ive always thought it would be fun if Better Than Life (in the book's context) was impacted by all their mental states and like. not just Rimmer's.
Like it probably works fine before Rimmer is in the vicinity but then along with Rimmer's OCD blowing things up its the others making waves (mostly Lister's in this context.) I already wrote this little snippet of Lister's depression starting to creep in to BTL in my fic. and it might be heavy handed but it'd be interesting if color started to drain from the surroundings.
but then on the flipside, even with Rimmer's OCD explosion, Cat is like. Unaffected. Like his attitude that everything will go good for him always is so impenetrable it starts looking like he has unbelievable good luck. it looks like a cartoon when Rimmer and Cat are near each other. because it would be like Cat would find a 100 dollars bill and a coupon for an entire house on the sidewalk and rimmer two feet from him got drenched in water by a car driving by, a bird crapped on her, and a part of her outfit has caught on fire. and Cat is walking away somehow having Madonna's phone number. like that level of absurdism.
“She's mad” Lucius hissed, a sneer in his voice that even through the phone sounded serpentine and bowel crushing.
Copia gripped the receiver tighter, gloves straining like a leathery squeaking rat, fingers tangling in the loops of cording as if unable to escape the words that had been chasing his thoughts for too long.
“Wh-what are you saying?” He said, hushed voice in panick as the pupils in his eyes shrank in cold fear.
“I mean, your little lady has contracted a affliction of the mind and soul- and it isn't of some chemical malfunction in the blood and bone. It's not a curse of this world, Cardinal.” Lucius growled, “This is beyond my medicine.” his throat constricted as he spoke, feeling like the freedoms of his human like form had become a new prison of his own salvations's making. A demon oracle, redeemed from darkness and cursed to live in the Grey matter of humanity, while gifted beyond most measures, could not cast out the thing of likeness of his previous recognition- no, demonic curses are one to the other as a poison to a poison. But unlike some polar relations of anecdotes and cocktails in the alchemic, these do not cancel out. Only heap exponentially upon one another. There was nothing Lucius could do. And it felt like it was killing him.
Perhaps it finally would…
“Surely you must know something!” Copia ushered, voice cracking through the phone as though he were already beginning to weep.
“All I know is I must withdraw my services from this venture. My presence would only, egg on, whatever darkness is plaguing the girl-”
“Be reasonable Lucius, your telling me there's *nothing you can do?”
“Not I!” Lucius barked, fist slamming at the desk in his office where he was calling from, green hellfire crackling along his veins in rage.
“Too many people, myself included have had contact with that fucking Blood Stone! All of you have handled it, all of us are infected! I just happen to be a catalyst, and besides you, Milagro happens to be the weakest amongst us all-”
“She's not weak!” Jim said, clutching Lucius’ desk corners in white knuckled rage-
*Jim and Teddy were in the dungeons of Lucius’ offices, confronting him about his machinations and obsessions, having found that he, and they, we're all being affected by the same malady that was making Milagro go insane- Copia was being phoned into the loop, and Emmanuel and Johan were upstairs in the abbey, frantically trying to make arrangements for Milagro's safe passage to somewhere she might be hidden from even them... Meanwhile Milagro was forced to seek sanctuary at the ministry, while the bloodstone was with Copia,kn the other side of the earth*
Teddy held Jim back at the chest, “Let him talk Jim, Copia needs to hear this-”
“Copia needed to be HERE, this whole time!”
Jim whirled, teeth on edge as a violent rage danced behind his dark eyes like wild fire.
The Preacher Man was on a knifes edge, and he felt like at any moment, either he would slide right through the blade and loose everything, or topple from the brink and loose himself...
“You need to calm yourself!” Teddy snapped, canines bared as his own temper, known to be long fused and short trimmed, flared dangerously, “Copia has been where he's supposed to be, away from here, where he can protect us and get help-”
“Liar, I smell you like wallow-water on a hog, you don't even believe what you're sayin', ya think you're better than everyone, like your high horse shit don't stink!” Jim glowered, sweeping papers off of Lucius’ desk as he went, knocking Teddy's hold on him away, balling fists shoved into his pockets as the Preacher Man sought the dark comfort of the corner of the room, snatching the brandy bottle and swinging it straight muttering, “Go fuck yourself”.
Teddy glared, feeling the red in his face grow livid, and his beast tearing at the bars of it’s cage within.
But Jim was right. Teddy felt like Copia had been far too absent from Milagro's life and care during her time with child, and so soon after their birth as well...
