Again, I'd like to thank my beta readers for looking this over and keeping me from looking foolish. And since I know people have been waiting for a while, I'll skip the rest of the intro and just get on to the story.
The Things Between Us
Chapter Nine: Hejira
It was quiet on the outside - Dib noticed it before he was even aware of the physical sensations. His eyes opened into slits and he suspected for a moment that he hadn't opened them at all. Either that or he was blind. Then he knew better, faint illumination rising from some unknown location and making it possible to see his surroundings. Zim's underground base. The memories were not long coming afterwards, though telling reality from the confusing images that had barraged him when he was unconscious was not a simple matter. Movement caught his attention and he had to squint in that direction, wondering why everything seemed so fuzzy.
A blur of green came into his line of vision, obscuring the rest of his admittedly limited view. Even before the alien spoke, he knew it was Zim and remembered flashes of something that seemed like a particularly vivid dream. The clearest thing in the memory was Gaz - his little sister - standing supreme above all. It made his insides hurt to think of it. He didn't want to believe that it was anything more than a nightmare brought about by his overactive imagination, yet he dared not disbelieve it. Still, things seemed to be as he remembered, except for the pain that had not lessened with the banishing of all the mental images. He looked down even as the alien addressed him.
"You're finally awake, earth stink." The former invader sounded oddly shaken and Dib wondered at the reason behind it. How long had he been unconscious? His hand crept up as his gaze lowered and he felt the cold metal against his skin. Bare skin. He blinked, tried to focus, realizing that his shirt had been torn rather badly.
"What...?" His fingers slid over the smooth metal, trying to shove it aside and feeling an immediate and uncanny pull at his insides. Green fingers clamped over his own, Zim's hissing voice interrupting his growing sense of panic.
"Leave it alone, foolish human! Unless you want to see how you look with your insides on the outside!" Dib didn't protest as he loosened his grip, allowing Zim to pull his hands away. There was a moment of watchful silence between them, neither of them quite sure what to say. Slowly Zim loosened his hold on the human, and Dib wondered why he hadn't noticed that the alien was oddly warm to the touch and not cold as he'd imagined a space monster should be. His fingers trailed over the metal again, making no move to dislodge it this time.
It took him a few seconds to find his voice again, "What did you...?" A piece of metal jabbed into his chest should have been a matter of greater concern. But he wasn't bleeding to death and despite any prior words to the contrary, Zim didn't seem to be trying to kill him. He could almost imagine that the alien was worried about his health, but there was no reason this should be the case.
"Stupid." Zim spat out the word like it was the foulest of curses, "You humans are far inferior to me - I am ZIM!" The alien was glaring at him, he could tell because there was a faint gleam of reflected light on the narrowed magenta eyes. He met the former Invader's eyes with a quiet solemnity. The time when Zim could have intimidated him in such a manner was long past. After only a few seconds of Dib's steady gaze the Irken relented, averting his reddish orbs. "Whoever designed you stink worms did a lousy job! You break too easily!"
Dib's lips twitched in the semblance of a smile, "Nature designed us, Zim."
"Then this 'Nature' is obviously in need of some better blueprints!" The alien raised a silencing hand before the human could interrupt him. "Irkens don't stop functioning if something happens to their organs." Yes. Dib thought he remembered a few examples of that trait before - he'd envied it for quite a while. The further implication of those words struck him but he waited for the alien to finish speaking. For some reason, Zim seemed oddly reticent to add more.
"Zim?" He finally interjected, his voice barely audible, even in the stark silence. He was only just now noticing that his throat hurt - yet another ache to add to the rapidly growing list. Broken wrist? Check. Cuts and bruises? Yup, all there. Borderline hypothermia and numbness below the knees? Amazingly enough, these symptoms had actually improved. And then there was the metal protruding from his chest. The alien wasn't trying to kill him, or else he was doing a lousy job of it - so what was going on?
The former Invader seemed reluctant to answer, or even to meet his gaze, although if Dib was reading his former nemesis right then what he was seeing was more embarrassment than an effort to be evasive. Apparently he wouldn't be getting many helpful answers there.
No sooner had he come to that conclusion than Zim finally spoke again, the anger gone from his tone as if it had never existed. He just sounded tired. Dib could definitely sympathize with that sentiment. He felt like he was going to collapse, waves of dizziness washing over him at random intervals and increasingly he was feeling the urge to just lay his head down and sleep. Only the awareness of Zim's presence was serving to keep him mostly alert. "I thought you were dead, Dib-monkey," Zim began dully, "I thought I'd finally succeeded and you'd never bother me again."
Dib felt the urge to bristle and barely stifled it - if Zim wanted him dead, he highly doubted he would still be drawing breath now. Instead he squinted in Zim's direction, wishing his vision would improve so he could read the alien's expression. "I thought I was dead too. For a while there I think I... maybe I was. I don't know." It was entirely too confusing - images and dreams. Was it a dream? He might never know the answer and that bothered him more than everything else. He didn't think he could ever rest easy... not knowing.
His words didn't serve to reassure Zim at all, if reassurance was what he was seeking. The alien's antennae went back, laid flat against his head. "You're not helping, earth stink! Stop interrupting Zim!" Dib took the somewhat less than subtle hint and remained silent until the Irken felt compelled to continue. "You hadn't finished yet. That would have been so stupid. I couldn't let you die."
"Finished what?" The human wasn't sure he understood whatever Zim's train of thought might be. If anything, he was more confused now and beginning to feel a dull throbbing in his temples that heralded an impending headache.
The former invader was silent for a moment or two. "Finished rescuing me." Zim raised his head, meeting Dib's amber gaze. There was embarrassment evident on his face, in the way that he held himself perfectly straight. "That is what you were doing?" He seemed desperate for Dib to agree and the human knew that he had only to say 'no' - to lie - and that hopeful expression would vanish. And he couldn't have done that, not after every thing he'd gone through to get this far.
"Yeah. I guess I was." Dib's lips twisted in a smile and even in the dark he thought that maybe Zim saw it. One antenna flicked, just the barest rise and fall of the alien appendage that he liked to believe was acknowledgement. "I wouldn't say I was doing to well at it though," He admitted softly.
