Lost But Not Forgotten-Part 9
Well people, this is finally it. Sorry it took so long, I got over my head with all of my other fics. This chapter is LONG, so I hope you like it, 'cause that don't happen often. I'm happy and sad to say that this IS the last chapter! I really hope you liked it, felt a new sympathy and liking towards Rimmer if you didn't before, and you like my writing SO much, that you go read my other fics! wink
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arnie looked up at the ceiling as if it was the answer to life, and if he blinked he would miss it. Sleep didn't come to him tonight, even thought it had knocked out his 4 other roommates. It wasn't if he was scared of bullies coming to kidnap him in the middle of the night. The day had been what would be normal and boring for regular people. He had not been beat up, picked on, and he didn't have any tests that could make or break him. He had mostly been ignored today, and the only thing wrong was that Katie had not been at lunch. He hadn't seen her all day, and he was starting to get worried, but not worried enough to stop him from sleeping.
It wasn't like most nights, where he would lay in bed, silently crying, and trying to keep his sobs from waking up his roommates. Eventually, he would drain himself numb and dry, and pass out. Today was a different matter, though. No tears, no hidden scars from the day, nothing. That was what bothered Arnie. He had no reason to be up, but yet he was. He had the strangest feeling that if he went to sleep, he wouldn't wake up the same person, and that thought scared him.
Slowly, Arnie drifted into a light slumber, holding his Army Teddy tightly with his boxing gloved-hands.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arnie woke up suddenly, not knowing the reason why. The room was still dark, though a silver light was shinning around. Still blurry from sleeping, Arnie heard a deep voice quietly whisper to him, "Pssst. Wake up!"
Arnie struggled up against the heaviness of the suffocating blankets, rubbing his boxing gloves over his eyes. His hands were tingling from lack of blood to his hands, so he started shaking them. "What is it? Who are you?"
Looking up, he saw a middle aged man, about 30, with wire-curly brown hair, crisp clothing, and a large metallic 'H' on his forehead. Arnie tilted his head to one side. This strange man had the same flaring nostrils that Arnie started getting a few days ago. The man looked over his shoulder, as something metal clattered to the ground. It sounded like his nameplate on the end of his bed, the one that said his name, but now said 'Bonehead'. The man, making sure the other boys were still asleep, continued on. "Look, don't be afraid. I'm going to make you rich."
Arnie saw Fred 'Thickie' Holden sit up in his bed, listening in, but the older man didn't seem to notice. "All you've got to do is listen very, very carefully. Right, this is the plan. You're going to invent a thing called 'The Tension Sheet'." Arnie nodded, not knowing what else to do. He hoped this was a dream.
"Pension Sheet?" Fred asked, looking intently at the stranger.
"T! T! T! Tension, TENsion sheet! Will you shut up? I'm trying to talk to the kid!" Arnie gulped, watching the man who looked like his older brother. There was subtle differences, besides the age, and that hard-set jaw looked eerily familiar. "Are you listening? They're little sheets of paper with lots of air bubbles in them." The man continued.
"Like the kind you get in packing paper?"
"Look, do you mind, Holden? This is a private conversation. Go back to sleep!" The hologram yelled at Fred, who snuggled back into the covers, giving them the evil eye.
The hologram continued to Arnie, "They're exactly the same as the ones you get in..." He glared at Fred, then whispered, "packing paper, but you paint them red."
"Why red?" Fred asked, showing that he hadn't fallen asleep yet.
"Because it helps people relax! Will you shut up, I'm trying to make the kid rich!" Arnie tried to write down the hologram's ideas on a notepad, knowing that he wouldn't remember tomorrow. "You'd write better if you took off your boxing gloves. Now, have you got all that?"
"I fink so" Arnie said, struggling his gloves off, then writing down the idea in his little copperplate handwriting.
"First thing tomorrow, take the idea down to the patent office."
"I can't. Not first fing in the morning. I've got extra rugby practice because I'm so wet." Arnie talked through the dry cotton that seemed to be in his mouth. Talking once you've been sleeping is smeggin' hard.
"Damn!" The hologram whispered to himself, then told Arnie, "Alright, then -- lunchtime. Take it at lunchtime, okay? I've got to go now." The stranger stood up from his kneeling position, giving Arnie a sad smile. "Don't mess this up." His voice seemed almost pleading. He sounded as if this affected him directly. Arnie didn't know why this man had told him this, but something about the man made Arnie agree.
"No, sir." The man gave him a weird salute with loops, then saluted him at the end. The guy walked off, not noticing the look of pure shock on Arnie's face. Arnie himself had thought of that salute only a few days ago. How did this man know it!
Arnie fell asleep again, not worrying about contingency errors and future echoes of himself.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After rugby practice, and after his morning classes, Arnie practically skipped to the cafeteria, since he was the captain of the skipping team.
Usually, students weren't let off campus during lunch, but Arnie had a plan. He would sneak out during lunch, not like anyone would miss him, and go across the street to the patent office to turn in the stranger's 'invention'. In art today, Arnie had snuck in some packing paper, and spent the whole class period coloring it red with crayons, when he was supposed to be drawing and coloring a 'serene paradise'. Ah well, he could always do the assignment tonight, then turn it in late tomorrow.
