"You made me do this."
There was ragged breathing from behind him and it only made everything worse.
"Zim, goddammit, you have to understand! You made me do this!"
The gun hung from his limp fingers. He flung it away from him, far away into the grass. Night was silent around them. Only the breathing, now. A grunt as the figure behind him tried to move.
Dib turned around. He flinched.
The thought registered that he had never really wanted to know what color Irken blood was, anyway. But it was red. Bright red, like an ocean of rubies beneath an ancient crimson sun.
"Seven fucking years, Zim! You don't understand what you've put me through! I could have had a normal life! Instead I spend seven years chasing after you, proving time and time again to the world just what you are. They think I'm fucking mental! I can never redeem myself after what you've made me, Zim."
The Irken coughed and Dib grimaced again. Blood splattered the grass of the playground.
"Seven years ago, all you wanted was to catch yourself an alien, Dib."
The black-haired boy babbled, "no, no, no," and looked, crestfallen, at the jewel-eyed creature.
"Well, here I am."
Dib crumpled. He fell to his knees in the blood-flecked grass and soaked himself in tears. Fingers locked in his black feathered hair, head shaking the word his soul was crying out in silence.
Zim coughed again and it was a pitiful sound. He hissed from bleeding lungs.
"Don't make me die in the presence of such a disgraceful sight, you worm. Get up and stand over your enemy like a hero."
Dib looked. There was a fire like a thousand supernovae in those violet-red eyes and they drew Dib to his feet and closer still. He crouched next to Zim.
"I had to," he whispered.
"Spare yourself some dignity. I'm the one dying and I'm having to console you?"
"I'm sorry, Zim. I never wanted this."
The alien's eyes softened as he looked upon the boy, perhaps by some shred of sympathy or merely by the dying of the light within him. For all stars must die, and every supernova will someday fade.
"You have nothing to apologize for," he murmured. "It couldn't have ended any other way."