A/N: Firstly, I have to give major props to DesdemonaKakalose, whose picture (http:// desdemonakakalose. deviantart. com /art / Holdin-up-a-smokin-gun- 91702071 without spaces) inspired this whole fic. Thanks for letting me play with your idea, Desdemona!
This story is basically a prequel to the picture, so you might want to read the story first.
Secondly, I have to say that this fic is completely unlike anything I ever thought I would write. In fact, this story contains almost every concept I have trouble writing. There's romance, there's angst, there's even geometry. Yes, really.
Warnings: This fic features the hopelessly warped and dysfunctional "coupling" (if such a word can be used to describe three persons) that I can only dub ZaGretchenaDr—that is, ZADR, with a Gretchen in the middle. Therefore, you can assume there's slash, het, and implied threesomes. Even worse, as mentioned above, there's a smidge of geometry, the sickest of all kinks. So, if the very idea of bizarre yet somehow compelling boy/girl/alien boy relations (not to mention the Pythagorean Theorem) causes you to scoop out your eyes with a spoon—turn back, before it's too late!
Disclaimer: Invader Zim belongs to Jhonen Vasquez et al. This is a nonprofit endeavor, done only because once I saw Desdemona's picture, I couldn't get the idea out of my head.
Hypotenuse
This is Gretchen at three in the morning, lying awake in bed staring at the ceiling, when she realizes that triangles are the cruelest shape in the world. It should've been obvious, she muses, from the very beginning. Triangles are not soft shapes, oh no. Triangles have three sharp points.
Someone is bound to get cut.
But even more than the points, it's the sides that make them cruel. In an isosoles right triangle, two sides are the same length, and the third side, the side that makes a triangle a triangle, the side that enables it all, is longer.
And, she thinks, is that really fair?
...
This is Gretchen, alone in the school yard, unconnected, unbridled, unnoticed. For now.
Suddenly, a dark shape blocks out the sun. Before she can blink a jumble of kicking legs and flailing arms crashes into her. She hits the dirt, the grit of it mashed between her braces.
"You'll never get away with it, Zim!" Dib shouts, picking himself up off the stunned Gretchen. Rolling over, she brushes herself off. Zim, silhouetted before the monkey bars, hands on his hips, smirks like he very well would get away with it.
"Nonsense! I am clearly the superior macaroni doodler," he proffers two wrinkled pieces of macaroni art holding one to his knees and the other high in the air, to show its superiority, evidently. Dib snatches the lower picture back.
"Ha! I've foiled your plot to sabotage me. Tomorrow, when the judges see our pieces, I'll take home the prize," says Dib.
"No! We settle this now!" Zim squints. He scans the playground until his gaze falls on Gretchen. Rubbing his hands together, he grins as though first realizing that she's there. "You! Metal-mouthed dirtchild! You shall declare Zim the winner of this contest!" he pushes the picture in her face.
"You can't tell her what to say, Zim!" Dib closes in on her, trying to slip his own picture in front of Zim's. "C'mon uh… Grace, you know that—"
"It's Gretchen," she corrects, automatically. People rarely remember.
"Right, Gretchen. Good old Gretchen. That's what I meant to say. The important thing is, you know that an alien couldn't possibly beat out a human at macaroni art! That's like the most human art there is!"
Unsure, Gretchen recoils. With the macaroni pictures brandished before her like swords, she can't go forward. She takes one step backwards, then another, and then another until rough brick scrapes against her back indicating she's hit the wall of the skool building and can go no further.
She whimpers.
"Decide now!" Zim yells. His shaking fist promises disaster.
"Don't betray humanity! You know who to pick!" Dib hollers. Likewise, the unbalanced gleam in his eye signifies ruin.
Mouth dry, Gretchen runs her tongue across her braces, thinking. If she picks Zim, Dib will surely destroy her. If she picks Dib, Zim will surely destroy her. Wincing, she bites her lip. Either way, she's doomed.
"Well?" says Dib.
