capeandcowllogs | I can't believe what you said to me, last night we were alone.

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I can't believe what you said to me, last night we were alone.

WHO: Raven and Rimmer. Closed log.
WHERE: Lake Placid house, their bedroom.
WHEN: Backdated to the night of this post.
WARNINGS: Heavy theological content and philosophy. Discussion of souls. Discussion of humanity and demons. A couple in their pyjamas in bed. Yannow, the usual.
SUMMARY: Rimmer is none too keen on the fact that Raven seems to be of the opinion that she has no soul. Which, coming from him, is highly ironic all things considered. A discussion ensues.
FORMAT: Probably acres of Teal Deers.

His hologramatic pyjamas were in place, as he sat on the bed with his book, waiting for Raven to join him. He was reading a fascinating piece on Augustus, the emperor of Rome after Caesar.

Although his mind wasn't really on the military campaigns, defeating the Germans across the Rhine. Instead, his mind was firmly stuck in the rut from earlier tonight, when the subject of souls had popped up. And suddenly Arnold Rimmer was treading some seriously shaky theological ground, and he had no way to get to safety.

This was not a conversation that he wanted to have over their comms with dozens listening in. This was something that needed to happen in person...but she'd been avoiding him ever since. And now he had no idea how to broach this subject, or if he even should. But then, it occurred to him...they'd never really had the 'religion' discussion before. Well, aside from her telling him about Azar and Azarath. ...He just caught on to the fact that those were almost exactly the same word, way to go, Arn.

So he waited. And fidgeted. And fretted. And reread the same paragraph eighteen times as he hoped she would come upstairs tonight. She'd often said that she would never make him sleep on the couch...but that said nothing about her choosing that for herself instead. Hrm.

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"Yet it will eat you alive and will eventually cause some sort of resentment. I know you."

She was in no hurry to pull away, or even move closer. The way they were sitting now was just fine - being close without being all over one another. How was she going to face this without there being another argument? No matter how she tried to phrase it in her mind, it always seemed to lead to that point.

... oh well.

"... so it's okay."

He turned his number three raised eyebrow on her, the one that said, 'don't give me that smeg, missy, we are not amused.'

"What is this, emotional blackmail? Tonight you barely even look at me, don't say a word to me, and it's only when you can feel how depressed that makes me, that you reverse course so I don't give you a headache? Thanks, Raven. Thanks for nothing."

And then he realises how that sounds. Welp. She's got him pegged. Bitter resentment, table for one! He sighed again and shook his head.

"All right, fine. True. But you're the one who's been avoiding me all night. Why? Why aren't you willing to talk to me about this?"

That resentment was enough to make her pull away. A couple of inches of breathing room between them seemed so sweet right now, just to work as a buffer against any more of those lines. ... although she knew she deserved it.

"Because... you seem to think what I believe is wrong... or... is a bad thing for me to believe." she grimaced a bit as the words came out.

"I'd like this to be something I can believe without people telling me I'm wrong."

He stared at her in frank bafflement, as her logic and reasons sailed right over his head. She wanted to think she didn't have a soul? But...but why? Why was she so hell-bent on ignoring that all-too-important spark of humanity in her? Why wouldn't she accept that there was more to her than just the demon?

...Why was he the one to so loudly insist that he was less-than-human as a hologram? Because it was his own form of self-punishment, his figurative rosary beads to worry and gnaw on and count his guilts and his sins. In that one flash of insight, he got it, and the resentment melted into something considerably warmer. Something like...well, no, not pity, but fellow-feeling.

"Because everybody tells you you're always wrong about everything else, but everybody agrees that you have no soul, is that it?"

"No, not at all." she gave him a bit of a look out of the corner of her eye. ... well, he was trying, anyway, that was for sure. She had to appreciate that part of him, the part that wanted to reach out and help her, or at least get on her level with things.

"I've talked to other demons, I've spoken with people like Lucifer, who knows my father better than I even do. I'm honestly fine with not having a soul, I feel it's a bit overrated now, after having time to think about it. Not having one is a part of who I am, and I can't change that."

And this was why he was on shaky ground in this conversation. He didn't believe in God, he didn't really believe in heaven but was absolutely positive he rated hell. He'd died and been resurrected as a hologram, with a small gap in his consciousness and...nothing at all to fill that gap.