"I'm alive." Zim didn't say more, but the human had the inkling that he was more surprised than anything. Maybe it was just too much for him to absorb all at once - after so long a captive waiting for only the possibility of death to offer him some release. Yet here he was now, not only alive but free. What that must be like, Dib couldn't help but wonder for a moment, then he thought that he might indeed know.
It was gratifying and wonderful - not to mention a little bit scary. He wasn't sure he was quite ready to deal with all the implications that came with his newfound freedom, so he did his best to shove it aside for the moment. There were still other things that were more important, or at least more immediate. Here in the dark, Zim's base didn't seem like the haven he'd expected it to be. Dib was starting to feel the prickling of unease that meant danger was approaching, although he wasn't certain what - not yet. "Is your computer going to try and kill us again if we turn it on?" His voice was low, even though he knew there was little chance of them being heard down here and even less chance that anyone would care enough to listen anyway.
"Probably," The alien was quiet as well, but to Dib his lack of volume seemed more due to the fact that he was tired and nearing the end of his strength than because he feared someone would discover them. "The computer is hooked up to all of the base systems. I can't even replace the computer's control brain without turning it back on."
"We can't
stay here forever, Zim." Dib was feeling it again, the unease, and
as more than a prickle now. It was a distinct pang and it sent a
shudder through him. "I'm not even certain we can stay here for
too much longer." Gaz knew where this place was, the niggling
feeling reminded him. Gaz did, and Membrane did as well. It wouldn't
be a safe place for them. He tried to get to his feet and felt the
pull of the metal still embedded in his chest. "Damn it." It was
proving to be a nuisance and he wasn't sure just to go about
removing it. Maybe you can't? Wouldn't that be a
laugh? Yeah... just hilarious.
It wasn't really a comfortable sensation as the thing slid out of his body - it was just an unpleasant watery sort of feeling, only punctuated by the occasional brush of a rare protrusion or bulge against his ribcage. Those resulted in a grinding that went straight through all the bones in his body. It felt like it took forever, but given the actual length of the metal tubing it had likely only been a few minutes. Dib raised one hand to his chest, almost afraid of what his exploring fingers might discover. What they found was a small circular wound, about the size of a bottle cap. Funny, it had felt a lot larger before. He didn't dare go so far as to try sliding his fingertip inside of the open hole, deciding to leave it be. As much as he didn't particularly want to, he found himself addressing Zim in a far more reasonable tone. "Um... thanks."
Zim barely seemed to hear him. The alien's attention had been diverted by something else. For a moment, Dib felt a spike of annoyance at being so casually dismissed, but it passed quickly. Even in the greenish light emitted by the orb, it was possible to make out the worry in the alien's expression. Zim's lips were pulled back, baring his teeth in a grimace and his hunched stance - head ducked and back arched - screamed feral animal. Dib felt himself tensing, it was difficult not to. The alien's reactions only mirrored the apprehension he'd been feeling in the dark and the quiet. "What is it?" His own voice rang hollowly and both of them flinched at the sound of it.
"Something is going on above." Zim hissed back softly. "Can't you hear it, Dib-monkey?" Dib almost shot back that he didn't have supernaturally enhanced alien hearing before he realized that he could hear something. It was a raspy scraping that reverberated among the metal piping like a nail file being rubbed against a steel girder. His hackles raised - now that he'd heard the noise, he couldn't un-hear it.
"What is that?" His gaze was locked on the darkness above them, up where the base's ceiling ought to be.
"The sound is vibrating down through the metal," Zim glowered as he spoke. Dib didn't need any further explanation, it was fairly easy to figure out what Zim was getting at and what the implications were. Besides, he could aptly remember having suggested something alone those lines back when he'd been chasing Zim. Digging the base out - it was an easy way of avoiding the base's security net. Of course, with the computer off, there was no real threat of setting off the defenses, but how would an outsider know that? As so the two of them were trapped down here waiting to be dug out of the ground... it seemed he'd only delayed the inevitable after all.
Instead of the despair that should have come with such a realization, Dib felt cold determination welling up instead. The last barrier had broken and he felt briefly giddy - full of defiance against the world and the government and yes, even his own family. He would be free of them - he would finish what he'd come to do - or he would die trying. But he most certainly would not simply lie down and give up without a fight. He'd made his last compromise.
"Zim." The sound of his own voice was foreign to him, as was the unfamiliar pull of a smile that was lingering perilously close to being a grin. "There's another way out right?" He was making assumptions and Zim was staring at him as though he was completely insane - neither of those things mattered. All that mattered was that there was another way and Zim was going to tell it to him. No other outcome would be tolerated.
"What nonsense are you considering, earth-stink?" Zim was trying to sound angry but Dib could read him entirely too well. The alien was afraid, but he was also a bit hopeful. Having come this far, it seemed too much a letdown for this to be the end. "All the entrances to the base are in my house." A pause. "Except for the teleporter, but my space station was destroyed. And it wouldn't work anyway - the base has no power."
Something still niggled, a gnawing sense of having missed something obvious as he'd done when he'd refused to consider Zim's base in his earlier calculations. Currently he and Zim were roughly at the center of Zim's underground base - the computer core. There were still many passages leading to other areas of the base. They could presumably retreat further underground and stave off their pursuers for a little longer still.
"No..." He gasped, finding that piece he'd been missing, "We need to go up."
The alien peered at him in disbelief. "Up?" He blinked several times, the motion so swift it was almost a blur. "Have you lost your wits, earth filth? Or have you just forgotten that there are a lot of other stinky humans up there trying to capture us?" Zim's tone was a little accusatory and laden with disgust. "Why not surrender if you're planning to make it so easy for them?"
Dib ignored the jibes, raising his good hand to grip at the control panel and steady himself. Whatever Zim had done to heal him, it hadn't fixed his broken wrist or any of the numerous aches and pains running through him. Still, he didn't suppose he was in the best position to complain, especially not to the alien who'd spent several years being cut open and experimented on.
Getting to his feet was a struggle, his legs were like rubber and they felt oddly disconnected from the rest of his body. His bracing arm trembled as he pushed himself upright through stubborn determination. He could feel the alien's incredulous gaze on him and ignored it. There was no time left to be uncertain - no time for asking questions or to try explaining it all. Surely Zim could understand that much?
