This would be my first ever Zim fic, and from the looks of it, the last. And yes, I have in fact been told that my mind has the plague. Or possibly syphilis. No show is safe from the slash, not even kiddie cartoons. If someone can slash Scooby Doo, they can slash Zim.
Yes, I know they're children. Assume for a moment that they're not. Like Zim shows up and is a highschool kid or something. Shut up.
With love, Jiia
When he first heard the crackled static of the order through his makeshift satellite dish, he was so happy. So happy it hurt. Finally, finally, everyone would see. He was right. He had been right all along. They couldn't deny it now, not when the fleet was on its way. They would see. They would all see. So what if everyone died. He was right. They would have to look at him then.
When he saw the streaking light of the ship arcing down out of the heavens, it was hard to contain his glee. At last, no more waiting, no more sitting up on his rooftop listening for the snap-crackle-pop of the alien intercom. Once the ship came down, once the invasion began, it was only a matter of time before the truth came to light. Then, as the terrifying alien creature no doubt inhabiting the ship began to wreak its terrible doom upon the world, he would be there, telling the lost and confused people of Earth what to do. They would have to listen to him then.
When he first met Zim, looked the little green boy in his false-blue eyes, he barely held back a laugh. The alien wasn't the threat he'd first thought. Just a little green man in the guise of a boy, as incompetent and foolish as the rest of them. He had a technological advantage, to be sure, but as far as intellect was concerned, it was obvious from the start that he was far superior. He would defeat the scrawny little extraterrestrial with relative ease and save the entire planet from ultimate devastation. He'd be a hero. They would have to love him then.
The first time Zim defeated him, really, honestly defeated him, he couldn't help but feel a strange sense of pride. On his knees before the gloating Invader, he let himself smile. It didn't matter what the alien did to him now. The alien would make him a martyr to the cause, the first soldier to give his life in the battle against the planet's new and dangerous foe. One day, his name would go down in history as the first to realize the threat, the first to take action. They would teach the children of the future about him, tell them stories of the brave young man-to-be who gave his life so that they could live. They would have to remember him then.
The first time Zim asked him, he didn't really understand. It wasn't a question that had really occurred to him. The answer was so seemingly obvious. He fought Zim because Zim was an alien. Zim was bad. Zim wanted to destroy the Earth. But the as the unmasked creature so callously pointed out, it wasn't like there was much to Earth that was really worth saving. So why, why, why, give his life for those who hated him, despised him, ignored him? What was so precious to him that he was willing to give his life to preserve it from the Irken taint?
The answer.
"It's the only way I'll ever matter."
Silence.
When Zim touched him, brushing his cool, dry fingertips along the curve of his cheek, it took the gentle sizzle and the smell of burning for him to realize he was crying. The Irken wiped away his tears, kneeling before him and touching their foreheads together in an intimate gesture that was strange and familiar all at once. It was like something out of a dream, only half remembered in bits and pieces that may or may not have been imagined. The other touched his glasses, carefully tugging them away with more gentleness than he had thought the boy possessed. Nothing now between their eyes, just ruby reds to inky black.
A whisper.
"I understand."
In two little words, a whole universe of meaning. A lifetime of loneliness, of longing. A hundred, two hundred years of solitude, endless training in the pursuit of a singular, almost impossible dream. To be an Invader, to be a hero among the Irken Elite. To gain the favour of the Tallest, to be recognized for the centuries of work required to make the Invader grade. To be special. To be loved. To be seen.
Zim was like him. They were two evolutions of the same being, crafted galaxies apart. For all the differences between them, they were the same. They wanted the same thing. A simple wish, one which could have, should have been easily filled. The love of a parent. A parent to love. Somebody, anybody, to care about them. To remember them. To hold them in their arms and tell them they mattered, they were special. Their existences weren't meaningless.
When Dib kissed Zim for the first time, it was like his heart broke into a million glittery pieces. The shards of a mirror, falling forever into the emptiness inside him. And yet, he was happy. So happy it hurt. Because the mirror had been put together wrong, with pieces missing and bits glued together that were never meant to touch. Now it could be healed. Broken and healed, broken and healed, over and over again until he finally got it right. A million kisses, sobbing and breathless, a million kisses just like this, and he might just fix it. He might just be whole, for the first time in his sad, lonely life.