He was firmly of the opinion that he'd lost his soul the moment he'd died, and all their discussions to the contrary wouldn't convince him otherwise. But...in spite of his disbelief, in spite of his contradictory denial and simultaneous loathing of God...he wanted rest.

A reward. Justice. Peace. Torment. Something. Not a psuedo-immortality, wandering the Earth accumulating memories until he went mad. He wanted to know it was all worth something in the end. He wanted to know that...that if it came down to it, and he and Raven were separated by the 'Porter, that he'd have something, somehow, someday to look forward to, as he took possession of a shiny new ethereal body in heaven and had her at his side.

Which seemed to require a soul, to his way of thinking, as the price of admission. So if she didn't have one, his eternal reward was kind of pointless.

And he had no way to articulate this to her. But damn it, he was going to try.

"...And what about me? What about how I'm made now? My lack is just as much a part of who I am, and yet you're trying to talk me out of it too. Why? And don't give me that crap about me beating myself up over my lack of humanity. I've seen you do the same thing. Dozens of times. You are always castigating yourself over your demonic heritage. But what about your human heritage?"

"My human heritage has nothing to do with this, Arnold. The demonic part of me controlled whether or not I got a soul, and I don't have one. This allows me to stay here, just... shift to another form and still stay with those I care about. Why wouldn't I want that? It's something about my demonic half that I actually like, and I don't enjoy people trying to take that away from me."

But that got off point... a point that was already off point to begin with, but if Arnold wanted so badly to drag himself into this discussion, then so be it. In her mind, this had nothing to do with him, but he was making it about him. Again. One of his flaws that she loved him in spite of.

"I still believe you have a soul. I thoroughly believe everything I told you. Do I have a way of knowing for sure with you? No. However I do believe it's there."

Y...eah. The ego would out. He did warn you when this relationship started, after all. Sometimes he was so myopic as to give Mr. Magoo a run for his money.

"I'm not trying to take anything away from you! I'm trying to...to give you something! I'm trying to show you that you do have a soul. Without one...well, you'd be what Starscream said. A drone. And you're definitely not one of those."

He turned to her fully, now, rubbing at his chin distractedly, his book entirely forgotten.

"But...wait, hang on, there was something Joey said. Something about how he couldn't possess things without a soul. So he can't jump into...a can of cola or something. And he's able to possess your body easily enough, you said."

It was, what he thought, his trump card, using Joey's powers to bring her about to his way of thinking.

Rather than the mention of Joey being an enlightening moment, a rather dark, dangerous cloud settled in over her eyes, and most of the color drained from her face. She had tried desperately to forget about that tie, about how that further made her point obvious to her.
Now she had to face it head on.

"He... can possess intellectual beings." she tried to choose her words carefully, but only the initial set came out that way, as the emotional tear turned into a gap at just having to talk about this subject.
"... he was fine jumping into those with souls, all right? Just fine. What happened when he began to make that link with me? I've told you all about that. I've been nothing but disaster for him, Arnold."

A sinking feeling in his stomach hit when she said that, and he felt like a complete and utter slimeball for even mentioning it. Oh. Right. The whole 'he possessed me and was then influenced by Trigon and went insane and died.'

Right. That.

Smeg.

"That wasn't your fault. That was your father's fault." It was a lame excuse, and they both knew it, but he had to say it. Rimmer thrived on blaming parents for problems like this, even if that particular problem was a bit out of the scope of what his parents did to him.

"Part of the way I was born. I'm part demon due to my father, and an extension of that is the lack of a soul, something I've been trying to accept about myself and turn into happiness so that I can stop disliking myself so much." every single word snapped off like an icicle broken from the limb of a tree.

"I can blame my father for everything in the world, but at the end of the day I am still a demon. I'm purified to make my own choices, but that doesn't change what I am. All of this nonsense about being incomplete, like I'm not enough precisely the way I am? It's not helping what I've tried so hard to achieve."

"But...but you...I mean, you are! I just...don't...I..."

He could hear that anger in her tone, see it in her posture and on her face. And he knew that he'd finally crossed a line with her, a line that he didn't even know existed until this conversation happened. He'd dented her pride, the one aspect of her demonic heritage that she had accepted and embraced. And here he was, trying to tell her it wasn't any good.

"I just...wanted you to love yourself..." he said inanely, seemingly at odds with everything else said here tonight. Apparently he'd made some serious mental and emotional leaps about this topic, and had subconsciously equated having a soul with self-esteem.