"Trust me." And he knew he was asking a lot, it was going against nature and convention to assume that trust could be as easy as those two little words. But who else was there to trust now, to ask trust from, if not this unpredictable, unfathomable creature? Dib had made his peace with his father and knew he never would with his sister. He wasn't planning to let the government or anyone else bring him down without a fight - they would not so easily take what he'd struggled and worked to build. No, he would not fold and let them have it - not now, not ever again.
"You're crazy." Zim's words were shaky but he wasn't trying to protest. His instinct for self preservation had to be at least as strong as a human's, perhaps even stronger. The alien was standing before Dib could ask it of him, although his motions were stiff, a little hesitant.
Dib had been called worse by more people than he could count, and from Zim the words were more laughable than anything. "Yeah. I probably am. Come on." He was in motion again, limping towards the lift they'd used to get down into the base. With the power off it wouldn't be working but that but that was not much of a deterrent to him. He moved into the lift and looked up, surveying the metal above his head with a critical eye. He knew how normal elevators worked, but for some reason he'd never considered the lifts in the same way. He wanted to kick himself for the lack of attentiveness now. Still, as he saw the hatch on the ceiling of the lift, he couldn't help a sigh of relief. It would have been painfully ironic for them to become trapped when they'd come here seeking escape.
He reached up his good hand and pushed against the panel, straining for a moment before he felt it give, swinging up and away with a piercing metallic squeal. The space above was now devoid of even what meager light remained in the control room. "Zim, can you pass me the orb?" He didn't say please, but he didn't have to. There was a sound of scuffling, then the lift was illuminated by the greenish light of the blowing orb. Dib reached out his hand for it and felt something else pressed into his fingers instead - smooth and cold and very oddly shaped. It took him a few puzzled seconds to realize that Zim had just handed him his glasses.
In the dark he hadn't noticed the inability to see his surroundings properly, it had been perfectly reasonable to not see. Now that he knew what he'd been missing it was almost a blow. He needed his glasses. As soon as he put them back on and things wavered into focus, he felt a great deal better. They were a security blanket that he hadn't even realized existed. "Thanks." He held out his hand again and this time the slight cool weight of the orb settled onto his palm. He raised it into the open hatch, some part of him half-expecting something to pounce out of the dark at them. Too many years of scientific work had dulled his childhood fearlessness but nothing came snarling down when he peered up through the opening.
The lift shaft was wide and stretched upward at a very slight angle, the walls consisting of smooth metal and sections of wire tangle. It would be hard to climb if it came to that and Dib knew already that it would - no base power meant no lift, and that meant no way to the upper portions of the base save this method. Surveying the opposite side of the shaft turned up more promising results - the metal there had protrusions at regular intervals, not tremendously large, but undoubtedly handholds. Perhaps they were actually holds for Zim's spiderlegs, given the distance between each section. Either way he could use them. "The lift is down so we'll just have to climb." His sore body protested the thought but he wouldn't allow that to deter him.
"You expect me to try and climb, Dib-monkey?" The alien's protest wasn't entirely unexpected either, but it was disappointing. Dib eased down to one knee, putting himself about at Zim's eye level. His gaze was frank and unwavering and the alien shut up immediately, staring back at him.
"All you have to do is hold on." He said, handing the orb back to the surprised alien. If Zim planned to counter the comment somehow. Dib wasn't giving him the opportunity. He slid his good arm beneath the Irken and lifted him. Zim hissed in undignified protest as he was picked up and unceremoniously shoved through the hatch. As soon as Zim was deposited on the roof of the lift, Dib steeled himself with a deep breath and leaped.
His jump wasn't as high as he would have liked. His entire upper body was propelled into the opening and he had to grab wildly to keep from falling back into the inactive lift. A new surge of pain tore through his broken wrist and he could feel a deep throbbing just below his ribs where the lip of the hatch was digging into his diaphragm. He tried to kick his legs and brace them against the lift wall to push himself up into the shaft but the angle was entirely wrong for the maneuver and only served to drive the metal more sharply against his midsection. His fingers scrabbled against the metal as he felt himself slipping, his tenuous grip threatening to give way entirely and send him tumbling back down to the floor of the lift.
Small green hands caught at his arm - clawed fingers sliding along his injured wrist for a moment and sending dizzying flares of pain up his arm. Still, the alien's grasp was surprisingly strong and left his good arm free. Dib grasped gingerly at a tangle of metal cables nearby and winced as he felt them shift. When they didn't give, even after a sharp tug at them, he painstakingly began to pull himself up, gritting his teeth at the effort the move required. Once he got his belly onto the roof of the lift the balance of weight was shifted and climbing the rest of the way was simplicity itself. He stretched out for a moment, struggling for breath and doing his level best to contain the sudden bout of nausea that had surged up due to all the pressure on his gut. As Zim finally relinquished the grip on his arm, he sat up and managed a sickly smile. "Piece of cake."
From the expression on the alien's face, Zim was obviously missing the fact that he'd been attempting to make a joke. "I don't see what your disgusting earth food has to do with -" There must have been something in his expression because the alien paused, ran his tongue over his lips in what appeared to be a nervous gesture, and just finished with a soft, "oh."
Dib surveyed the shaft quickly before easing from his sitting position into a wobbly crouch. "I hope you're as good at hanging on as you are at coming up with stupid plans." There was no heat in his voice at all and Zim only tensed for a moment before letting the remark pass. The alien eased up behind the kneeling human, hands clawing briefly at the smooth fabric of the trench coat before getting a firm grasp. Despite the fact that this was entirely his own plan, he couldn't help a stab of wariness as he felt arms encircle his neck and the extraterrestrial's slight weight drape across his back. It seemed to Dib that Zim was kicking at his sides oddly for a moment before he understood what the alien was up to. The fabric of his coat pulled taut - apparently Zim had found footholds, the pockets of the black trench coat. The human couldn't help but find that reassuring in two different ways. It lessened both the likelihood of Zim falling and relieved the tightness of the alien's grasp around his neck at the same time.
As soon as Zim seemed to be settled, Dib carefully picked up the glowing orb and held it within the alien's reach. "Can you hold it?" If he couldn't then they were in for a long, dark climb... not something that Dib was particularly looking forward to. Zim took it wordlessly, grasping it in one hand. This meant the illumination was coming from a spot right about level with Dib's ear, but this was hardly the time and place to be complaining about such niggling details.