"Well, yours is—" she starts, but Zim gives a warning growl, "and Zim's is—" but Dib grits his teeth, "that is. Um. Well." she grasps. "It's uh, a tie?" she squeaks out, unexpectedly inspired. Closing her eyes, she throws her arms in front of her face. Let it be quick, she thinks.
A loud smack sounds and she flinches, but then realizes that no pain accompanies it. Cautiously, she peeks though her fingers to see Dib slapping his palm to his forehead.
"Tie? What is the meaning of this tie?" Zim frowns.
"They're both, um, good…" Gretchen lies. They actually aren't. Both pictures have been reduced to a jumble of cracked macaroni on ripped paper, smashed beyond recognition from the fight.
"But Zim's is better, yes?" Eyes narrowing, he leans in closer to her, daring her to say otherwise. Gretchen glances at Dib. He clenches his fist and steps in front of the green kid.
"No, Zim, nobody wins a tie. Of course, you would know that if you weren't… a bloodthirsty alien bent on taking over this planet!" Pointer finger extended in accusation, Dib's shoulders shake in crazed zealotry. Gretchen slowly starts to inch sideways along the wall.
"I am normal!" Zim shrieks, launching himself at Dib.
Gretchen's heart leaps. Now is her chance. In the midst of their fight she turns and runs for the safety of monkey bars, hoping that they'll forget all about her.
But they don't.
...
This is Gretchen, uneasy in between them in the lunch room. She doesn't know why, but she seems to have become some sort of buffer. They bring their disputes to her, trying to make her declare one of them the winner.
She always shrugs and says it's a tie.
...
This is Gretchen, being dragged off to Dib's house. "I can prove it to you," he says, "Zim is an alien."
"Um, I don't think…" Gretchen starts, but then gives up. There's no way to say what she's thinking nicely and this is the closest thing to a friendship she's got.
Dib's house is not far from the school, but at first it feels much longer.
"You should've seen it last Tuesday. There I was in Zim's base, knee deep in radioactive deer ticks—this was after checking out that infestation of vampire bunnies I told you about—"
A constant stream of chatter escapes his mouth, each subject more ridiculous than the last; he keeps going on and on about how Zim's an alien and his attempts to expose him. Gretchen wants to be his friend, to be anybody's friend, really, so she tries to pay attention and, on occasion, to say something that isn't "But that's insane!"
Soon enough, however, she realizes that Dib does not expect a response from her. He seems to be satisfied with a warm body to hear him out and maybe the intermittent nod in the right place. She relaxes. The remainder of the walk slips past like water from a cupped hand.
When they arrive at Dib's house, he proceeds to show her a cardboard box in his garage filled with blurry photographs. She doesn't see what the big deal is, but she inspects each one closely anyway. Quite a few of them feature nothing but close ups of Dib's thumb superimposed over fuzzy backgrounds.
"Okay, so this one's not of Zim," he admits, "but look! Over there in the corner you can see Bigfoot."
Making vaguely approving murmurs, she pretends that she sees Bigfoot and not the corner of someone's furry snow boots, pretends that the blotch on the horizon of a dingy beach looks like the Lock Ness monster, pretends that it's not creepy that Dib keeps hundreds of photos (purportedly) of Zim in a box in his garage.
She hands the latest photo back to Dib, who sighs.
"See, I knew you would understand! Somebody had to understand, eventually, I just had to keep looking and…" he rambles on and Gretchen smiles. It doesn't matter, she decides, that he had never so much as looked at her before the incident with the macaroni art last week and that he hadn't even known her name despite the fact that they'd been in the same class since kindergarten and that therefore he couldn't have possibly known she, specifically, would understand. He was looking for 'somebody' and somebody, anybody, is good enough for her. Gretchen is tired of being alone.
"But here's the one that really proves, once and for all—" Dib reaches into the box.
