disclaimer: Zim is not mine.. but cant I just borrow him for a while?
author's note: Ah, I'm back, with yet another attempt at fanfiction... gosh why does my brain have so many ideas that I can't decide on just one and stick with it? Not to mention the Tallests fic I am going to start on soon...
Dib leaned against the bathroom wall, struggling to catch his breath as quietly as he could. He whished so much not to be found by his stalkers. He closed his eyes tightly against the pain in his head, and at his side... luckily no one had seen him run into the desolate bathroom. He looked around at the room surrounding him... no wonder they hadn't followed him in here.
The walls were tiled with dirty, putrid-yellow squares. The sinks were out of order and the soap dispensers were stolen. Only one urinal remained looking almost usable. The toilet seats were stolen, the walls were vandalized, even the mirrors had writing on them... well between the cracks in the glass anyway. Dib glanced down at the floor, cringing in disgust he moved himself away from a mysterious yellow puddle oozing its way over from a urinal that was half-ripped out of the wall.
'I can't believe this,' he thought to himself silently as he put one hand over his temple. His head was throbbing from so much pain, it was hurting pretty bad this time. 'This just can't be happening...' he felt his legs give way underneath him as his routine thoughts ran through his head at top speed... questions of why and how emerged in his mind. He slid down the wall that he was using as support, his head becoming too much of a hassle to bear. He opened an eye slightly, but closed it immediately at the intrusion of light.
'It was worse this time... and they saw me....' he continued his mental discussions... feeling the unsanitary cild against his body. 'They were supposed to be on my side...' he felt the warm tinge of unconsciousness slowly spread its way across his body, 'Father.. why?' he gives into the consuming comfort of escape, letting himself rest ont he floor, unkowing of the men right outside the door, waiting for that very moment.
~6 months ago~
Dib thought today would be just like any other day in his Hi Skool life. Just two weeks into his freshman year, and Zim was somehow in every single class of his.. it seemed to be this way every year since Zim's arrival.
He worked his way into a crowded Japanese classroom, it had become a langauge that he was interrested in... Spanish just seemed so.. customary. He took his assigned seat at the front-left corner of the class... it was where he sat in most of his classes... his prefered seat since kindergarten. He glanced towards his right. There was Zim, looking as annoyed as ever. Grinning to himself, he wadded up a sheet of notebook paper and threw it towards the alien's head.
Zim glared at him, why was the human always bothering him anyway? He picked up the paper and threw it right back at Dib who skillfully ducked out of the way. Growling to himself, he opened his mouth to speack just as the teacher made her way through the classroom.
The rest of the day proceded normally... he even had his habitual lunchtime bickering with Zim. Well it started out as routine at least. Well, until Zim had went a little low in his insults, not to mention the fact that Torque had pushed him down to the ground by accident, causing him to cut his knees.
Dib felt a strange sensation course though his body, a sensation of warmth surrounded his entire self and then released all at once. His vision blacked out and his balance went off. Wehn his vision returned, everyone around him was staring. Confused as to why he was the center of attention, he stood up slowly. The croud around him seemed to back away in what looked like fear as he did so... everyone except for Zim that is.
"Wait, what happened?" For some reason, he felt exhaused, and his breath was shallow. He felt as though he had just run a marathon seconds before.
"How did you do that, human?" Zim stared at him with a look he had never seen from him before. His eyes were wide adn he looked utterly shocked... perhaps even impressed. Dib could hear sirens in the distance.
"How did I do what, Zim? What happened, why is everone looking at me?"
"You mean to tell me you don't remember?" Zim raised a hairless eyebrow questioningly, "I seel. Well, I'll let you know.. this one time. You just knocked the bully boy over without touching him. I felt something push me back too... so truthfully, what kind of weapon do you have hidden?"
"What? I.. I don't know what you're talking about..." Dib started to back away, looking around him in a nervous fashion. The sirens were getting louder... closer. He glared at Zim, "You did something to them, didn't you? You're trying to frame me!"
"Don't be stupid, worm-baby. If it was from me, I wouldn't have asked you."
"No... I couldn't have done something like that..." Dib looked down at Torque, who was still laid face down against the ground near him. His mind was racing so fast he couldn't even keep up with his own thoughts. Then he saw the cars that produced the siren sounds... they looked like cars from his father's worl. He looked back at Zim, who remained impassive. He gave Zim a pleading look.
"What is it, human? Scared to be on the autopsy table?"
Dib glared at him... and without a second thought, he reched over and pulled Zim's wig off to reveal a bald head with two antennae to the entire student population... not to mention the members inside the cars.
Dib's eyes widened as realization hit him. He looked down at the wig in his had and back up to meet the enraged and... scared.. eyes of the uncovered Irken.
Dib opened his mouth to stammer an apology, but he was cut short as the men in white coats began running towards them. He shook his jumbled head and told Zim to run, which they both did. Their efforts were short-lived however, as the student body rushed to help the men-in-white capture them.
