His boots made a faint crunching sound as he shifted his balance, surveying the scene before him with a business-like posture. Crimson puddles and spray soaked the vicinity; it reminded him vaguely of a scene from an old horror movie he'd seen not long ago. It took him about a second of thinking to determine the blood wasn't human; it took him half that time to locate said inhuman source, lying feet away from him, limp.

He clenched his fists tightly, enough to make both his arms tense painfully and his fingernails slice his palms. His teeth gritted together as he bared them in a frustrated scowl, and his torso tightened on him, making breathing calmly completely impossible.

"I thought you were strong," his voice wavered and cracked, shaking as if he were about to burst into tears, "You said this kind of thing couldn't happen to you."

Dib stooped down on one knee beside his fallen nemesis, examining the extent of his injuries. His stomach churned at the sight, and that was a feat, for Dib had seen some truly disgusting things in his seventeen years.

Zim's stomach was completely shredded; his skin looked like it had been run through a cheese grater, all three layers of it. Most of the blood seemed to have come from this injury, as it was still spilling from his exposed guts. The guts themselves-or whatever Zim's internal organs were called-were in disarray within his ruined body. They pulsated sickeningly, trying to continue their purposes and in turn only causing their owner agony. They seemed to want to be spilling out from the gaping gash, and were pushing at the edges of it, tearing it farther each time they throbbed.

Gruesome as this was, it wasn't the only wound Zim's miniscule body had sustained. His left arm was snapped in two places, each break sight revealing the tender grayness of torn muscle and the sheer white of shattered bone. His right leg was missing from the knee down; Dib suspected it would be found somewhere in the sea of blood later on. The bone seemed to have been torn all the way out, for all that was left of his leg was a limp-looking stump, oozing fluids onto the ground. His right hand hadn't fared well either; all three of his fingers seemed to have been chewed off. Both sides of his face had sustained lacerations, the right side far worse than the left. Three thick claws, apparently, had raked into his flesh, exposing even his strangely-shaped teeth behind his cheek.

His eyes were closed, and for the first time since meeting the deranged little invader, Dib saw a sense of pure serenity on his face.

Zim was still breathing, which came as a great shock to the human boy, considering the fatal severity of his wounds. His consciousness, however, was long gone, and Dib knew that it would probably never return.

Led seemed to fill his stomach as he came to the truest and most devastating conclusion; Zim was dying. Zim was dying and there wasn't a thing Dib or anyone else in the universe could do about it.

His body swayed on the support his knees granted him, and he sank slowly, arching his body over Zim's like a horizontally perilous bridge. He hovered his face over Zim's, feeling the weak heat of his breathing against his skin, as well as searing moisture in his eyes.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening. Not Zim. Zim was Zim. Zim did not get hurt. Zim did not bleed like this. Zim could not die.

And yet he was; right before his eyes.

"You can't do this to me, Zim," Dib was whispering into the side of Zim's face, where an ear would have been if he'd been human, "You think you can just die, huh? You think you can just quit now, when you've come so far? Well, tough," he was crying now, "because I'm not letting you die here. I don't care what you think afterwards. I'm not letting you spill your guts and bleed all over the place out here."

You don't deserve it.

He slid a spidery hand to the side of Zim's throat, feeling the pulse beating almost too lightly to make out, and he turned Zim's head slightly. Some blood dribbled from the cuts on his face and landed on his hand. Curiously, he lifted his hand to his lips and licked the blood from it.

Sweet.

He looked down at the alien's tranquil face once again, letting his annoyingly persistent tears rain down on it. He wished, no, he needed Zim to feel them. To wake up and start snickering at him for being a weakling. He needed the insults, the cold and jeering looks, the smirks, he needed everything. He needed Zim.

"I need you, stupid space scum!"

He buried his face in Zim's uninjured shoulder, his body now heaving with sobs that he desperately tried to silence.

"You can't go now, do you hear me, invader Zim?!" he was screaming now; he didn't care who, or what, heard him.

"You can't go yet! You aren't done with your mission yet! You haven't beaten me yet! You haven't taken over my race and world yet! I'M NOT DONE WITH YOU YET!"

He let himself cry out for a minute or so, catching his breath and letting his tears slow. He was losing him; the alien boy's breathing was slowing, his skin was paling, and his skin, oddly enough, was beginning to become smooth and cool, like porcelain. He couldn't fathom why; he'd never asked Zim what happened to Irkens when their bodies died.

"I still need you, Zim…"

You're the only one who ever treated me like an equal; you were the only one who ever understood. You were alone, like me, and you found me. We're the same, and I can't make it without you yet.

"Dib…"

Dib's eyes shot open; he pulled away from the alien's shoulder and stared down at his face, feeling a jolt of shock when he saw two red, bug-like eyes staring back.

"Zim!"

"Dib…I…take…GIR…care…"

"You…you're giving me GIR?"

Zim moved his head slightly, in what seemed to be an attempt at nodding. Dib realized that he was crying as well.

"You heard everything I said, didn't you?"

Another feeble nod.

"Don't…Zim, just…"

Zim was trying to shake his head now, gesturing with his uninjured hand. Unfortunately, this hand that still retained its fingers was connected to a broken arm, and thus all Zim could do was flick his wrist.

Dib, fortunately, understood Zim's gestures, and reached down to take his hand. Something cold and metallic slipped into his hand.

Before he could see what it was, a gasp of pain erupted from Zim's throat, which was followed immediately by choking and sputtering. He could see something convulsing inside Zim's torso, and the amount led in his stomach just got tripled; Zim had gone into cardiac arrest.

Zim's body began to convulse, and his blood and inside began to slosh and spill out of him again. Dib hovered frozen above him, lost in the horror of the moment.

Their eyes met one final time. Dib's pupils were tiny within his enormous eyes, a single breath was held in his chest, his body was tense, and a look of sheer terror had overtaken his face.

Zim's eyes were widened to the point of explosion, and they were losing everything in them that marked life. The last thing his eyes ever saw was the terrified expression on his enemy's face.

Zim grew still beneath Dib, who in turn, felt his own consciousness slipping away. He fell flat against Zim's bloody corpse, wincing at the feeling of the blood soaking into his clothing and the sound of the useless organs being squashed.

His eyes, growing dim, focused in on Zim's face one last time. A final, single tear leaked from his left eye, and his world vanished; thrusting him into a pitch black vortex of unconsciousness.