of his psyche, he knows him better than he's ever known anyone. Rimmer told him things he's never told anyone else, and Lister knows how to use them to talk to this new Rimmer, this younger Rimmer. He knows how to make him laugh, how to make his face purple with rage, how to soothe feathers he hasn't been able to ruffle in years. Not since those early days when it was just them and the Cat rattling around the empty ship.
It's still hard, like those weeks after Rimmer left, where he kept turning to share a joke or an eyeroll only to be met with an empty console behind him. This Rimmer never spent days trying to decipher the worn away letters on a garbage pod, never ran away from the advances of his female self, never spent half a millennium being persecuted by his own clones. Lister starts stories only to be met with confusion when he only sketches out the details, forgetting that this Rimmer wasn't there. He makes jokes that are met with a blank expression because this Rimmer has never met Ace, never fought a polymorph, never spent three weeks in a world where everything was backwards.
This Rimmer isn't quite his Rimmer, but he's all Lister has.
Rimmer sits across from Lister, luck virus in hand, and finally looks at him properly.
He had heard about his arrest as he was finishing his shift and had hurried back to their bunkroom, ready to gloat about his predicament. Lister had looked different then but Rimmer had been too distracted to take much notice. First by his glee, then by Lister's promise to make him an officer. But now, sitting in front of him, Rimmer considers the reality of Lister being a decade older. He looks thinner now, his cheeks less full than they had been when Rimmer had seen him last. His face has a sort of still seriousness to it that wasn't there before and his eyes, usually sparkling with mischief or amusement, are duller now, with lines beginning to appear around the corners. He had noticed how those eyes had softened when he saw Rimmer in their bunkroom, and again when he entered the holding cell. He had smiled at him and it had looked friendly, almost fond. The Lister he knew had never looked at him like that, but this one mentioned that he had had Rimmer with him, brought back by Holly to act as company on the empty ship. Rimmer wonders what they had seen together, and where this hologram version of him is now.
He wonders if they had been close.
Either way, Lister certainly seems betrayed when Rimmer, well, betrays him, but then again Lister has always been the trusting sort. As evidenced by the fact that, even after leaving him locked up and then tampering with his virtual trial, Lister still asks Rimmer to come with them. The other three have expressions ranging from indifferent to annoyed, but Rimmer only has eyes for Lister. He pretends to consider, letting them ply him with a title and the promise of buttons on a desk to himself, but the warm smile Lister sends his way has already made his choice for him. He spares a minute to wonder who exactly Lister is seeing when he smiles at him like that, then tries to shake the thought off.
They get thrown in the Brig by Hollister and escorted to the same prison cell. Rimmer takes the bottom bunk and Lister takes the top and they sit and have inane conversations and poke fun at each other and everything is the same and yet… not. It's like going into your house and finding that everything has been moved two inches to the right.
The routine they fall into is mostly familiar to Rimmer, but this just makes the occasional missteps even more jarring. Sometimes he forgets that this Lister isn't the one he knows. He's quieter now. Of course, he still likes to fill the air with inane chatter or off-key renditions of half-remembered songs, but sometimes he just sits, lost in thought or listening to the quiet chatter from the guards or other cells. He touches Rimmer more too. Lister has always been tactile, pulling his friends into hugs or kissing them on the forehead, pawing at women in bars but he never used to touch Rimmer. But now it's like he never stops. Patting his shoulders, his hands, knocking their knees together under the tiny table in their cell or bumping shoulders as they listen to the warden shout. Rimmer isn't used to it, these casual, barely-there touches. Occasionally he goes to say something, opens his mouth to ask Lister why or tell him to stop, but he never does.
Sometimes Rimmer wonders if Lister is treating him like he does because he forgets who he is. Forgets he's not the other him, forgets that the Rimmer in front of him has never fired a bazooka or scavenged a ship. Still, even if he does forget, Rimmer can't find himself to care much when he's getting treated less like an annoyance and almost like a… friend.
Lister still drives him up the wall, still likes to spend his time annoying him and making jokes at his expense, but he knows when to stop, too. Knows when to pivot to a different topic or tell a story or even, on a few memorable occasions, apologise. He pulls him into conversations with the others, even when he doesn't know what they're talking about, and he invites him to join in on his ridiculous, convoluted schemes. Now that they're less about making fun of Rimmer and more about finding a reprieve from the monotony of prison on a ship three million years into deep space, Rimmer finds himself agreeing, finds himself having fun. Scheming about how to hide contraband in their cell or how to slip a truth serum in the warden's drink has Rimmer thinking about his boyhood. Before he faced the reality of boarding school, before he was beaten down by the scorn and ridicule from the other boys, he had hoped for a friend or two who he could get into various bits of mischief with. Who he could share secrets with and pull pranks with and spend all night laughing with.
It hadn't happened, of course. He had spent every term at school counting down the days until he could go home (and then spent every holiday at home counting down the days he could go back to school). He had told himself that he didn't need anything distracting him from his studies, from getting into the Space Corps, and had tried to put the whole idea out of his mind.
He had tried, with coworkers, with bunkmates, to make friends, but no one seemed to stick around. Coworkers were always busy or got promoted, bunkmates always seemed to move out quickly. Lister lasted the longest and that's only because there weren't any rooms to move him into. Rimmer watches Lister tap out a message on the pipes in Morse code and the corners of his lips quirk up. Lister might not have been his first choice, and this isn't even technically his Lister, but if he had to be stuck in a cell with someone, he supposes it could be worse.