*The twins knew their own father as the red flash in the door to coo and dote on their cherubic faces, and to quickly leave them, fussing and crying at the sudden loss and absence that their own blood knew to be kin. And watching their distressed wailing and constant upset, felt like torture! No, Teddy didnt want Copia here, or just away... he wanted him gone...
*Then again, Teddy Wolfe felt only he was good enough to have earned the right to be by Milagro and her children's side, for to his eyes, everyone but him, had taken his family for granted. He had bonded to them so fiercely, a possessive snarl to any percieved slight was never far, as was the feral roaring in his ears, and he could not close himself from it. As if he were fighting the beast within, which, for the damage he could cause, very well could spell out a fate, dark and terrible, and full of blood and carnage to rival a lycan berserker. Teddy, was also, dangerous... and he knew it... and he hated himself for it. And that hate, made him lash out at everyone like a baited fighting animal, so for now he had to admit, even he couldn't be counted on to keep 'his woman' and 'his cubs' safe. The man' mind was also going, like a mad dog...*
*And now when the woman they all loved needed their strengths the most, it seemed, one by one, every man for himself was dropping out of the race like flies- no one was themselves. No one was all there, everyone was broken in ways darkened unto themselves, and it felt like Milagro was the one most affected- too crazy to be left with her own children, possessed by something abysmal, demented, and possessive beyond any one's ability to pull her back from…*
Lucius continued his phone call with Cardinal Copia, but had seemed to be doing more than that at once, feeling the auras of those around him constant and acrid. Though Grey walking, he was still a deamon. There was an energy feeding him from the combined strife and aggression of these men, and Lucius was tasting every one of them- like swallowing a meal of sustenance that was as disgusting as it was poisoned. And it too was forming changes in him that he could barely control, so subtle was it, that he knew like a frog in a pot, would eventually doom him to a fate in the abyss…
*The road to hell is gentle on the slope, without milestones or signposts*
Glancing at Jim in the corner, stewing hotly half finished down the bottle, Lucius saw the Preacher Man's eyes and hands blackened like a blix from hell. Then his gaze flit over to Teddy who was half seated on the desk, arms crossed and rubbing a hand at his temple, hackles raised and constantly, painfully, shifting between human and wolf's forms...
the subtleties of their maladies were becoming more and more apparent, and the corruption was spreading...
*Like a cancer, crawling amongst them, infecting, corrupting, cell by cell, like a slow dismemberment of self into something…. Monsterous… like a vision of grotesque malformation, wailing and gnashing it's teeth…*
it was clear to the Oracle Deamon how deeply the whole matter was affecting them all, and Lucius knew, that indeed, all of it, was a bad sign…
*
Copia hung up the receiver and buried his hands in his face. The dismal room held coldness and stale air, and the smell of rotted books and bone dust followed wherever he went- settling here on his shoulders, where he stooped over a makeshift table, while tears seeped through his gloves.
The night beyond the window held no hope of dreams and wonder, no music or stars. It was simply dark. And only the flicker of thin pale lamplight from the street beyond, veiled through the forgotten crypt, one place of the few sanctuaries afforded to The Clergy and their Vampiric members. The safe house was old and delayed, like everything inside it, and The Cardinal could feel the emptiness that seemed to fill the air, heavy and malcontent...
“I should never have left…” he whispered. Deep down, what Copia meant was *I should never have gone back*.
A pale hand, shapely and full of youth, slid over Copias left shoulder, a voice smooth and quiet spoke, “We all agreed, it would be safer for you to be here, than there-”
“I know, that's what I said!” Copia gasped, “but I can't protect them from across the world, hiding in some mausoleum like a plague rat in the sewer-”
“This is no sewer, and you are no rat,” The voice continued, a tinge of earnestness behind it, “Believe me. I have seen the world of rats and ‘less-than’ creatures,” the hand was joined by the other, both giving a squeeze at each of Copia's shoulders, “and while you may at times be a rat bastard-”
Copia winced.
“- you are not, a monster, not like what Ive seen.”
“But this, this sickness, it grips me like some clawed thing in the dark, and I can't escape it, no matter where I run.”
“Running in retreat is better than standing by and becoming something you are not-”
Copia closed his sore eyes, watching himself in his mind...