"Silence your noise maker!" a familiar voice cuts him off. Plaster rains down on Gretchen's head as Zim bursts through the ceiling. He wrestles Dib to the floor while a shocked Gretchen looks on. Scurrying to the edge of the fight, she wrings her hands uselessly, unsure of what to do.
The cardboard box of proof lies forgotten in the corner. After dithering for a few moments, Gretchen folds in the flaps on its sides to create a makeshift lid and sits down upon it, waiting for Zim and Dib to finish. The proof sags a little beneath her weight.
...
This is Gretchen being dragged off to Zim's house. "I'm normal!" he declares. "Come see proof of Zim's normalcy, spiky metal monkey-creature!"
"Um…I don't know—" Gretchen tries to think of something diplomatic and fails.
"The Dib-worm's giant head is filled with HIDEOUS lies," Zim rants, talking over her as if she isn't speaking at all.
"It is not! And my head's not big, either. You'll see the truth when we get to the alien's base!" Dib yells, following along behind them.
"You're not coming anywhere near my base—er…house, Dib-creature!" Zim yells back.
"See Gretchen, that's just what an alien would say!"
The scenery passes in a comfortable blur. Scrawled on the trunk of a tree, she reads "Jork + Heebz 4ever" a simple equation, with an implied equal sign.
"Metal mouthed stinkbeast! Tell the Dib-worm that Zim is not talking to him." Putting Gretchen between himself and Dib, Zim finally breaks away from the argument in disgust.
"Um," Gretchen squirmed. She turns to Dib. "Zim's not talking to you."
"Well, you tell the alien that I'm not talking to him either. And also that he's stupid."
Gretchen turns to Zim. "Uh, Dib's not talking to you either and—"
Zim cut her off. "Tell the Dib that it is he who has the defective brain meats! "
"Uh, Dib, Zim says you have—"
"Tell ZIM that I'm more than smart enough to beat him!"
"Zim, Dib says—"
"Tell DIB that it's only a matter of time before he is squashed beneath the mighty shoe of Zim like the bug he is!"
At that point she falls back into blissful silence, letting them continue on their own.
"Stay back, Dib creature!" Zim says as they traverse the yard before his house. He beckons to her. "Hurry, hurry into the completely ordinary non-alien house of Zim!"
"Keep your eyes open in there, Gretchen!" Dib yells after them. He seems to be caught up in one of Zim's lawn gnomes; Gretchen can't fathom why.
Zim ushers her inside and slams the door.
"Phew," he says, exaggeratedly wiping non-existent sweat from his brow. He "Now then, as you can see—"
Greenish fur shoots through the room to land at Zim's feet in a slobbering ball. It appears to be a dog of some kind, though its coat is covered in sticky patches of a slick greasy substance.
Recoiling from the growing puddle of drool and mystery-grease, Zim steps back. "This is Gir, my normal human dog."
"Why is he green?" she asks, before she can stop herself.
"It's a skin condition," says Zim, loftily. The dog wraps its paws around her leg and meows.
"Oh," Gretchen says. "I see." Patting the dog on the head, she sits down on the couch.
Zim plops down next to her, extolling the virtues of his 'regular human couch' and bemoaning Dib's large head.
After a minute, he pauses for breath and they stare at each other. Zim's dog scampers out of the room.
"So…" says Gretchen, testing the silence. Zim leans in unhelpfully, rearranges his hands on his lap. In an instant, she feels sorry for him; it must be hard enough to be new to a place without people (also known as Dib) insisting you're an alien, following you around, and taking pictures of you in your sleep on top of it.
A loud bang sounds from somewhere beneath the house; Gretchen supposes there's a basement. Relief flashes across Zim's face as he jumps to his feet.
"I'll go get you some juice. Juice! Yes! Earth-monkeys love the chemically enhanced drippings of pulverized fruit, this is correct?" Gauging her reaction, he raises one eyebrow, slightly desperate.
Even though juice sounds kind of gross the way Zim describes it, she nods.
