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Ten months after one of the strangest mistakes of her life, Deb Lister was convinced she’d never get used to the responsibility of looking after her sons.
It was just under a month after Dave had dropped off the twins – Jim and Bexley – and she hadn’t got a full night’s sleep with all the time she spent fretting over them. They’d arrived almost fully grown, physically eighteen, but had seemingly reverted in every way over the past few weeks into children, an apparent compromise between their recent birth and accelerated ageing due to being born in another universe.
In all fairness, she felt like Dave got the short end of the stick, forced to give away his kids just three days after giving birth to them, never able to see them naturally progress into adulthood. She’d seen the regret in his eyes as he handed them over – it wasn’t as though he had a say in the matter though. The universe had decided his kids wouldn’t survive with him, so it wasn’t like he’d chosen to abandon them. If they’d been conceived in Dave’s universe, he’d have been able to raise them, but then Deb would have been the one to let them go.
Just unfortunate luck, really.
The kind of unfortunate luck that also left Deb herself in an awkward situation: trying to teach the kids. She’d be the first to admit academics weren’t her thing – in the few occasional weeks she’d properly tried to go to school regularly, maths and art were the only subjects she did decently in.
She’d ask Kryten, the newest member of the group, for help, but Deb was still busy replacing her wiring after that crash on the asteroid, and could confidently say that the mechanoid would be out of commission for a while longer.
Dog wouldn’t be great with teaching the kids phonics and the like - he communicated mainly through smells rather than words, and thought human books were for decorating the floor of the bunkroom like confetti.
Hilly was no help either. Still hung up on the doppelgänger crew’s computer, he’d changed appearances to mirror the object of his affection and skulked off to the furthest corners of Red Dwarf’s electrical system to read Anthony Christie novels in peace, occasionally turning up to snark and bemoan about his lost love.
This process of elimination left Rimmer. God, Deb didn’t even want to think about what her roommate would consider a good quality education. Probably teach the twins twice-daily mandatory Ionian etiquette lessons, threaten to toss them out an airlock if they didn’t pronounce stuff with that nasally stuck-up accent of hers, stuff like that. Actually, Lister bet the smeghead would probably turn her nose up at stooping so low from her post as to actually help her roommate out with Jim and Bexley.
Which was why, all things considered, when Arlene actually offered to teach the kids the month after they arrived, and was a damn great teacher at that, Lister was gobsmacked.
Somehow, the smeghead managed to command the attention of the twins enough to get them writing full sentences within a few weeks. She’d screech in horror, of course, whenever they got something even slightly wrong (which Lister had been worried about at first) but somehow it seemed a comical kind of screech rather than her usual demeaning one. Mock horror, almost.
Whatever it was that made Rimmer such an great teacher for the boys, it made the lessons entertaining enough that soon Jim kept coming up to Rimmer to show her short stories he’d shakily written, or Bexley would grab her attention with an “Auntie Arlene, look at this new word I can spell!”
Oh yeah, and the “Auntie Arlene” remarks kept coming. It seemed the boys considered their temporary teacher almost as much of a parental figure as Deb herself.
Which, of course, Lister was completely fine with, totally. Didn’t feel threatened at all, actually.
So when Jim asked her one night, when she tucked the twins into bed, “Mum, do you and Auntie Arlene not like each other?”, she swallowed down an immediate scathing retort and instead muttered “We have our differences, but don’t fret about it, ‘kay?”
The next day she’d cornered Rimmer on the main deck.
“Why the smeg do the kids like you so much? What can you offer them that I can’t?”
Rimmer’s lips had curled at this. “Instilling a good sense of hygiene, perhaps? Or maybe a comprehensive understanding of the importance of structure and law-abiding?”
“Rimmer, the only laws you actually follow to a T are the ones you’ve implemented yourself! Besides, stuff like that doesn’t really matter when there’s only us on the ship.” She scrambled to speak again as Rimmer’s nostrils twitched. “Also, it’s not like you can offer them any comfort. Emotionally you’re a wasp’s nest on the best of days, and you’re not even physically here!”
Rimmer’s mouth gaped open like a suffocating fish, before pursing tight. “Thanks for reminding me of my death, you goit! My, you lack so much tact its value’s practically negative. Great example for your kids, aren’t you?”
With that, the hologram stormed off through a wall.
Lister found her a few hours later, after tucking the twins into bed. Rimmer had been slinking around the fuel decks, apparently sulking silently except for a few half-hearted attempts to kick at the pipes along the walls – unsuccessfully, of course. By the time Lister found her, she had slid down a wall, staring down at her lap.
Deb crouched beside her before slouching against the wall too, curling her body in to face Rimmer. Letting out a sigh, she began.
“Listen Rimmer, I went too far back there. Honestly, I feel like I’m not handling this well – any of it actually. I’m so scared I’ll be an awful parent to the twins –”
“You’re not, though.”
Deb’s rant careened off its tracks and exploded, leaving only debris behind.
“… Eh?”
“You’re not. An awful parent, I mean. You’re still learning and, considering the general lack of support around here, you’re doing pretty fine.”
“Thanks. I think?”
Rimmer’s eyes rolled. “That was actually a compliment, directed towards you, from me. Yes I know, it’s impossible!” A grin flickered across her face for a split second, before returning to a careful neutral expression as she resumed studying her lap. “Besides, you’re doing better than I ever could by myself.”
Deb hesitated, then replied “Honestly, I’m not doing it all by myself. You’ve actually been a lot of help. Look,” here she uncurled her body, and Rimmer’s eyes connected with hers, “you’re not half bad either, considering what you’ve told me about your mum. I think all things considered we’re both doing a decent job, eh?”
Rimmer nodded, seemingly only half listening as she kept locking eyes with Lister.
“Listen, I’m sorry I said that smeg earlier. I just… don’t want to feel like I’m failing the boys in any way, and seeing them so excited to talk with you about your lessons and stuff made me think you were…”
Rimmer cut in harshly, “What, trying to steal them away from you?”
“A bit like that, yeah. But not only that? I was expecting you to make parenting into a kind of competition between us, y’know, who can help the kids grow and develop better than the other, the kind of smeg you used to pull all the time.”
“Key phrase there being used to.”
“Well, still do it sometimes, don’t you?” Lister chuckled.
The conversation faded as they listened to the pipes hum for a minute. After a while, Rimmer replied.
“Well, I’m not planning on making this a competition. Not this time. Too much at stake, the kids and all that. Wouldn’t want to mess them up over petty rivalry.”
“Nah, we wouldn’t.”
“So… truce?”
Deb felt the weight on her shoulders loosen, even if only by a tiny bit. “Sure.”
She spat on her hand, and reached out to shake. Rimmer rolled her eyes again and gestured down at her hologrammatic body. Lister paused for a second, then announced to the room “Hilly, can you seal the deal for us?”
She strolled away, chuckling once more, to the sound of her roommate trying to stifle her own guffaws even as she tried to shake the spit off her hand.