*Remebering the way he pretended to have been fine, indifferent even, all while those at home had suffered from his absence. Hiding in In the limelight, he had found his darkest shame...*
*He had made a mess of things, mistreating Jim as his companion, taking for granted his love and abilities with the dead. The Cardinal had even gone so far as to kill a waitress by blood draining, his appetite known to be voracious, was now unquenchable, and he reacted to it like a fiend, with no regard or remorse in the moment, and expected Jim to quite literally, clean up the mess. Jim had managed to bring the woman back, but he had his own blood hunger to satisfy, and The Cardinal had greedily taken the food from Jim's mouth, having stolen the intended shared feeder from him. And Copia kept on denying Jim the sustenance of fresh flow. And in keeping his familiar, like a bonded prisoner, to drink only from his veins, The Cardinal was mirroring the injustices done to him, reanacting his own traumas when he himself had been a blood slave, once upon a lifetime ago. It was not like him, but his sickly natures were spilling out, for while the Grucifix he had been wearing had housed the cursed stone, the stone's curse was rather simple... it brought out and fed, the worst in those it affected.*
* It summons evils from within... going unoticed until the damage was too great to ignore, and the demonic feeding that posessed it, while granting power, granted also madness *
*The power had gone to the Cardinal's head, the tour had been wildly successful. The erruption of fame and fortune, the masses throwing themselves at his feet, compelled by his silver toungued voice, the grandeur of his presence, and controlled by his will, the warbling of The Cardinal's song had enchanted millions... But behind the scenes and round the trailers, Copia had behaved like a dirty scavenger, latching on to anything that had a bloody pulse, and draining it to death without mercy. He had preyed on the weak and vulnerable, the ones like the network of blood donors, who would let him drain them far beyond what they should, even to an inch of death out of desperation for the euphoria of his venomous bite... even taking them on like disposable lovers, all while *his Jim* suffered in silence...*
*To the public, a charming man of wealth and taste... but two faced was his visage. And in the dark he had been something terrible, something else entirely...*
One of the pale hands left the Cardinal's shoulder, and was brought to the shadows where the younger man stood. The red glow of his eyes, soft, and yet so piercing. He bit into his wrist and stiffened, feeling the way the Cardinal instantly whipped back to latch onto the wound, like a desperate leech, gripping hands wrapped around the presented arm as if it might be taken away. Feral, hating, gluttony at it's core...
Copia couldn't care at the moment, how his companion in the dark looked on with disdain and pity. He was groveling for the blood flowing warm over his mouth, and the soft whimpers and groans leaving him were battering his own ears. The word he embodied, was one he had tried to run from for years- from Nihil, from His Mother, from the responsibility of his calling, and cowering in this place, because Daryn, the man before him, was the only one who could satisfy the blood lust from the sickness crawling in his own veins, the word the Great Cardinal Copia embodied, debased, and internally alone, was
*pathetic*.
"There has to be a way," Copia thought, his dualed mind reaching far and out for answers to the impossible, "there has to be-"
*
"There is" Lucius replied, the forces of his darkness brewing behind the shudder of his barely moving lips.
"But by all the unholy, is such a journey long..."
The Grey deamon smiled softly, an eerie shaddow in his countenance that glowed green, the intensity of which mirrored that of the hellfire that both threatened to consume everyone, and refine them like the crucible of fate, "a plague..." hissed the Oracle deamon, his vision hazed and far, of rats and snakes and spiders and blood, "a plague on all your houses...."
Ruth never liked nights. As a kid, she hated them for putting an end to her games, and back in her teens she always wished she’d had more time to get all the things done. Even after joining the police, doing night patrolling or working overtime meant drinking gallons of coffee to keep herself awake, for the amount of work could get a little overwhelming every now and then.
However, now she hated nights for how quiet they were. For the way this house felt so empty and lifeless whenever Thatcher went to sleep — which she never judged him for though, having worked with the man side by side for years now — leaving her to entertain herself with whatever her mind could come up with, most of the time opting for staying in his room.
For the way something would tap on the window, not having a particular pattern, with taps either getting more frequent or going silent for what felt like hours before making a return.
For the way her ears would pick up the scratching sound at the front door, barely audible for a human yet never quietly enough, as if to make the said human believe they must be going crazy.
For the way her skin would crawl whenever that something made it inside, whenever its steps pronounced all around the house, whenever it stopped right before the door to his room, merely standing there and doing nothing.
For the way a knot in her chest — perhaps in place of the heart she had long since lost — would go so tight she could barely breathe, shallowly inhaling the air her nonexistent lungs were begging for but never releasing it, lest it woke up the human.
For the way her whole being was shaking over the fact that, despite knowing it was doing this on purpose, Ruth could never tell which one of them was the target of its actions. Thatcher, who was human and had been under immense stress caused by long-lasting M.A.D. and public pressure, or her, whose humanity was ripped out back at that house and fear was made known to the thing.
And this uncertainty both frustrated and terrified her. It was aware she cared for Thatcher. It fucking knew how scared she was of losing him, and it would take advantage of that. It would never hesitate to keep her up at night time after time, steadily driving her insane, if that was even possible anymore.
