Disclaimer: I don't own Zim. Or Gaz either.
Retribution
In the bitter cold the snow crunched like styrofoam under Gaz's boots as she stalked down the sidewalk.
A salt truck went by, its chains clinking against whatever pavement had made it through the packed snow and ice.
Stupid weather. Always stupid snow in the stupid winter. She hated that last one worst of all.
Gaz was now at the beginning of her fifth year living in a suburban neighborhood in the quiet part of town. She knew she needn't have bothered getting to know the losers she was stuck with, those unfriendly freaks firmly holed up in the houses on both sides of hers. Look at all those stupid Christmas lights. Look at all those stupid snowmen. And just look at all those stupid patios. Every single one of those idiots had a barbecue this summer... and I never got invited to a single one. Stuck up weirdos. They just pretend to sound like they're happy. But they're NOT. Curse them all.
They were too stuck up to even ask about her work. Gaz was a very busy beta tester for a gaming company... and she would have quickly enough cut off whoever dared be nosy enough to ask because that was HER business.
Gaz never saw Dib these days and she liked it that way. Loser. Never talks about anything useful. Saving people, some foolishness like that.
The last time she'd seen him was at the funeral. Of course she'd shed not a single tear. That would have made her look... weak. Had that actually happened Gaz would have dramatically proven just how weak she WASN'T to whoever happened to be standing nearby.
But she was already plotting revenge, had been doing so right from the moment the police officer told her because her neighbors were all too gutless to come and tell her what happened and she punched his face in and knocked him halfway across the front walk and no charges were pressed because she only did it because she was grief-stricken. That was the moment she began planning her revenge. Oh, how Gaz loved her revenge. She loved it more than she'd ever loved anybody or anything.
Even her child.
Yes, indeed. None of them could quite figure out how THAT ever managed to happen. From time to time as she passed a tight knot of shoppers in the supermarket or downtown (a knot that pulled itself even tighter at her approach) she heard the hushed whispers far behind her back that after raping some guy she then had the gall to sue him for child support and if a cent of it was a day late she went after his hide and didn't water her threats down by going through any lawyer either.
Gaz never got even the slightest urge to turn around and confront them. She enjoyed the rumors too much.
Steadily, relentlessly Gaz strode toward that house. She was on a mission. She was as determined as she had ever been back in the days when she would torture Dib to the brink of sanity for hours on end over one single scrap of pizza. But more recently she had found she could get her point across just as well, and a lot more efficiently, by making the punishment match the crime.
Adults are a great deal physically stronger than children, and adults could also be a lot more subtle, but achieving adulthood had its downside. Right when she finally had the wherewithal to REALLY make sorry anybody who dared cross her, Gaz had found that she actually couldn't get away with as much as she could when she was a child. (She would make somebody pay for that, too... just as soon as she figured out who.) Ironically, kids were largely left to their own devices when it came to coping with bullies, but whenever Gaz beat up an adult, or even just terrorized the living shit out of him or her, somehow it was she who ended up dealing with all those nosy police officers snooping around asking stupid questions.
But some things you just had to do; this time, vengeance was called for fair and square. If anybody thought they had any place to say anything about it, well, she would cross that bridge when she got to it. Gaz's sense of justice, which had so well served her for so long, would demand no less.
Gaz fought down a swell of nauseous rage as the house she now hated more than any other in the world came into view through the roofs and the piles of snow. Finally she was forcing herself to walk right up to it. Gaz stepped off the sidewalk, went straight to the front step and sat down right in front of the house to wait. She didn't care who saw her. This was the same complete and utter disregard for any other human being that had stood her in good stead through everything else, large, small, and trivial, that had ever been done to her.
Gaz knew she was well above the rest of humanity... a higher evolved being, not bound by the laws that bound other, lesser mortals. She saw an old woman cautiously poking across the ice on the other side of the road and didn't even bother to sneer in contempt. Other people weren't worth even that much of her effort.
Gaz settled in to wait. She had closely watched the comings and goings connected with this house for a few weeks. She was a lot colder than the step; she was colder even than the snow itself. Combine the berserk frenzy of a pit bull with the mechanical patience of a steel trap, and the result is Gaz. She was going to wait right here, though not for very long. She had studied the movements of everyone in that accursed house for days. Let them come to her. She wasn't going to lower herself to go chasing after anybody.
A sudden noise turned her head, but she turned back and resumed her relaxed pose when she saw that the person she'd heard was heading up the walk two houses away. She didn't know if the person had noticed her; she could not possibly care less. Gaz was going to do exactly what she had come here to do, and nothing was going to stop her.
Nothing.
Finally, the someone she awaited was coming up the correct driveway.
Gaz stood up.
Though they would soon clench in a death grip, her fists were now relaxed. She would do exactly what had been done to her, no more than that. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That was Gaz's sacred creed. Gaz repaid, Gaz always repaid. People respected her for it even if they didn't always like her. Whatever. None of those worthless idiots mattered; that Gaz respected herself was all that mattered. Gaz simply took what was hers. Always.
A four year old girl in a pink showsuit with white buttons and a furry white cap bounded innocently up the driveway, pulling a little red sled made of light plastic with powdery snow sliding inside, the residue of a joyous afternoon spent sledding with a friend. The little girl paused upon noticing Gaz, offered up an open, honest, cheerful smile, and...
Gaz's hands leaped out and took hold of the little neck and before the child could cry out, "Mommy," Gaz twisted her wrists to snap the neck of the child of the person who had been driving too fast, hit a patch of ice and run over Gaz's child.
Gaz held on until the child's struggles grew weaker, still weaker, and finally ceased. A life for a life... Gaz was simply taking back what had been taken from her.
Gaz dropped the little body to collapse in the driveway and walked home with her head held high, satisfied that once more, the rightful order had been restored.
The End
(A/N) As many of you are aware, the bit about Gaz torturing Dib for hours over a single lousy shred of pizza is straight from canon.
One of the texts I've been using here is full of essays. I didn't write them, or even select the book. An essay about the history of crime and punishment is followed by one very interesting question. The question mentions that some primitive societies considered it appropriate to put to death the child of somebody who had caused the death of somebody else's child, even accidentally.
It then poses the question, is this rehabilitation, restoration, or retribution?
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