Steeling himself mentally, Dib grasped hold of the nearest metal outcropping and began to climb. It was tricky work - not as difficult as trying to maneuver himself onto the ledge had been, but still a challenge. His broken wrist had to be favored a great deal as he ascended the lift shaft, but after a few painful slips, he soon realized that he could simply hook his injured arm on the metal protrusions and use it to brace himself as he made his way upward. It would have been so easy to set his mind to automatic during this process - it was quite tempting really because the work required no thought, just the same motions over and over.
There lay the danger, of course. One faulty grip or misstep and there might not be any need for the government to capture them. Dib had only to spare the barest glance downward to know that they were dangerously far from the bottom of the lift already. The exact distance wasn't something he could even begin to gauge - the light that Zim was still holding only penetrated the blackness of the lift for a very limited distance around the two of them. The base below had been swallowed up in shadows already - there was nowhere to go but up.
It was easier said than done. Somehow the enormity of the task had never crossed his mind. The lift had made the descent from the house to the base in a very short time, but there was no doubt that the distance was rather substantial by human standards and going down was always an easier process than going up. His arms were starting to ache a little - this time from sheer weariness and he was tempted to pause and try to catch his breath. Something inside told him that it wasn't a good idea. The tension in the air had grown thicker and he wasn't certain quite why until he felt Zim shifting nervously on his back. The sound of digging was louder now, but Dib wasn't sure if that was because he was closer to the surface or because the diggers were nearer to reaching the base below. He noted with faint interest that the sounds seemed to be coming from below him now.
The tunnel was beginning to slope even further gradually - it was no longer really vertical. He could only be silently grateful that the angle was to his advantage - tilting forward instead of backward. He wouldn't have been able to continue if it meant having to hang from the top of a shaft that was becoming almost horizontal. Instead he was rapidly approaching the point where he might actually be able to stand and walk across the slight incline. Still, there was always the chance that it might head back in the other direction eventually and that if that was the case, it would prove to be more than a little problematic.
He was more than half expecting things to be difficult - it was how his luck tended to run after all. So when the tunnel abruptly hit up against a sharp vertical wall, he could only stare at it in a mixture of incomprehension and disbelief. One of Zim's claws yanking at his hair tore him out of his stunned silence. "Ow! What-" He whipped his head around to glare over his shoulder at the alien and saw the frustrated upward gesture that Zim was making in his direction. He blinked and glanced up noticing the ceiling of the shaft only a few feet above his head.
They'd made it. Dib slumped in relief for a moment, pressing his cheek to the cool metal of the sloping tunnel and allowing himself a brief moment of relief. Zim wouldn't give him any longer than that - claws began tugging at the collar of Dib's coat with near-frantic impatience. "This is no time to sleep Dib-human!" The alien hissed in his ear. "Or was that actually your plan?"
"Of course not." Dib tried to lever himself into a better position for pushing at the hatch above them. His limbs felt as wobbly as overcooked noodles, but he managed to get himself turned around so his back was almost pressed to the metal wall at the end of the tunnel. Carefully he stood, fully aware that the floor was still slanted precariously - the dark well of the shaft behind them was oddly fitting. His good hand pushed upward against the hatch and he strained, trying to budge it. Somehow he hadn't expected it to be so heavy. Logic corrected this assumption quickly - there was a couch on top of this entrance. The slight shift of the panel on his next upward push was a real surprise but the screech of the couch sliding was really what made his heart leap into his throat. That might have been audible even outside of the alien's house! He froze in fearful anticipation.
"What are you doing?" The alien on his back snarled faintly, striking him on the temple with one flailing hand. Dib felt stars exploding behind his eyes and clawed at the ceiling for a moment as his balance wobbled. As soon as he'd regained his equilibrium he turned his head and glowered as best he could in Zim's direction.
"What the hell was that for?" He growled back, still feeling a throbbing ache where the alien had struck him.
Zim didn't seem particularly nonplussed by the look aimed toward him. His tone was remarkably cold and matter of fact as he addressed the sore human. "You should be grateful stink-beast!" The audacity of this was not lost on Dib but he wasn't allowed to interject - Zim was continuing and once he was talking it was horrendously difficult to get a word in edgewise. "Foolish earth monkey - you can't expect Zim to leave these matters in your hands. After all, you would just mess things up the way you always do." The alien's voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone, "Isn't that why the other human's don't want you, Dib," And the emphasis on his name was almost an insult in itself, "-you're a failure at everything and they all know it."
The alien couldn't have picked a better weak point to lash out at if he'd tried - he'd managed to strike a deep blow with those words. The colour bled right out of Dib's face, his amber eyes widening in shock and disbelief. He hadn't expected to hear that coming from Zim, especially after all they'd gone through. Still, it was little more than an echo of his own thoughts and suspicions given voice by the one person he could not afford to ignore.
For a moment the temptation to toss the alien back down the shaft swelled in him - threatening to overwhelm his good reason. It was only the fact that such an action would have proven those naysayers right that kept him from ending his mission right there and then. Being weak and tired was not automatically a reason for failure. Being injured and afraid wasn't either. It was giving in to those things that would prove his undoing if he let it. He had no intention of doing so: not now, not ever. Anger surged through him and it swept away the tiredness and the fear of falling. Zim squealed in alarm as Dib braced both hands against the hatch and pushed upward with abrupt force. His balance hung on a knife's edge for a few seconds and then he felt it give. The hatch raised, caught for a moment and then there was an odd skittering-bumping noise - the sound of a heavy piece of furniture sliding down a now sloping floor. The weight on the hatch eased up considerably when the couch could go no further.
Clambering out from beneath the hatch was not even close to a dignified process. He struggled and kicked as he tried to lever himself into the house. Sheer determination won out over the minor problems of angle and added weight and Dib pulled himself out onto the tiled floor. Thankfully, the adrenaline coursing through his body was blocking out most of the pain, otherwise it might have been too much to ignore. Getting up onto his knees, he glanced over his shoulder at the alien. Zim looked somewhat shaken, but also relieved. All that mattered was that he could answer Dib's questions though. "How do we get above, Zim?" His voice had a bit of a sharp edge to it, he knew, the remnants of anger - both at Zim and numerous others - were not so swiftly forgotten.
"Eh?" Magenta eyes peered back at the human quizzically - the uncomprehending expression on Zim's face was oddly comical.