"Excellent! I shall return shortly." He marches out of the room and another loud bang shakes the floor. Gretchen wonders if his furnace is broken or something.
Five minutes pass. Gretchen rests her elbow on the armrest of the couch.
Ten minutes. Behind her, the painting of the weird monkey trembles. She leans forward, hoping it won't fall on her.
Fifteen minutes. A tortured harrumphing sound emanates from what she presumes is the basement. The painting rattles angrily. Gretchen's gaze slides to the door.
Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! She hardly flinches at the series of small explosions that go off intermittently beneath her feet. The door looks more and more appealing, but this is only the second time in her life she's ever been invited over somebody's house. Just a little longer, she thinks, don't mess this up.
Her patience pays off when, minutes later, Zim's head pokes through the door. He staggers into the room, hair frazzled and long red shirt/dress thing singed at the ends.
"Um?" says Gretchen, shaken by his dishevelment. He's not holding any juice. After a moment, he seems to notice this, glaring down at his empty hand as if to chide it into making juice appear.
"Do not move, shiny-faced pig smelly," he says, "Feel free to enjoy the Scary Monkey painting, a common feature in normal human homes." With that, he dashes into the kitchen. Gretchen leans back into the couch cushions. Shiny-faced? And just when she'd thought she'd heard every possible insult to her braces.
And yet….
While Dib was at least close when he thought her name was Grace, Gretchen is pretty sure that Zim still thinks her name is 'metal-mouthed dirtchild', or some variation thereof. She isn't offended though; the way he says it doesn't sound like an insult. It's more like a weird statement of fact, fond almost, and it isn't as if he doesn't do it to everyone else, she muses.
Breaking her daze, Zim thrusts a cup of juice in her face.
"Behold the GLORIOUS liquids of Zim!" She giggles a bit and accepts the cup.
"Thanks." The 'juice' is the dark purple-brownish-red of a blood clot, congealed like old gravy where it bites at the sides of the glass. Sniffing it, she realizes the odor is not unlike the smell of sweaty gym sock that lingers around the changing stalls in the skool locker room. Her stomach churns.
Zim looks at her expectantly, motioning for her to drink.
"W-what flavor is this?" she stalls.
Zim blinks, obviously caught off guard. "Cranberry? Or…eh…cherry? Pork! Cran-cherrypork?" he offers.
"Pork? That's uh…not a fruit." It isn't what she'd intended to say when she'd opened her mouth. She'd wanted to say something encouraging. She kicks herself inwardly as his face falls.
"Eh, no?" he recovers quickly, though. "Don't be RIDICULOUS! It falls off your filthy mutant trees like asparagus!"
"Um, I don't think asparagus grows on—"
"Enough with your head chatter! Rejoice in the delicious fluids that Zim bestows upon you!"
"O-kay." She has no choice. Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe a lot of people from…whatever country Zim is from drink the cran-cherrypork and survive. She lifts the glass to her lips, holding her breath.
"Don't do it, Gretchen!" Dib crashes through Zim's window, repaying him for the hole in his garage ceiling. He grabs the glass out of Gretchen's hand and dumps its contents into a little plastic container. "Who knows what freaky alien poison that is? I'd better take it back to my dad's lab for study."
Zim screams in frustration. "It is juice! Normal Earth juice!"
Gretchen wonders who's crazier, Zim or Dib.
...
Sometimes she decides it's a tie.
...
This is Gretchen in Hi-Skool, with Dib to her left and Zim to her right.
"Gretchen and I are going to expose you for what you are," Dib says. He grabs her arm.
"Poor insane Dib-stink. The Gretchen-monster knows that Zim is a perfectly ordinary human wormbaby!" Zim snatches her other arm, tugging her towards him.
Enveloped in their constant chatter, she sighs contented.
...
This is Gretchen, caught in the middle. Sprawled in the grass on the hill overlooking the city, "neutral territory" Dib and Zim agree, they lie on their backs and stare at the sky. Zim and Dib point out constellations, arguing over their names while Gretchen just smiles and sighs. Blades of grass poke at her back in dull points, miniature triangles, not sharp yet, but still soft with the rain of mid spring.