It would always stay here. It would always make its presence obvious to her. It would always be there to remind her this game would go on for as long as eternity could be, or until she or Thatcher finally broke down, for it never intended to leave as a loser.
She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning the head against the soft bed to listen to Thatcher’s shallow breathing and the familiar tapping on the window.
here it is! the uh. the entire sketch page of swamp brain and practice doodles (sorry for the sorta-reupload?). the auto time lapse on procreate is 2 and a half minutes, and I don’t know what to do with myself now :D
im out of ny mind, anyways cat/trixie!rimmer made by me !!!! i got so into this im embarrassed, idk if i'll main tag it. if you see this be nice to me. anyways keeping all my ramblings under the cut
okay for context some stuff in my Better Than Life AU that changes things: the order of places the story lead is -> rimmer's, kryten's, cat's, and then lister's. lister is the hardest to convince to leave (cat was also hard to convince but lister took almost months). rimmer's ocd also isn't immediately nuking whatever place they step into anymore, its like a slow bleed. trixie is also a choice in this, sort of a jekyll and hyde situation and then where rimmer gets stuck as trixie, loses everything, and get placed in misogyny central. when rimmer made his way to cat's city (made it a city just because that's more fun to work with and i listened to a lot of Pop Muzik) there's this whole tense argument where i cathartically write cat calling out rimmer. when they make it to Bedford Falls, they all get there together and spend a good couple of months trying to convince Lister to leave. along that time lister's marriage slowly falls apart.
anyways all that said: Cat/Trixie actually isn't canon to all this, its more of an AU to an AU that is just fun to me. idk maybe i'll make it canon when i write stuff out idk.
the actual meat of this: this sort of starts in Cat's City when they first run into each other and Cat doesn't realize that Trixie is Rimmer:
^ canon lines lol
anyways then there's the confrontation in Cat's Manor. that i accidentally wrote a, tension to:
rattles them around.
anyways eventually they do make their way to Bedford Falls, and are trying that whole song and dance of trying to convince Lister for weeks (Lister at some point kicks them out of his house because he's getting pissed off at him. Cat, with his stupid luck, finds a place and brings kryten with him. and eventually trixie shows up in the pouring rain and begs to be allowed to stay [it's kryten that lets her in]) at this point and they're kind of getting bored. they're at one of lister's christmas parties and cat & trixie kind of drift together because all the other people there are just saying nice pg hallmark bullcrap and kryten and lister are no fun to talk to rn, so they're just gabbing in the corner having actually a decent time. and there's a smile and laugh and- trixie gets dragged away by a party goer to join in some boring conversation because they thought she would know something about it. spending part of the night kind of glancing across the room at each other until they meetup again and its a quick small conversation before "I know Dog-breath has a closet with a lock down the hall-" "Yes, please," and before yknow it they're arguing and making out in a closet while trying to be quiet.
obviously afterwards trixie freaks out and cat is literally so alright. and trixie is all like we'll never do this again. anyways a week later they do it again. and this is countinous through most of their time in Bedford of then hooking up. to Trixie this situationship is stressful & complex and to Cat it's the most simple thing the world and that is: Fun.
for the most part all of this is a secret, but the heteronormative (that are probably fine with queer people but still. heteronormative) people of bedford falls think they're in a relationship anyways
^ my dumb interaction i wrote lmao
also throwing in this post and the drawing i did at 2am
but for all intent and purposes they genuinely are just in a situationship and neither have romantic feelings at all pop up. its just fun :3
once they leave BTL properly they don't reeaally have time to think about it. okay they kind of do, but they're a bit preoccupied and rimmer has already started repressing everything from BTL. Rimmer 100% wants to keep all of that a secret and Cat, doesn't care. I have a scene in my head where Cat sort of accidentally brings it up with Lister by making a comment about Rimmer. snd the entire time it's soft light rimmer trying to shut up Cat who will NOT. TAKE. A HINT. and Lister is just staring like ??????????? and kind of laughing. and rimmer lowkey crumbles to the floor because the thing he was stressed about being found out got found out.
there's also a lot of scenes in my head of post-btl of rimmer basically being like:
^ everytime i look at this it cracks me up. she's so stupid
idk if i have anything else to talk about. uuuh
my favorite songs to loop while thinking about them is: Good In Bed & bad idea, right? & get him back!
i've been calling them Catty Attitude as their ship name, and here's my animatic idea i posted a while ago to bad idea, right? and here's my little drawing board
^ the stars are hiding bad drawings and the scribbles is just a very out of character drawing lmao
thank you for listening to me being out of my mind lmao