~Back to Present~
Dib felt his head throbbing, and cold all around him... he must be back in his cell. After being so close to escape too. He heard a movement in the cell besides himself, 'That's strange... I never had a roomate before,' he thought to himself, keeping his eyes closed in fear of the brightness overwhelming his eyes that seemed to get more sensitive to the light by the day. He moved his hand over his forehead, noticing that his glasses were still on him, "Whose there?" He grumbled hoarsely from thirst.
There was no answer from the other occupant of the cell. Dib sighed aloud and opened his eyes slightly to allow the artifivial light to seep in at a comfortable pace. When he got used to the light, he let his eyes move to the hunched figure int he corner of the cell... he gasped.
"Zim, is that you..?" Dib found himself in a storm of emotions. He was glad to see someone he knew, but afraid that Zim would want revenge. He was sad because Zim seemed... different, and he was confused as to why he didn't feel the same hatred that he used to. He knew that they'd both been though a lot, and he knew that it was all his fault.
The figure still gave no answer in return to Dib. He remained in his corner, unspeaking. He wasn't wearing a suit to look human, his antennae hung limp at the sides of his head. His eyes were set, staring at the ground. He too was feeling as though his emotions were in a blender. It was Dib's fault that he had gone through all of this pain... but at least Dib called him by his name... addressing him as a feeling being... understanding that he can feel pain.
Dib crawled over to Zim cautiously, the ache in his head never leaving him. Dib was shocked to find Zim so tense. He noticed his arms looked as though incisions were made into them. Dib looked the alien over, counding the cuts on him that he could see, each of them looking as though it had been done by a precise medical instrument... twenty-seven visible.
"What happened to you?"
Dib nearly jumped back at the sudden response. Zim glared up at him, "You ask me that like you don't know. You know damn well what happened to me... exactly what you wanted."
"You've been stopped, that's all that I really wanted. These cuts, where did they come from?"
"Liar. You told me yourself, time and again, how you wanted my organs strewn across an autopsy table, don't even deny it..."
"I," Dib stammered, "I said those things. But it was a blind threat, a way to intimidate you into stopping you invasion... You don't think I really wanted you to be chopped up, do you? I mean.. it was tempting with the way you acted sometimes..."
"Either way, you got what you wanted..."
"They didn't really do that, did they?"
"No, they didn't. An autopsy would have required my death..." Dib remained silent as Zim faced him and moved closer, "They weren't that kind... Imagine laying on a table," Zim pushed the fearful looking Din onto his back roughly, putting a clawed and de-gloved finger over his chest, in the center. "A knife being pushed," to emphasize his point, Zim pressed his finger down hard, "Right into your skin... you're awake during all this of course. Then while you're seeing this on a screen, they point and have the nerve to even ask what each organ is called..."
"They did that to you?" Dib was horrified... he thought the constant brain probings were bad...
"That's not the worst of it," Zim growled and moved back against the wall.
"What else did they do to you...?"
"...I don't want to say..."
Dib felt more curious, and risked venturing further, "No, tell me. It might help to get it off your chest."
"Stupid logic."
"Come on..."
"Its embarrassing, leave me alone!"
Dib sighed and sat next to Zim, "I guess you want to get out of here as badly as I do then..." He changed the subject, feeling Zim's resistance too strong.
"What are they doing to you?"
"I'm not having vivatopsies or anything... they're messign with my brain. Sometimes I'm awake too though... then they push... and push... until it happens again..."
"You mean that thing you did at skool?"
"Yeah. Telekinesis. I wish I could have been able to control it then... I'm just brginning to now. But they don't know that... they force me to do it,a nd it hurts... before, during,a nd after."
"What made you do it, anyway?"
"I think it was something you said.. I don't really remember."
"I wonder why it bothered you so much... You don't really strike me as the type of person to care what other people thought of you anyway.."
"What did you say..." Dib closed his eyes, trying to recall that day...
"Why don't you just admit that you're gay?"
"What the hell kind of question is that?"
"Well no girl with good eyes would be with you!"
Dib didn't even know why that would bother him...
"Maybe I was having a bad day or something."
"Maybe..."
"Zim," Dib looked over at the alien hopefully, "Can we work together, just this once?"
"What do you have planned?" Zim decided to stay safe and give him no direct answer just yet...
"Let's break out of here..."
"You're so desperate as to ask me for help?"
"Yes..."
"I've tried.. it's not easy... but you're right... we need more than one person."
"Okay."
"Then we have a temperary truce..."
"Only until we can get out of here."
"Dib reached a hand out towards Zim. At first Zim didn't know what Dib was doing, until he remembered that this was how humans confirmed agreements. Zim took Dib's hand in his own, giving it a smooth shake. Both letting go immediately as they heard the chamber doors unlock.
Hah... I know.. it's a new fic.. but you have to start cliff-hangers somewhere, don't you? More fun this way... I'll just have you wanting more ^^