"The ship, Zim! How do you get to the ship?" Dib knew the alien kept it on a landing pad between the ceiling and the sloping roof - what would have been the attic in a real house. He also knew that the ship could function independent of the base computer, although not whether it was actually connected in any way. What he'd never been able to figure out though was precisely how the alien managed to access the ship. There were no obvious ways to get into the launch area - at least none that he'd ever been able to figure out. Zim would know though. He had to.
"Oh." Zim blinked several times and Dib realized that the alien really hadn't understood his goal until this point. But he'd gone along and hadn't put up much of a fuss, really. Not even when he must have been thinking the human was out of his mind... it seemed that trust was not so difficult a thing to grant after all. That was something, wasn't it? "There's a lift that comes down and sucks you up into the room." Dib had a pretty good idea of what he meant by that, although he would hardly have referred to such a contraption as a lift. It was more like one of those suction tubes that they used at the dentist's office and it sounded almost as unappealing.
Besides, with the power off, there would be no access to a lift or suction tube or whatever anyway. "Is there any other way?"
A long silence stretched out and Dib braced himself for the inevitable 'no' that would mean he'd have to come up with a plan himself. "Maybe there is, Dib-human... Maybe there is." The alien flashed him a toothy grin before snapping out an order. "Into the kitchen feeble Dib-thing! The incredible brain meats of Zim will get us off of this ball of dirt!" He sounded so much like the Zim of Dib's childhood memories that the human wanted to laugh with something akin to delight. Dib almost ran into the adjoining room - a speed born of something that had nothing to do with fear. Perhaps it was eagerness or even relief.
Or maybe he was just as happy as Zim was at the prospect of being away from this place. The promise of freedom spurred him on. Zim was almost as enthusiastic, as if it had taken all of this to really drive the point home. They could actually make it.
"We need to get to a high point." Zim told him and immediately the fridge was the answer. Dib almost stepped into the bowl of the toilet as he climbed up, luckily there was no water in it. He wouldn't fit atop the refrigerator himself, but with some careful maneuvering on his part and some scrambling on Zim's they managed to get Zim seated atop the large appliance. There was nothing for him to do but watch and wait. The little green alien had a determined expression on his face as he surveyed the ceiling that was within arms reach of him. He closed his eyes and bared his teeth in a slight grimace. Dib didn't understand until he heard the uneven whirring from the pak on Zim's back. the sound was rather alarming - reminding Dib uncomfortably of jammed gears grinding against each other before the top compartment of the pak opened and a length of metal emerged from within. If Dib had been asked to identify it, he would have said it was a truncated version of one of Zim's spider legs. Whatever its usual purpose, Zim was using it like an old fashioned can opener - tearing into the ceiling with it.
Bits of debris were raining down on them - they stood out starkly against the inky black of Dib's coat like a scattering of stars in a moonless night sky. Larger fragments hit the floor with solid thuds. Neither human nor alien paid the mess any mind, all of their attention was focused on Zim's task. At first the hole was merely a long ragged gash, like a wound in the plaster that gradually widened into a ragged hole. The ceiling now looked as though giant rats had been chewing through it.
Dib could hear rumbling noises now, vibrating up through the floor. Outside the faint sound of sirens was slowly becoming audible. Time was short - either Gaz had called the authorities on him or else his father had. He suspected it wasn't the latter, giving his father that much credit, at least. Who had done it wasn't the important thing though, the sounds sent his heart racing frantically. He tried to gauge the size of the hole from where he stood and he calculated that it would be large enough. If it wasn't, then they were in trouble. "Zim-" But he didn't need to say more, the alien was listening now as well, his antennae flicking before flattening tightly against his head. "It'll have to be now," Dib said urgently, and the alien nodded in reply.
Zim stood, holding the small orb in one hand - the greenish light reflected off his skin and illuminating his magenta eyes with a startlingly red gleam. He looked more alien in that moment than Dib had ever seen him before.
Yes... Dib could understand now how he could have seen Zim as frightening when he'd been young. Still, in the light he could also see the wounds that had been inflicted upon the alien during his captivity - some of the injuries were still open and bleeding slowly. The human couldn't help but feel a sympathetic tingle of pain - like the memory of scars long since healed over and mostly forgotten. With the sensation came a lump of unease that settled itself somewhere in the pit of his belly and refused to be dislodged. The sudden familiarity - the odd sense of connection - seemed too strong to be merely coincidence, or even the product of their years of the chase and the struggle. All he could think was that Zim had done something to him when he'd died or almost died. Humans were not meant to be connected into freaky alien technology.
He took the orb from Zim wordlessly, his voice had somehow taken the opportunity to flee and could not be found by any conventional means. The alien got to his feet, now standing with his upper body disappearing into the hole. It was an easy fit for the small being, with ample room for him to move. A moment of hesitation and then Zim was disappearing into the dark and could not be seen.
It was Dib's turn next. He put one knee on the toilet tank then the other, resting his elbows on the top of the fridge. There was barely any room for his upper body as he shifted, but the hole was almost directly above the area his head and torso now occupied. As he carefully got to his feet, he eased his head into the hole. Darkness enveloped his sight, his chest serving to block off the light from the orb he held. His hand entered the hole, then his other hand, illuminating the room. As he pulled his right knee onto the top of the fridge, he felt a tremor shake the floor beneath him, this one longer and stronger than the brief trembling he'd felt earlier. The shaking came only moments before the horrendous squeal of protesting metal shuddered upward from deep below. There could be no doubt what that noise signified - the government had breached the underground base! The house would be next.
Dib didn't freeze this time - he shifted his weight and pulled his other leg up onto the fridge. As soon as he had the leverage, he stood. It was a tighter fit for the human than it had been for the alien - but his shoulders slipped through the hole and the rest of his skinny frame wasn't likely to have any problem following suit. Even better, since the hole was only two feet or so above the top of the fridge, no further climbing was necessary. He stepped up into the chamber and felt vaguely uneasy when he couldn't immediately see Zim. What he did see was the rounded front end of the alien's ship, almost within touching distance.
