Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim in any way, shape, or form.

Summary: ZADR. An episodic look into the immortal "what if Zim was captured?" idea. Well, what if he was?

Warning: contains ZADR innuendos, minor descriptions of captivity and its psychological and physical repercussions, and character death. Is sop a warning?

This is more of an experiment than anything else. I wanted to see if I could write a story in under five pages. I guess I did.

Enjoy :)

The End

It was pink. It rose from underneath Zim's feet, warm and pink and viscous. He started to panic, even though he promised himself he wouldn't. What air was still in the containment tube was stuffy and hot, and became hotter as Oxanea flooded over his shoulders. It was breathable, they had muttered to each other, laced with sedatives, paralytics, and pain-killers. Oxygen and anaesthetics.

A queer sense of weightlessness fuelled the cold feeling creeping through his body. His feet left the floor and his antennae bumped against the metal ceiling. Distended faces watched from outside the curved plexiglass of his prison.

The pink soup rose over his lips, his eyes, and then his antennae. It didn't sting. It stained his world a translucent rose. It made his arms and legs heavy. He held his breath, counting with his eyes squeezed shut, but it didn't make a difference. He gasped and choked. The thick pink ooze surged into his mouth. It tasted like chalk.

Irk didn't have water—not in its liquid form, at least. Breathing fluid felt very final. Zim waited for the death that didn't come, and kept on not coming. The hushed conversations echoing inside the glass tube quieted and then vanished. Everything was dark, everything felt calm.

For the first time, Zim slept.

He did something no Irken had done before. He dreamed.

Dib was there, in one form or another. Sometimes he was just Dib, sometimes it was something or someone else, but had his voice or his glasses or his smell. It became the constant in an illogical, ever-shifting universe.

There were flashes of other things. Perhaps it was waking up, perhaps it was a nightmare. There would be pain, glimpses of shadowed faces and sombre suits. Him talking. Them talking. Drowning all over again. Watching the world go pink. More dreams—more Dib. It became a cycle: different but always the same.

He dreamt about kissing Dib. It happened only once, but it had felt startlingly real. He hadn't thought about that before. Dib? Ridiculous. Impossible. Primitive.

But after so many glimpses and faces and drownings, it was the one interesting thing amid a dull, aching muddle of half-thoughts. A ray of sunlight braving the dimness of an unused room. The groggy swirl of dreaming and almost-dreaming fell away, if only for a moment. There was only Dib. His hands, his mouth, his smell, his eyes—his hair his glasses his freckles his skin his teeth his tongue his shirt his shoes his eyelashes….

As time slipped by, unnoticed, Zim never forgot that.

Breaking glass thundered all around him. Deafening.

It was so sharp and vivid and real. The gentleness that had supported him was sucked away. He slammed against something metallic. The pain was immediate and bone-splintering, as was the heavy thud that echoed throughout the room.

Breathing was hard. The pink fluid was cooling, becoming jelly-like. Zim coughed, squeezed by a giant, invisible hand. He devoted all his strength towards ejecting that familiar rosy soup from his innards. The world drifted away, gliding over waves while he was pushed under. Only the hushed, baby-soft sound of his breaths kept it within sight. There was a wonderful stillness around everything. No thoughts, no dreams, no glaring pink-worlds. Just breathing.

Then came other sounds. The whisper of his wet clothes against someone's body. Light footsteps. Tense silence. Opening doors, closing hatches, the drip-drip-slosh of water, and then—finally—the quiet rustle of shoes against grass. Distant traffic. Cars.

He was wet, and the wind flew coldly across his skin. He was gently laid on the ground. It was enough to open his eyes. The face above wasn't human, wasn't Dib like he'd imagined over and over.

Oh, but then the dark metal face was peeled away, and Dib was there. He didn't wear glasses anymore. His face was slender and solemn—older.

"Hey," Dib said with his Dib voice. It sounded deeper.

Zim blinked away the Oxanae. Dib's head was surrounded by a halo of bright, twinkling things. Stars. The sky.

The sky

Neither of them spoke about it, after. Zim's body was unfamiliar: thinner and weaker than before. He was taller. It took time to walk again. It took time to count the scars. His left antenna drooped and was half-deaf. His hands sometimes trembled, but Dib said it would stop once his mind settled. Over time it happened less, but it never went away.

His pak's higher functions were irrevocably damaged, his long Irken life-span shortened. It wasn't capable of funnelling his thoughts down efficient, pre-programmed channels. His mind was constantly stumbling around, jerking back and fourth, to dark, pink places, to Dib and food and Dib again, feeling everything and then nothing.

When they were used to each other again, Zim told Dib about the dream kiss, and then the dream kiss became a real kiss. And sometimes, when it was dark and Zim felt sad, Dib's warm body pressed down on him. At first, he just let it happen, but after a while he made it happen, too. And then there wasn't space in-between them for those cold, hard feelings.

A few years later, on a muggy Thursday, the pak failed and Zim died. It was alright. Zim had known what was happening, and they had loved long and memorably before the end. And when it did end, both agreed those years had been good and worth while.

Dib moved out shortly after. He went to university and majored in philosophy and religion against his father's wishes. He lived in an cozy basement suite, and was content living with a loud, well-meaning girl as a roommate. When she spotted an old picture sitting on his desk, Dib explained the boy had been a classmate, the picture taken during Halloween.

She saw the frame's worn, constantly touched edges and said she didn't believe him. Dib warned her to be very careful with it. One day she followed him to a spot outside city limits, where he stood silently and stared at a patch of unremarkable grass. It was the first and last time she had seen him cry.

Years later, she still remembered that skinny teenager in his alien costume and the eccentric tilt of his grin. It had belonged to an old roommate. What was his name? Membrane's son. A nice guy. Weird, but nice. What had happened to him, anyway? No one knew.

I love playing with that ruler feature. Hehehe.