"Andromeda," argues Dib.
Zim contradicts him with a word composed mostly of a series of sibilant hissing sounds. The best she can understand is "Splootyplaxiss." She thinks he's probably making stuff up to get at Dib. It's strange because half the time Zim vehemently denies being anything other than human, and then the other half of the time he comes up with stuff like "Splootyplaxiss" and it is those times that make her sure it's a game between them.
Sometimes, like now, they argue almost fondly, the vitriolic undercurrent not completely gone, but obfuscated by quiet laughter and the low chirrups of crickets.
"Do you ever feel small?" Dib blurts out, his voice very close to her left ear, the heat of his breath skimming the shell of her auricle "I mean, when you're looking at the stars," he corrects, hurriedly.
"Hmm?" Gretchen says. Pleasant heaviness draws down her eyelids. If she concentrates, she imagines she can feel the slow revolution of the earth.
"It's so big." Lulled by his whispers, she closes her eyes, nodding in assent. "And I've always wondered…what's out there, you know? But even if people could go...out there…there's no way we could see even half of it in our lifetimes. So it's kind of sad to look at it, I guess, but I want to anyway. It makes you think you're… like you're just so…" he pauses, looking for a word.
"Insignificant?" Zim pipes up suddenly.
"Well, yeah," Dib sits up a bit, looks over Gretchen's prone body in surprise. Gretchen turns to the left, her cheek grazing the grass; the earthy smell of it fills her nose. She thinks of seeds and how they grow into stalks and roots, of how these three parts link to make a whole.
Meanwhile, Dib narrows his eyes. "How would you know? Have you been sending nanobots into my brain again?" That familiar tinge of viciousness rises in his voice and Gretchen puts her face to the sky, willing it away.
Zim jumps to his feet. Gretchen whines as the impact of his boots rumbles through the ground beneath her. "Lies! Zim sent no bots! I merely…" He waggles his hands in the air as if shooing away the stars.
"Empathize?" Gretchen suggests. Cocking her head at a bright star, she wishes that the both of them would just sit down and shut up.
"Eh?' he frowns, caught off guard, blinking, the sheen of the moonlight reflecting off the whites of his eyes making them look strangely pinkish. "No! The MIGHTY Zim could never empathize with the Dib-creature's disgusting feelings!"
Dib sits up fully, pouncing on his chance. "See Gretch," he says, with a humorless smile that somehow manages to half turn down at the corners, "that's just what an alien who could go rocketing off up there any time he liked would say. It's proof!"
Zim sighs loudly and flops back into the grass. "You and your proof Dib-creature. You must've gotten more than three hundred of your little proofs and where has it gotten you?"
"Nobody believed Galileo either," grumbles Dib. "Someday…" he trails off, throwing himself onto his back with his hands behind his neck.
Smug that her wish came true, Gretchen closes her eyes once more, drifting in a half dream state, listening to Zim and Dib halfheartedly snipe at each other.
Suddenly, loud voices pierce through her bubble of calm. Not again, she thinks.
"I understand your meaningless human rituals perfectly, thank you!" Zim yells. He and Dib are standing up on either side of her, faces inches apart.
"Oh come on! Like you ever manage to blend in with a crowd!" Dib shoots back. Gretchen makes an unhappy noise in the back of her throat and sits up, unsure of how to move out of the crossfire.
"I am virtually undetectable from the FILTHY herd of lowing human meatbags. I understand every ludicrous intricacy of your feeble society." Zim folds his arms, smoldering.
His head tilts ever closer to the other boy and Dib moves to match him so that their lips almost touch and Gretchen can feel the tension between them crackling above her like static electricity. Their combined shadows cast a pall over her head. Holding her breath, she realizes that they're leaning so far that the slightest shift could send them both toppling down on her.
