I was very inspired by the music video for As Cities Burn's song Empire. It got a picture and a fan fiction. Look up the video and the story will make more sense, but hopefully it makes sense anyway. If you want to see the pic the link to my DA account is on my profile.
Zim watched the large city burn from the cliff twenty miles away. By now all the humans should be dead. Some managed to escape the city before the fires got to them, but those would be destroyed later. There was no place left on Earth that the Armada hadn't reached yet.
He should have been proud. He'd done what he'd come to earth to do, destroy the humans for his Tallest. Zim should have been proud, but he wasn't.
It didn't feel right. When he'd imagined this moment it was different. He'd expected them to bow to him, tell him how amazing, how glorious he was. He'd expected his Tallest to congratulate him, tell him what a great invader he was, give him the recognition he deserves. He'd expected so much more than this.
The Tallest didn't even seem to care. Sure, they'd seemed surprised at first, shocked even. But they didn't congratulate him; they didn't even tell him he did a good job. All they did was tell him the Armada would be there soon and for him not to mess anything up before they get there. He soon realized that the Tallest would get all the glory anyway. When an invader readies a planet for invasion they get mentioned, but the Tallest end up getting all the credit.
He didn't even get pleasure from rubbing his success in the Dib's face. He'd chosen Dib as one of the humans allowed to live and be used for experiments. Zim would visit his cell just to taunt him, but Dib never fought back. All he did was stare at the wall across from him. Once, when Zim yelled at the human for ignoring him, Dib sighed and mumbled something about building a stone house on the sand. What he'd meant by that Zim never figured out.
He was sent back to this planet. The Tallest said they wanted him to stay there for a while and make sure nothing goes wrong. Zim didn't understand how he could do that from Earth, or why he had to if the entire planet was almost completely in flames. He'd tried to use his PAK to contact the Tallest and ask how long he had to stay there, but he discovered his PAK disabled.
The ships had left a while ago, and Zim had realized that they weren't coming back. They destroyed the planet and left him there to die.
It was almost funny in a sick way. He'd thought he was on some great mission that would show how amazing he is, that would give him glory, but really it didn't mean anything in the end.
He had nothing. He was nothing. He'd built his entire life upon a lie and all he had to show for it was nothing.
Aren't I glorious?
If any one gets what Dib meant with that 'stone house on the sand' thing, you get free cookies for a year. But not from me.