Which was why he said he lacked it.

"... you have a very unique way of showing it." her eyes had softened a bit, enough to let him see that she wasn't angry at him for what he was trying to do. The words pissed her off, that was all. "... I'm trying to love myself, Arnold. I need to learn to love myself for exactly who I am, not what you think I need to be."

She hadn't even realized how brutal and cold phrasing it like that was, it had just come out that way.

She never did this to him. She'd never defended some part of her demon side to him in any respect, or been so harsh with him in a serious discussion. His blow to her pride must have gone deeper than he thought, and he really felt awful, now.

"I know I stink at showing it," he said quietly. "I did warn you, Raven. I warned you ages ago. I told you I was a smeghead."

And with that, he pushed the covers aside and slid out of bed, pushing his feet into his slippers as he swung his legs over the side. He was up and across the room seconds after that.

"... don't do that..." she breathed, closing her eyes for a moment before following him out of bed, and crossing the room to him without another thought about it.

"... this is why I don't talk to any of you boys about these things. None of you have the ability to understand where I'm coming from on this issue." she wrapped her arms around one of his, pressing her forehead to his shoulder.

"I don't want to upset you all with these things."

He was right at the door with his hand on the knob, ready to go downstairs and remove himself from her presence...just to keep from making her more angry. As she took hold of his arm, he slumped again, defeated completely in this moment. He'd only wanted her to feel good about herself, and had gone and made everything worse.

"I'm trying," he said quietly. "I really am. I thought I'd be the best person to understand this, but...I don't know. I just don't know. We're going to keep talking this in circles until we're throwing crockery at each other, so forget it. Just forget it."

"... come back to bed." she took a single step back, giving a little tug to his arm. "We'll work through this, just like everything else we've ever worked through."

She gave yet another tug on his arm, and a half-step back.

Turning and looking back at her, he began to follow her into bed, helpless in the face of her now-gentle voice and hand on his arm. And as they moved, his eyes caught hers.

She was so beautiful. He could look into her eyes for hours, days, and never get tired of it. And it was in that moment he realised something important. Her own beliefs on the state of her soul were hers, and he shouldn't and couldn't change them...but at the same time, his beliefs were his own too. And he would always, always believe that she had a soul. More soul, certainly, than the monsters who raised him, the so-called friends who tormented him, the co-workers who loathed him. They all saw Arnold Rimmer and despised him; she saw him and loved him.

So she could believe what she liked, and he wouldn't ever argue this point again. He would just look into her eyes and know his own truth, like she knew hers.

He stepped closer again and cupped her face with one hand.

"I love you," he said quietly.

She smiled up at him, honestly happy to hear him say that in the face of an ongoing disagreement. Lifting herself up on tip-toe (a lack of high heels to even out more of their height to blame), she kissed him, then slipped back into bed, holding the blankets back for him to join her.

"I love you too, Arnold."

She tucked a bit of hair behind her ear.

"... and I promise, I'm not putting myself down when I talk about all of this stuff. I really am okay with it, I really do see it as a positive now that I've had time to think on it."

Clambering back into the bed, he found his book face-down in the covers. He had to take a moment to put the bookmark back and tuck the volume onto his bedside table before he could truly relax. Even when they were quarreling, the man was an anally-retentive git.

Then he just put an arm around her shoulders and cuddled her close, still sitting up in the bed.

"And I promise, I wasn't trying to tell you you weren't good enough as is. I mean it, you're wonderful as is. I'd say 'perfect' but you'd accuse me of putting you on a pedestal again."

Her shoulders shook in a soft laugh and she shook her head, unsure of what to say to that in particular.

"... if you want to put me on a pedestal, go ahead. I'll try not to get too uncomfortable about the entire thing." she nuzzled in closer, taking a deep breath.

"I... I need to stop trying to change you. I think that's what I'm doing, anyway. I keep telling you to stop doing certain things and that's not right. I do love you precisely the way you are."

There was a medium-length pause there, as he tugged on his lower lip with his free hand, a wry half scowl, half smirk on his face.

"...And if I can manage to cheese you off by trying to make you feel better and assure you that I love you, perhaps you should be trying to change me. I'm completely hopeless sometimes. I can't think of a single other man in the entire multiverse who would get in a quarrel with his finacee because he was telling her she did have a soul. I'm just...too much of a giant jackarse, clearly."