It was just as he remembered it and that was something of a relief. Hell, just seeing the ship was a relief, subconsciously he'd been expecting it to not even be there. "Zim?" He stepped forward, raising the orb in an attempt to illuminate the rest of the room. Motion caught his eye and he turned his head quickly - feeling a brief moment of superstitious fear. He whipped his head back around when he heard an odd hiss, his heartbeat racing. What he saw was the top of the Voot opening, dismissing the last of his fears about the plausibility of this escape plan. He was, however, a bit surprised by how small the cockpit was - it had certainly seemed larger in his last memories of it. There was still no sign of Zim either. "Where are y-" He didn't finish his question, his words cutting off as he heard a scuttling sound from behind him and then something shiny and metallic lashed out and knocked the orb from his hand.
The light level dropped as soon as the orb rolled beneath the body of the Voot. It didn't mean that Dib couldn't see Zim once he'd stumbled and turned around. The little green alien was staring up at him through narrowed eyes and somehow he'd found himself a firearm. It was probably stored inside the ship, Dib thought, taking a step back and bumping into the Voot behind him. It was the fact that Zim was aiming it at his chest that both alarmed and confused him.
Zim had saved his life back in the underground base - something he'd most definitely been under no obligation to do. It was hard to reconcile that act with this new threat he was facing. It seemed to be completely out of the blue, but his analytical mind insisted on trying to find a way to reconcile it. When Zim had saved his life earlier, their chances for escape had looked to be very slim indeed. Dib had managed to come up with a plan despite the odds against it, but now that they had succeeded and freedom was within their grasp, Zim didn't need Dib any longer. They were enemies, weren't they? You didn't rescue your enemies.
But the alien's words had nothing to do with any of that. "How did you do it, earth stink?" There was frustration in Zim's voice - frustration and distress, even a hint of something that could have been fear. Dib knew it wasn't the fear of being captured again - the likelihood of the government taking the alien alive was slim to none. If it came down to that, Zim would fight them until they were forced to kill him. There would be no more of the experiments and the painful tests. No... that was only the least of his fears. Everything about his stance and expression told the truth of the matter. He was afraid of Dib.
"How did I do wh-" His amber eyes widened and there was no need to ask the question because he already knew the answer. And Zim had obviously expected him to.
It all went back to the same point - he'd died, or else had come so close that the distinction was extremely muddled. He would have been dead. And Zim - Zim had...
Copying Cerebral data - 46 complete
His head was spinning as he tried to remember what exactly had happened - he remembered a confusing sequence of images, misty and disjointed. The end of the world. He remembered being dead. But he also remembered the struggle to save his life, the moment of panic that had swept over him as he looked down at himself and knew that he was dead. It couldn't have happened both ways, his mind screamed at him, and he stared down at the menacing alien with blank confusion etched on his face. It couldn't, it hadn't...
Those weren't his memories, he realized in a flash of clarity, he was remembering what Zim had done. It was as if the memories were his own.
Repairs completed - data transfer in progress
Some part of him was painfully aware of the ever louder noises from below and their eminent danger. He just couldn't bring himself to give a damn about it. How, indeed? Zim had done this and had to know where the blame lay but that was no comfort now. Even the weapon aimed at his chest seemed an afterthought - Zim couldn't kill him, not so easily. "You did this." The words escaped from him without any conscious thought on his part and they held the same frustrated desperation and the same fear that he'd seen in Zim.
Zim had saved his life, yes, had hooked him into the pak to repair him just as he would have for another Irken. It had been a dangerous, desperate maneuver and the odds of success had been virtually impossible to calculate. No one had ever done such a thing before. The pak had summarily treated him like one of Zim's own species - making a copy of his data for backup purposes. A copy of his brain, in essence, with all the memories, thoughts and feelings that added together into his unique personality. It stirred a vague memory of another time when he'd been through a similar experience - when his personality had been downloaded into Tak's ship. When the repairs had been completed, the pak would supposedly have transferred the saved information back and deleted it from the pak's data storage. That was where things had messed up, he speculated. That had to be the point where it had all gone to hell. Somehow the save had been corrupted, or it hadn't deleted or one of any number of things that could have gone wrong with this process. No wonder he could understand the alien's oddities better! It was a disturbing thought on too many levels to list.
If things were bad for him though, how much worse must they have been for the alien? He stared down at Zim, saw the uncertainty of Zim's stance and how the gun wavered in his grasp. The sounds from below had become easily discernable, banging and yelling voices. He would have to risk it.
Even so, the levelness and the calm in his own voice surprised him. "We don't have time for this, Zim," He was saying, putting aside the other feelings for the time being. Sorting them out could come later - if there was a later. "Either shoot me or let me get in the ship. They'll be here for us any moment." Zim's antennae flattened back sharply and his finger jerked on the trigger. For a moment Dib thought that Zim really would shoot him, but he didn't flinch and the gun slowly lowered until it was pointed at the floor.
"Come on, then," Dib's voice was a little shaky as he turned back to the Voot, climbing inside with far less trouble than he'd anticipated. It was a tight fit, admittedly, but it was such a minor matter that it didn't merit complaining about. He expected Zim to follow suit immediately but the alien crept around the front of the Voot instead. When he climbed in from the other side, he was grasping their light tightly in one hand.
"We almost forgot it." It was all Zim would say on the matter and Dib didn't feel the need to question him about it.
The controls were confusing to Dib - the last ship he'd piloted had been Tak's, a different type of ship altogether, and that had been nearly a decade ago. Zim was having no such problems. He could not shove Dib aside, and had to make due with perching on the edge of the human's lap as he ran his claw-like fingers over the controls. The panels lit up as he touched them and the dome came down, clicking into place as Zim frantically messed with the controls. "This is it, Dib-monkey. You'd better cross your feeble human limbs and hope that my piloting is as superior as it used to be."
Dib hastily clutched at the edges of the pilot's seat, ignoring the pain the sudden action caused him. "I hope it's better than I remember it being!" He hadn't really planned to say that, the words had just popped out before he could think about them. Sure enough, the alien cast him a nasty glance, teeth bared slightly. The loud crash from below was enough deterrent to prevent him from responding, instead he slammed one hand down on the panel and the ship lurched sickeningly, its boosters thrusting once, sputtering and then flaring to life. There was only a brief moment for Dib to remember that the roof wouldn't open without power either and then the Voot surged upward.