He slipped out of the door that led to the tree, noting that no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary. He let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding, and started down the path that led away from his sanctuary tree, and to the front of the school. Suddenly, a gush of chilly air blew past him, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He had a feeling in his gut that something bad was about to happen, but tried to shake it off. He glanced behind him to see if anyone was following him. He had the weirdest feeling that he was being watched.
As he rounded the corner to the front of the school, a scream met his ears, and the sight before him made his blood run cold. A group of five bullies, easily the biggest guys in the school, were in a circle, looking down at a small figure in the middle. The person was crumpled to the ground, long brown hair tangled in front of the face, so much so that Arnie couldn't tell who it was. The hair was long, though, so Arnie assumed it was a girl. Through the bush of tousled hair, a set of blue innocent eyes looked up at him in fear and hope. It was the eyes that shook Arnie back to reality, those same blue eyes that made a friend with him so long ago at lunch. The same eyes that he had been thinking more and more about as the days rolled by. The eyes of the only girl who thought Arnie was worth the time to talk to. The eyes of an angel. The eyes of Katie.
Another bully kicked her in the stomach, as they took turns kicking her. She whimpered, but didn't fight back. She only tried to block her face with her arms, as the pain rained down on her. Just seeing her so beaten, struck a chord inside of Arnie. Something snapped in him, and all reason and self-preservation flew out of his mind.
With a primal roar, Arnie jumped on one of the bullies' backs, and started beating his fists down on it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the other bullies suddenly forgot about Katie, and were diving towards him. His small moment of victory was short lived, as all thinking capabilities raced out of his mind. The first blow was towards his stomach.
Arnie didn't think about how the back he was on had suddenly disappeared, or how he had ended up on the ground, in the center of their little circle. It's hard to think when all you can feel is pain, deep searing pain that laced its way down your feet. Before the initial pain had gone, another hit rocked him, this time on his leg. He screamed, seeing hot white dots in front of his eyes. A cracking sound snapped in the air, and the sudden rush of blood towards his leg and the numbness alerted him that something was broken. 'No duh!' he wanted to say to himself, but a sharp stinging on his mouth stopped that train of thought. He tasted blood on his lips, but that was the least of his problems now. His sense of reality was floating away, and he forgot who he was and where he was. All he could see was the guys above him, and all he could feel was the cool gravel of the sidewalk pressing against his hot and scrapped back. But mostly, all he could feel was pain. His world revolved around the hurt that seemed to come from everywhere on his body. In the background, he could hear a girl screaming, and glanced Katie screaming, tears running down her face as she tried to pull one of the bullies off of him.
A persistent banging on his right temple drew his attention, and the rhythmic beating was lulling him to sleep. A hand drew his head up, only to bang it back down on the concrete, as Arnie slowly lost consciousness. As the numbness started taking him over, he felt something inside himself die, slowly disappearing from his psyche. Then, darkness took him.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Something inside Arnie died that day. The following weeks showed the subtle change from Arnie to Rimmer. The sweet boy who had tried to save his girl was slowly being overtaken by a bitter guy who made himself feel better by putting others down. After the fight, his grades had dipped down so low into the hole that there was no chance of bringing it back up. He no longer took the pain and made it into sadness, he made the hurt shape him into something that even he didn't like. He wouldn't even look at Katie, no matter how hard she tried. He was broken, and she couldn't fix him. He wanted nothing to do with anybody, and if anybody tried to work their way past his defenses, they would be met with hostility. Arnie was dead, and the Rimmer who took over didn't even like himself.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rimmer looked out of the window, watching the Terrorform planet shrink into the distance. The memories of all his neuroses, of all of the tiny graves still haunted his mind. The betrayal of the others saying they didn't mean all of the hugging stuff when they were trying to escape hurt him, but it fueled his self-loathing beast, the beast that didn't think he deserved anything good. He didn't deserve their friendship. He didn't deserve Katie. Looking back at those graves that had been there since he was 7, he saw that the good kid in him was dead. Arnie had died in that fight, all those years ago. He still felt traces of that little boy in him every once in awhile, but Rimmer always took control; took him over completely. Arnie may be dead and lost, but Rimmer still remembered him. He hadn't forgotten that innocent boy before the monster ate him. He would always remember that long forgotten boy, and hope that he would show up again; fool's hope for a lost cause.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, BIG thank you to my Beta-reader, reddwarfaddict! I've always wanted one, and now I have one! I'm so tickled, I'm going past pink and into crimson. I love her work, too. Also, thank you to my reviewers, who kept me writing this. I hope that the wait wasn't too long, and I still have some of my old readers still interested enough to read this chapter.
I'm sorry if I got my contingence wrong. I think he jumped from being 7, to being 8, but please understand that my story wouldn't flow like that. I can't remember what episode Rimmer said he was captain of the skipping team, and I can't find it, so if that's wrong, please let me know!
"Rimmer is returned to solid, human form at the end of 'Timeslides'. Some fans have theorized that visiting his younger self here meant that, when Rimmer traveled back in Stasis Leak, his older self reacted better to his glimpse of the future and put himself in stasis." That's a quote from the 'Watch Out For...' area in the 3rd Series DVD booklet. I totally agree with this, and that's why I wrote that scene. Just thought I'd let you know...Anyway.
Author's Notes over actual story chapter: I just wanted you to think that things might actually be going right for Rimmer, then something horribly bad happens.