"That's more my problem than it is yours, Arnold. I can't wrap my head around why you feel it's so important to have a soul."

She went to lie back into the pillows, getting far more comfortable for a less... angry... version of the very same discussion. Who knows... maybe it'd get them somewhere?

"If I did have a soul, I would have gone to some sort of afterlife once I died. I wouldn't be here with you."

"And I can't wrap my head around why you'd be so insistent you didn't have one. I guess those bible classes my mum dragged me to as a boy had a deeper impact than I thought, hm?"

He kissed the crown of her head and snuggled down further into the blankets.

"Darling, I'm not trying to change your thoughts on this. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice in such a short time. You believe that. You're glad of it. I'm fine with that, I really am. I just know that...well, we both died and came back. Maybe that means we've just got more soul than normal."

The look on her face read 'yeah okay' like nothing else, but she gave in, just shaking her head as she rested her body against the warmth of his. Better to disagree and be cuddly than argue and storm about like they were, that was for sure.

"Just..." she sighed once more, wanting to bring up so many more points - how it made her immortal in a way, how the trade-off was her powers that had saved her and many others quite a few times...

"... okay."

"Okay."

He snuggled her closer still, one foot rubbing against the satiny skin of her leg. It was silly, but he liked doing it. It just...felt nice.

"I really didn't mean to make you upset, dear. I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean to upset you either, so I think we're about even there." she smirked up at him, twisting a bit of his hair with her fingers. She did it for much the same reason...

"Are there any other topics like this we should get out in the open now, before it explodes?"

"Oh, I don't know. Perhaps your thoughts on abortion? Gun control? Saying the pledge in schools? Here's my great secret; I'm going to go to one of those ridiculous Tea Party rallies next week. Don't tell."

He smirked down at her, and nudged her with his elbow.

"Although they'd probably throw me out the second they heard my accent. What do you think...should I pretend to be an American or what?"

He said that last in a really broad Texas drawl, which was actually quite good.

"Arnold, I'm serious!" she laughed out, utterly charmed by that fake accent he had put on for her.

"And you wouldn't have to worry, I'd be far too horrified you were going to one of those rallies. I wouldn't tell a soul, rather pretend I didn't know you for a few days after."

Ah. She laughed. That made everything so much better, it really did. If she wasn't laughing, he was smegged.

"Don't worry, I've absolutely zero intention of hanging my flag with those fruitcakes. American politics reminds me too much of a television show. When somebody popular enters the room, the studio audience goes 'woooooo!' and then there's a new tax code suddenly."

Well he had pretty much summed up her feelings right there, enough to make her laugh a bit more, and even go as far as to kiss his forehead.

"It is a bit like that, I try to avoid it altogether if I can, and I'm from this country, technically."

"I keep waiting for the queen to come out and wave at the crowds, honestly."

Kissing. Oh, kissing was nice too. As she turned her face away, he darted in and stole a kiss from the corner of her mouth. Hey, at least this time they hadn't made each other cry. That was an improvement, right?

"I love you, my little soulless wife to be."

Now he was just teasing her.

No need to steal a kiss after a silly little line like that, she directly kissed him this time, beaming a smile at him as she pulled back.

"I love you too. ... I'm very sorry for how I was acting earlier, it was immature."

"...Thank you," he said, with a little smile. "It was immature. And it hurt. But thank you for apologising, and I absolutely accept it. And I'm sorry I was being so...narky at you. I was upset and taking it out on you, and I apologise for that as well."

See? Married couples could actually have fights and make up, smeghead. He knew he really needed to nip those 'TOO SOON' feelings in the bud soon, or he'd have a nasty surprise on his wedding day...

Now she allowed herself to curl up the way she did most nights, right up against his side where no matter when she woke up, she'd feel the security of him there. He'd probably never know how much of a comfort that was to her.

"I forgive you too."

Was it really that easy to just... make up? Near-constant arguing with Gar for Azar-only-knew-how-long had made her wary to the entire argument process.

As they settled down into the blankets further, he kissed her again for good measure, and then held her look. She was...god, just so very beautiful.

"Thank you."

Then, there was a comfortable - well, all right, not 100% comfortable, call it 99% comfortable - silence, where they didn't need to talk about it anymore, but could just be. These were the moments when he loved her the most, truth be told. When he could just lay here quietly with her and feel accepted and connected and not so unutterably lonely anymore.

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I can't believe what you said to me, last night we were alone.

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