The ceiling of the house exploded around them into thousands of fragments, briefly obscuring their vision in a cloud of sawdust and wood fragments. It did nothing to their hearing however - numerous shouts and the sharp crack of handguns being fired greeted their emergence. As soon as the debris cleared, Dib could see the scene below. A ring of cop cars formed a half circle in front of Zim's house and some distance down the street the pavement was torn up in chunks and the ground beneath it sported a gaping, dark hole. These things were expected, to Dib at least. Zim stared down at this scene with an agitated expression on his face. He did exactly what Dib would have tried to avoid, swooping down and causing the police officers to scatter and duck behind their vehicles. "Get away from my base!"
"Zim!" Dib yelped in alarm, "Forget about the base! We need to get out of here!" He reached out himself and slammed his hand down on a random button on the controls. The Voot reversed course and jerked backwards, slamming them into the front of Zim's house. Human and alien were both slammed up against the front of the dome and remained there for a few seconds, stunned by the force of the impact.
The Irken recovered first, planting his foot against Dib's chest and shoving him back into the seat with more force than was strictly necessary. "What do you think you're doing stinkbeast?" The alien snarled, rounding on him furiously, "I thought you wanted to get off of this filthy planet alive! Keep your grubby human meat off of the controls!" The alien turned back to the front of the Voot and examined the panel quickly. While he was doing this, Dib was rubbing gingerly at the sore spot where Zim had kicked him and thinking, rather irritably, that the alien had no right to talk. After all, which of them had been the genius who'd insisted on driving the planet Mars through an asteroid belt? It certainly hadn't been him! He glared out of the clear sloping side of the dome and nearly choked as he saw a familiar face among the crowd of uniformed police officers.
Unfortunately for him, the amber eyes that were rarely seen due to a perpetual irritated squint were quite visible now and locked firmly onto him. He felt his stomach doing the down elevator routine and dropping rapidly into the vicinity of his boots. Forget waiting for Zim to figure the controls out again - he knew that expression all too well and he sensed that his immunity to the full effects of it had long since faded. He shoved Zim aside in his haste, slamming the little alien into the dome as he reached for the controls again. This time his intuition seemed to be working - either that or panic was extremely good for making him divine the meaning of the alien script. His hand came down on the forward thrusters.
The Voot plunged straight ahead without gaining altitude, bowling over the barely recovered policemen and rushing down the street like an unbridled horse. It was all Dib could do to keep the ship from crashing into any buildings or other large and immovable objects - getting it higher into the air seemed impossible. The shriek of sirens behind them was indication enough that at least some of the police had recovered their wits enough to give chase. Dib could see the flashing lights out of the corner of his eye and turned his head to look behind him and see if he could tell how many there were. When Zim's shrieking filled his ears, he turned back, just in time to see them whiz right through a red light. The sound of skidding tires and honking horns raised loudly in their wake.
At least the collisions at the intersection had effectively rid them of their unwanted pursuers... Dib was about to try making sense of the controls when something struck him on the side of the head and sent him reeling. By the time his vision cleared, Zim had retaken the controls and they were angling upward sharply. Dib groaned, feeling an insistent throbbing in his temples and an answering ache from his ribs and arm. Still, they were gaining altitude and that was hardly a matter for complaint. He slumped back into the chair, his eyes squeezing tightly shut as he tried to gain some measure of control over his flip-flopping stomach.
The sudden swerve that followed on the heels of this action did nothing to help his wavering grasp on his nausea. He was on the verge of protesting when he heard a loud explosion and felt the Voot shiver as something clipped it. His eyes flew wide and he sat up straight immediately. "What the-" Another explosion, and this time he saw as the object flew past them. "They're shooting at us!" As soon as he said it, he wanted to smack himself for his stunning ability to state the obvious. Apparently the police hadn't been the only ones called in when news of Zim's escape had gotten out - the tanks below were clearly military issue and so were the jets that were swarmed after them in hot pursuit. Gaz had arranged this somehow, he thought, but doubted he would ever know the details of it. "We need to get out of their range." His mind was racing. "The military doesn't have space capable vehicles yet." It had been true the last time he'd checked and he could only cross his fingers that the constraints of government funding that had long been his bane in childhood would now be working in his favour. He only hoped that his assurances hadn't been rendered lies by some odd chance that the politicians had gained some common sense in the last few years. "What are you doing, Zim? Go up!"
"Shut up!" Zim snapped back, "Your bleating is disrupting the incredible brain processes of ZIM! I knew what I'm doing, human, I've been flying spacecraft since before you were spawned!" Despite this, the alien seemed just as flustered as Dib felt - somehow he doubted that Zim had spent too much of that aforementioned time dodging enemy projectiles. But Zim was angling the Voot upwards again, gaining altitude rapidly. The jets behind them followed, speeding up as they pursued the alien ship doggedly. Zim's Voot wasn't as useful as a jet was in a planet's atmosphere, if Dib remembered the information he'd managed to hack from Zim's computer nine or ten years ago. The ship was much better for space travel than for planetary dogfights.
There was nothing Dib could do to improve their odds of getting through this in one piece, his only option was to cling and hope as Zim took the ship through its paces. It was a minor relief that the alien seemed at least minimally capable of driving the Voot in combat conditions. A couple of missiles arced past them at uncomfortably close quarters, but none of the attempts to shoot them down had managed to do more than strike glancing blows off of the hull. Dib also guessed that the general quality - or lack thereof - of military training might have been somewhat to blame.
The Voot arrowed through a wispy layer of clouds, the ground falling away beneath them until there was no way of making out the details of the city below. The ground had become an uneven patchwork of greens and browns spread out below but the jets - two of them, Dib could tell by looking out the dome - were still following in their wake tenaciously. It was rather amazing that the pilots were daring to follow still, they had to be very close to the maximum altitude the vehicles were capable of handling. Dib's eyes widened as he saw the two jets move into a formation, ready to try for what would undoubtedly be a final volley.
It would be all or nothing.
Dib tore his gaze away from the jets, away from the earth below, and fixed his sights on the vastness of space that was spreading out in front of him. Mumbled words passed his lips and he couldn't recall thinking about them. "I have fought the good fight..." He wasn't even religious, none of his family had been - unless one counted science as a religion as his father had been wont to do. He knew the words nonetheless, they echoed through his head.
I have finished the race...