And when Zim kissed him back, claws scratching and tearing at his jacket, his shirt, rough and yet somehow so careful not to break the skin, it was impossible to contain his glee. He smiled, grinned into the Irken's toothy kiss, crying again but not caring, not caring at all. Zim felt the same way, wanted the same things. They could be each other's genie, granting the other's wish and having their own granted in return. They could share in one another's love, give each other what they had never had. They could be together, no longer alone, no longer lonely. For the first time, they could face the world with another at their side.
When Zim took him, gasping and shaking and crying, sobbing, desperate, he let himself break down and laugh. In between each and every shuddering moan, each and every pleasured gasp, he laughed, holding on to the other's slender body for all he was worth. He couldn't help it. The thought of losing his virginity to Zim, his enemy, his nemisis, the one he hated with all his broken heart, and loving it, and loving him... It was too much. Even his superior intellect failed him. He simply couldn't comprehend that it was Zim doing this to him, making him feel this way. Zim was something to be hated, to be destroyed. But now, Zim was something to be loved.
When Dib met release, he couldn't believe the intensity of it. It ripped him apart and stitched him back together, not bothering to do it right the first time around. The world went black and the sky went dark, and the entire universe was just one big floating mass of bliss. He couldn't imagine being anything but happy, anything but content. The days of pain and sorrow seemed far behind him. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and in the light, it was as if it had never rained at all. And then the answer came to him, the reason why, why, why he did what he did.
So that I could live to see this moment.
And then he opened his eyes, and it all came crashing down.
The first time Dib pulled against the restraints, he couldn't believe they were actually there. He had to crane his head, to look, to see, to make sure it wasn't just the sloth of sleep still upon him. His
hands, tied above his head, lashed to a laboratory bench like a specimen stretched out for display. Feet too, immobile in their metal prisons. Naked and vulnerable, spread eagle in the cold, dark deep of the secret base. And Zim, curled in the shadows where he never would have seen, had his quiet, shaking voice not called an apology into the dead air. I'm sorry, Dib. This wasn't what I wanted.
A moment of confusion, and then dreadful understanding as a door hisses open. The shadowed silhouettes of to alien forms and a glimpse of stars through a window, brighter and clearer than anything he'd ever seen, the blue gem of Earth rising gracefully below. The planet has been given over, surrendered unwittingly by the only person capable of defending it, a gift in exchange for a single moment of happiness.
He will not miss it.
It is Zim he will miss, and Zim he regrets, wondering what joy could have been wrought had he just realized earlier, just seen it sooner, how they were so alike. A thousand different timelines, a thousand lifetimes of love that could have been and never will. He looks at the quiet, guilty shadow, so uncharacteristically humble in the face of his own betrayal. It would have been so easy to hate. So easy to blame. And yet he can't. He understands too well the motivations of his traitorous companion. They're the same as his own. They're the same reasons which made him implant himself with a locator beacon and program a missile from his father's workshop to target it in case of his capture. Actions taken before the realization could not be judged, not now.
He looks at Zim, and he forgives. With a single look, he forgives, pouring his understanding out through his eyes and smiling, letting him know that it's ok, that he doesn't mind. And then he returns the whisper, I'm sorry too, and for a moment, his crimson eyes are confused. And then the ship's proximity alarm goes off, and chaos erupts all around them, and they are in a bubble of calm understanding, alone with one another once more, as it always should have been.
And Zim brings himself out of his shadows and releases Dib from his bonds, and he wraps his black gloved arms around his naked back and whispers, It will be ok. And for the first time in both their lives, with their death speeding towards them out of the starry black, it actually is.
And then it's over.
A thousand years later, they are still remembered. Honoured on Earth as the saviours of all mankind, despised among the Irken as the destroyers of the Almighty Tallest, their names are known in every household in a thousand worlds. In their deaths, the two of them accomplished that which they had always dreamed of. They made a difference in the world. They mattered.
But now they no longer care. It doesn't matter to them anymore, looking down on the million glittering planet-jewels strewn across the galaxy from that strange place Beyond. Now, they have everything they always really needed. Now, they are happy.
Now, they will never be alone.