"Yeah? What do you think of this then?" Dib drops down and before Gretchen has time to react, presses his lips against hers.
Her heart stops. The universe tilts on its side and her brains drip out of her skull like slimy mush. He pulls away and the three of them wait in silence for a moment, two moments, three, saying nothing, swathed by the vast blackness that rises up from under the hill beneath them like the swell of the world.
Dib smirks, looking over her shoulder for Zim's reaction.
"I…I…" Zim's left eye twitches; for once he's at a loss for words. Then the muscles in his face contract, harden. "So?" he says. "Just your typical sickeningly repulsive human mating ritual—" he stops and catches himself, "that I too enjoy, of course. Because I'm not an alien."
Dib stands up and steps over her. Flushed, she hardly notices. Sidling over to Zim, bending down a bit to meet his height, Dib says "Prove it." Gretchen presses a finger to her lips wonderingly.
Zim takes a step back. Glance darting to the left then the right, he finds no reprise from Dib's glare. He balls his hands into fists. "Fine!"
He stomps over to Gretchen, and with a quick backward glance—gloating, angry, fearful? Gretchen can't tell because he kisses her then, hard on the mouth so that their teeth clank together and that knocks all other thoughts out of her mind. This kiss lasts longer than the first; whereas with Dib it was over practically before she registered it was happening, this time, for a split second, Zim's tongue touches hers, thin and strangely smooth.
"See?" Zim breaks the kiss, turning to Dib. His hand brushes her arm. Warmth flows through her, radiating outward from her lips. Zim and Dib flank her on both sides, their eyes interlocked, still challenging. She can feel their thighs pressing against hers.
Looking from left to right, from Zim to Dib and back again she dreamily licks her lips.
"What now then?" she says.
...
Lines Z and D collide to create a crisp corner. Line G reaches out to both of them, touches them at acute angles.
...
This is Gretchen during an uncomfortable moment in math class.
"So what's up with you and them?" Zita looms over her, resting one elbow on her desk as if she owns it.
"What?" she manages to get out. Zita never talks to her and Gretchen likes it that way. People like Gretchen hope to slide under people like Zita's radars, no more interesting than a footstool. It saves them a lot of trouble.
"You and those two weirdoes. You know who. Greenie and Crazy," Zita says, airily.
"You…think…that…me and Zim and Dib?" Not her most articulate moment, but Zita seems to know what she means. Maybe that's what makes her so popular—Gretchen can never figure out any of her peers.
"Everyone's talking about it, you know? Did you think it was a secret?" Zita grins, her naturally straight teeth gleaming wickedly. (No dorky braces for Zita; some people are just born lucky.)
Gretchen gapes, struck dumb.
"What I want," Zita continues, examining her purple nails, "is to get the real dirt."
"The…dirt?"
"On your thing with Nut and Nuttier," Zita says, like it should be obvious. When Gretchen still looks blank, Zita leers.
"You know… the thing. Your little affair. You're always together; don't think it's not obvious."
It clicks.
"What!?" she stammers. "B-but how would anyone— who would care if I… if we, if that—why?"
"Why would anybody care what a bunch of losers like you get up to in your spare time? Yeah, well, truth is…" lowering her voice conspiratorially, Zita leans in, "we've got kind of a betting pool going. I mean, who would have thought that either of those two freaks could get any kind of action at all? I mean what kind of sick weirdo do you have to be to even think about… Uh, no offense," she cuts herself off, as if suddenly realizing who she's talking to.
Registering Zita's words enough to be dimly offended, Gretchen can still only sit and stare.
"So…I guess what I mean to ask is, which one is it?"
"Huh?" Gretchen blinks.
"C'mon, don't play dumb. You can tell me." Zita spreads her hands on the desk.
"I really don't know what you—"
"Puh-lease," Zita holds up a hand. "Is it Zim? You can just say yes or no."
"I—"
"Dib?"
"Uh—"
"Is that a yes!"
"No!"
"So it's Zim?"