In front of him, Zim was cursing in Irken and glaring down at the controls as though he could command the ship with just the force of his will. Tenseness was clear in every line of his small green form but while he was obviously being quickly pushed towards the limit of his tolerance, Dib was becoming almost relaxed. The stars were brighter than he could remember them being before, the thinning atmosphere no longer serving to distort them so much. He couldn't say he understood the feeling he was experiencing at the moment, though. It wasn't quite acceptance nor was it really confidence either.
Perhaps there was just a certain relief in knowing things would happen as they needed to. Sometimes struggling and determination were good - they could wrest victory from the most unlikely of circumstances. Sometimes. And sometimes you could only sit back and let it all unfold around you. There was nothing to do but... trust.
...I have kept the faith
Sometimes trust was a matter for great consideration and sometimes it wasn't. But in the end it all boiled down to one thing - it was about putting aside your uncertainties, closing your eyes and just letting go.
He was almost smiling as his dark amber eyes slipped shut - it was just a short time as he heard the sound of the missiles being launch and counted down the seconds in the strained silence of the cockpit. Even Zim had frozen, either from fear or the realization that things were out of his control. It seemed that they waited for an eternity, trapped in the moment of anticipation. Salvation or damnation - which would it be?
The missiles skimmed past, a bare miss, and immediately time kicked back into gear. Zim slumped over the control panel, suffering from extreme relief or maybe it was just that exhaustion had finally caught up to him. Dib's eyes opened slowly as he heard the sounds of the jets beginning to fade away in the distance. He'd calculated right after all, a fact that could not help but make him feel a certain distant contentment. Unless the government had been dabbling in military spacecraft, they had nothing left to fear from pursuit. Dib thought there had to be something amiss with him that he wasn't jubilated by this realization. It took a few moments for the enormity of it to sink in and when it did, he began to tremble alarmingly. The alien was addressing him but the words refused to penetrate his haze, even when Zim began to shout at him in a painfully hoarse tone. His surroundings dipped and surged crazily around him.
"Stay awake, human!" Zim was saying - he understood the words now, as he let himself sink back into the pilot's chair. Stay awake? Dib thought the request ridiculous, if not downright ludicrous. He needed to sleep - surely they were out of danger at long last and he could finally rest? He leaned his head back against the meager headrest and fixed his gaze on the perfect view unfolding before him. There were thousands of stars and countless worlds and creatures out there, just waiting for him to come across them. They could wait a little longer still, he thought fleetingly as his eyes slipped closed. The last waking thing he saw was the familiar constellations of his home planet burning their way into his retinas.
Dib slept. And for the first time in a long time, his dreams were untainted by fears and family and little green aliens...
-
Gaz stared upward, her expression one of something like disinterest as she surveyed the skies above. The other jets had already returned empty handed, leaving only the stubborn final two still after her brother. They were high above now, barely visible to the naked eye. Gaz raised her shoulders in a slight shrug - turning her attention to the white clad man who had just arrived at the scene. He came up alongside her, his gaze fixed on the sky where the first hints of daylight were starting to make themselves known. The horizon was touched with brilliant pink, but Gaz knew that the scientist was not merely admiring the pre-dawn colours.
"Hello, Dad." It wasn't quite a flinch that she saw him make at her words - he was too well schooled for that - but his lips did tighten into a long, narrow line. Gaz's own mouth quirked for a moment, almost a smile. The expression vanished as the two remaining jets swooped back down towards them, not heralded by the falling of fiery debris or anything similarly impressive. Membrane relaxed a little as they passed overhead, lowering his gaze to the alien's base, which was now looking a great deal worse for the wear. He said nothing, patiently waiting for his daughter to speak first.
She held her silence for a moment longer, knowing that he had to be wanting to get this over with. Well, that was just a dreadful shame, wasn't it? Her day had come and there was no way that she would allow him to regain the upper hand. No more vying for his attention with her pathetic brother or waiting for openings in his schedule. Gaz would be calling the shots now and it was well past time for her father to give her the affection she so rightly deserved. Maybe too far past time - hugs and kisses and bedtime stories really just weren't going to cut it anymore. But she could find something that would, she had no doubt of that. "I think you owe me." She said levelly.
"I think perhaps I do." Something about his tone aroused her ire a little and it took her a few seconds to realize what it was. He wasn't referring to the years of neglect that had led to this end. His gaze was still on the sky and his thoughts had to be on that tiny alien ship arrowing out into the universe. As always. As always... Her hands clenched into tight fists for a moment, nails digging half-moon shaped grooves into her palms. Her composure was pulled back into place almost immediately though and she kept her level gaze fixed on him until he felt compelled to continue. "It seems I have made a grievous error, but perhaps it can still be rectified." He finished, his words soft and thoughtful.
Gaz smiled, that was a start, at least. "I'm glad we agree." She turned her back on the alien's house where the military was still trying to secure the underground base. "You can begin right now." She called back to her father. "We have a great deal of work to do... Father." Not 'Dad' - he would never be just 'Dad' again. You made your choices and you lived with them, for better or for worse. "Come on."
She tried to pretend she didn't see him hesitate out of the corner of her eye. His gaze was on the pink and orange sky as though he could peer through the colours and see what was happening beyond. He turned to trail after her a moment later and she let it pass. It was only a very brief lapse, after all.
At long last, it was the beginning of a new chapter in earth's history - one that she would write. Gaz was looking forward to that.
-End Chapter 9-
So, here is the second half of what was Chapter 8 - the epilogue is coming up next. . I've had this written for some time but it requires a bit of tweaking. So, look for it in about one-two weeks.
Now the reviewer shout out!
pruning shears -Here's more, and sooner than I usually manage.
flying metal child - Heh, thanks for the praise. I also need to thank you for reviewing every single chapter of this fic. You rock!
DibMagician - Gaz ruling was one of the elements that came as a surprise to me, but perhaps not as surprising as it might seem.
ZimFan21 - Thanks. That has to be one of the best compliments a writer can get about their work.
Storm Dragon Girl - How about it? Is this soon enough for you? Heh.
Maran Zelde - I'm already working on the prequel, it surprises me that so many people have expressed interest in it.
Penname wa Silver B - Wow... that really is a lot of neatness...
Dibsthe1 - You know what they say - it's not over until... the writer uploads the epilogue. Hey, it's still part of the story, right?
Senri - Senri! I'm surprised to see you reviewing my humble fic. You know I love you and your stuffs!