"No! I mean, it's not like, I—"
"Or…" Zita raises an eyebrow craftily. "both?"
Gretchen's mouth opens and closes, but no words will come out. Zita cackles.
"Both? Is it both? Ooh boy! It is! It is! Oh man, that is so gross. Hey Moofy, you're never gonna believe this!"
"No! Wait!" Gretchen blushes, but she's too late. Zita practically skips to the back of the classroom, holding her sides.
"What's Zita so happy about?" Dib walks in, Zim close behind him, and deposits his books on her desk.
"Does she have the brain worms?" Zim frowns, knocking Dib's books out of the way with his own. Without turning her head, Gretchen can hear Zita snort. She wants to sink down into her chair and die.
"No, I—" Gretchen resists the urge to glance behind her. "It's nothing. She's just being stupid again."
"Don't let her get to you," says Dib. "I mean, who cares what she thinks?"
"Yes, Gretchen-human. You do not need to associate with the Zita-beast when you have the vastly superior company of ZIM!"
Dib elbows him; Zim coughs and adds "And the not-as-AMAZING-as-Zim, but still-more-amazing-than-Zita, Dib-thingy."
The warm feeling leaves her face to be replaced by a different, "vastly superior" warmth in her chest. As class starts, Zim and Dib sit down at the desks on either side of her and Gretchen smiles.
...
This is Gretchen when she can't breathe. Her heart floats somewhere in the pit of her stomach and she can feel a pressure behind her eyes. She closes them.
It's not fair.
It starts in the grey twilight, when the sun has just set and faint outlines of stars emerge in its place. Gretchen creeps out of her room, past her mother watching taped soap operas in the living room, into the dark kitchen, through the back door, out onto the still street and up to the hill overlooking the city, the 'neutral territory' where the three of them are supposed to meet.
She hears their voices as she climbs and laughs to herself, shaking her head. Neither of them would make very good ninjas. She's not worried that they've come without her—they always seem to show up at around the same time quite by accident, as though their minds run together at a point like perpendicular lines.
It is fall now, almost winter, and the blades of grass have become needle fine daggers, stiff with early frost. Their voices are closer; she can hear them clearly but they haven't seen her through the clumps of brambly bushes that dot the hill.
"I'm going to tell her, you know," says Dib. She waits, lingers just a bit longer behind a tree. Maybe she'll jump out and surprise them, she thinks. That's always fun.
"Stupid Dib-creature! She didn't believe you before!" Maybe not. She rolls her eyes. The whole Zim-is-an-alien thing is getting really old. She wishes they would just drop it and find something new to obsess over.
"I'll show her the proof this time. I'll make her believe me and then Gretchen and I will—" Dib's voice drops to a snarl.
In elementary school, true, Zim and Dib had gotten along about as well as a cat in the rain, but after the three of them entered into…whatever this thing that she can't explain to Zita is, they mellowed. Lately, the game takes on a softer edge, more like an inside joke, and those times Gretchen tolerates it.
But sometimes, like now, that hidden vitriol rears its head all over again and suddenly it's like the last six years haven't happened and the two of them are back on the playground beating each other up and shoving macaroni in her face.
"You'll what, Dib-stink? The Gretchen-monster is in awe of Zim! Even if, by some miracle she catches on, what makes you think she'd align herself with weak, pitiful humans?"
Maybe if they don't see her, they won't try to make her pick sides. Gretchen crouches at the base of the tree, trying not to draw their attention.
"Gretchen would never!" Dib sputters.
She hates the way they can drag her into an argument when she's not even there.
"And why not?" Zim tears at his hair.
Sometimes it's almost like they don't…
"Because Gretchen couldn't betray her people!" Dib yells and Gretchen doesn't know whether to laugh or groan at the melodrama of it. In one way it's ridiculous that they should get so worked up over a stupid little elementary school game, in another it's so entirely them that she can't help but be amused.
"She couldn't," Dib repeats, "Not even if," he turns, looks to the grass, to the sky, to the constellation that's maybe Andromeda, maybe Splootyplaxiss, "not for anything." He steps forward and Gretchen rolls her eyes—once more with feeling. She's seen this before. The two of them are going to go around and around in circles until one or both of them end up in a bloody heap.
That always makes her feel awkward because she doesn't know who to root for and a little ashamed because sometimes she likes their attention even when they're fighting over her. No, Gretchen decides, maybe it's best for her to take a little walk down the hill. She could go back to her house and get bandages and come back when she's sure they've finished. She's done it before and they've never minded that she was late.
"What have the meat-creatures ever done to deserve her loyalty?" Zim drops into fighting stance. Circling him like a hungry dog, Dib follows suit. "They hate her. They think that you're— that she's crazy."
Careful and silent, Gretchen eases to her feet. I'll go now, she thinks, they don't need me here for this.
Just as she's turning to leave, it happens. They don't need me here for…The thought hits her square in the stomach and she doubles over.
One hand shoots out to dig short nails into the bark of the tree.
"She knows that!" Dib grits his teeth. They're almost touching, like they were with Gretchen that first night, but now alone with only each other the distance between them seems too far to bridge. "But she doesn't care," he says, more softly. A haze melts over her vision. She loudly gasps for air but they don't hear.
"It's stupid of her, not to care! It makes her just like all the other monkey-beasts!" Zim spits.
She cries out, a harsh undignified squawk that she attempts to cut off but can't.
"So? What's it to you?" Dib folds his arms.
Neither he nor Zim look in the direction of the tree.
"Because!" Zim gesticulates wildly. "If she is to be worthy of MY attention, she must be better than all the other pig smellies!"
They don't need me here. There it is, stark and cold and clogging up her windpipe.
Dib punches Zim in the jaw. The crack of the impact resounds through the hill, shakes the brambly branches of the bushes at her feet.
And then she realizes that everything she thought before is a few degrees off and that they don't even know. Maybe they couldn't know. Maybe it would destroy them.
Something wet marks a hot path down her cheek. Flecks of dry bark flake off the tree and bounce off her coat.
She's going to tell them, anyway.
...
This is Gretchen with a gun in her hand. Her wrist shakes a little at first, but she tells herself that it's just from the cold. With her free hand, she pulls up the collar of Dib's trenchcoat, which he'd left over her house last weekend. It has to end. The proof is like his "proof": the result of a squared plus b squared is too big to be pushed aside like a cardboard box in somebody's garage.
"Hello, Dib?" she says, holding the cellphone between her ear and the crook of her shoulder as she polishes the barrel. "Yeah, it's me. Could you meet me up on the hill in –oh, say, twenty minutes? Yes, I already called Zim. Yes, he's coming," she scowls. Why hadn't she seen it before? Why don't they see it now?
Pointless questions. Triangles are the cruelest shape.
Snapping the phone shut, Gretchen sits on the ground to wait. The thick material of the trenchcoat can't protect her from the cold frostbitten points of grass.
She hasn't rehearsed what she's going to say, hasn't even decided what she's going to do, but she knows this is the way to get them to pay attention to her—by making a place for herself in their little game, even if she has to blast a hole in it.
She knows that she can't hold them up anymore.
As she passes the gun from hand to hand, feeling its leaden weight in her hands, the cool press of its snub nose against her sweating palms, Gretchen wonders who's crazier: Zim or Dib or her.
When she hears the two of them arguing in the distance, she stands, brushing herself off. Zim emerges from the brambly brush, Dib close behind. Gretchen cocks the gun.
"Hi, boys," she says to their shocked faces. "I just found out something important about triangles. I thought you should know."
If it's a tie, she's going to break it today.
//end.
Please don't forget to go look at DesdemonaKakalose's picture (http:// desdemonakakalose. deviantart. com /art / Holdin-up-a-smokin-gun- 91702071 without spaces) You can assume that's what happens after the end of this story.