AN: I hope this chapter proves that I'm still alive. It's a short chapter, but I don't think it will disappoint anyone horribly. Please review…if you please.

Chapter 10

In the Grey

It's plastic surgery. Cosmetic surgery. You cut away the outside, perfect it, thinking you're fixed, but the inside is still rotten and terrible, dead. The act of taking away to smooth the sore spots sounds nice. Very nice indeed. Taking away the dead and replacing it with living stuff.

There's madness behind the concept because it's both logical and illogical at the same time. Something says accept what you're dealt while another voice says you don't have to accept what you've been given. You're more powerful than nature and you can bend it however you please.

Bend it until it's unrecognizable...

Just don't break it.

Dib sat up straight, panting and covered in cold sweat. The moon came through his window and reflected against all the shiny surfaces in his room. The computer screen, his clock, the rivets on his jeans, and now his glass of water knocked helplessly to the floor. The water seeped into his carpet leaving a dark mark. Dib sighed and fell back to the bed. He wasn't cleaning up water. Maybe if it was something sticky and sugary he would, but he was too damn tired. It was two in the morning and he had been asleep for only an hour or so. Some dream. Couldn't remember.

Most of his dreams were lost. He used to remember so vividly. They were like going into his mind and walking around, frighteningly like the time he walked around in his own head with Zim...

Zim. Oh, yeah. The dream was about Zim. It should always be about Zim. His clock's red numbers transformed into other numbers, noting the progression of time. For a month, time enough to think, Zim had been stuck to the back of Dib's mind, a nagging sensation that the alien was lurking behind every shadow and stalking him to his doom; it did not put him to ease about the alien's sudden apparition. A Zim not seen is dangerous indeed. Gaz said she hadn't seen Zim again. Dib knew she was lying, and he was sure Zim knew that Gaz had told of his not so secret arrival.

Had he threatened her not to tell again?

--

You do what you have to do, even if he won't understand. Sometimes you have to be selfish to survive, and if this helps you survive, then you have to do it, understand?

I can't help you, even though you ask. I can't understand. He can. I'm selfish and I survive, and I do what I have to do.

Gaz turned over in her bed, rolling in the sheets with a happy little dream about the supremely cute boy in her English class. He sat next to her and they exchanged rude comments about their professor on each other's notes. He turned to her, said, I think I love you, and with a rush of passion, kissed her.

In real life he sat two rows away. Her mind remembered and reminded her of this truth, inserting things from the waking world into her dream. Her would-be lover pulled away from the kiss. He was Zim, young and fresh as the last time she had seen him, only, the last time she saw him he didn't look so good. He melted into a ghastly form and the room spun into a black sucking void with flying piggies, students, words, grammatical errors, and the professor, who had gained about six legs and arms and was prostrating to give the results of the latest exam.

F...failure...

Gaz woke up calmly to the sound of her alarm clock, and as she woke she remembered bits of her dream and remained unaffected by its weirdness, reminding herself that some had been stranger.

--

Dib made a transition from life after high school to a life of semi-freedom. Working for his father did not allow for much of a social life, if he had ever conceived of one in the first place. He had never been on a date, never had a "real" crush, save for Zim, had never kissed a human in a romantic way, and the loss of his virginity with the most inhuman creature possible put Dib into a reflective mood. For the most part, he reflected on the positives of Zim rather than the negative.

Today he would find Zim. He could feel it. The alien could only hide for so long. He knew Zim had set up base somewhere, for some purpose. Gaz would know.

Today he would do the unthinkable.

And so it went:

"Are you threatening me?" Gaz spat as she slammed the fridge door shut. Her brother looked over the counter, a seemingly safe distance away, but still vulnerable to the shaken can of cola in Gaz's hand.

"I'm not!" he replied, holding up his hands defensively. "I just said I think you're lying about seeing Zim!"

"And I said that I haven't seen him...except that one time. Don't you have to work today?"

"Don't you have a class today?"

"Touché, Dib, touché."

Dib sighed and stepped back from the counter to reflect. Not leaning against something made him feel disconnected from this place. He just felt the tile under his feet.

"I've been having weird dreams about him, Gaz. I feel like he's pulling me and I can't see the strings. I want to know why he's here."

"Even more than why he left?"

"Good question." Dib didn't have to think long. "Yeah, even more than why he left. I can reason that out, doesn't matter if they're the wrong reasons. Why he came back...what's here?"

Gaz shrugged. It didn't matter how many times she told Dib what Zim had said.

I got caught up in a war.

I came back because I had nowhere else to go.

I don't remember why I left.

I wanted to tell Dib, but I didn't think he would want to see me.

I can't go anywhere ever again.

The finality of these words were too concrete for Dib to accept. Too concrete because Dib heard an indecisive voice. Hearing that Zim was unsure if Dib would want to see him...that wasn't Zim! Zim would not care about your insecurities! He would confront you, mangled or not, whenever the hell he wanted because he wanted. Saying that he had nowhere to go. Lie. Zim was self-reliant and if he wanted to stay on earth without letting anyone know who he was, well, fuck you, should've set up camp in France!

"Zim's a liar, and so are you."

"I can't say that I'm not a liar Dib. You probably know me better than anyone." Gaz stopped, then posed, "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking...I'll wait. Zim will show up," Dib said confidently.

With a cynical snort Gaz said, "And you know this because he wants to see you?"

"I know it because he has to see me."

--

"He said this to you?"

"Yes and oh my God will you sit down." Gaz glared at the pacing alien in her living room. "Could you also take off that disguise?"

"What disguise?" Zim looked down at his flawless form.

"That holographic shit. I know you want to seem normal, but you're not anymore. Looking like your old self isn't going to make all the scars go away, and besides, I don't like façades."

"I don't have to listen to you, human. You know it won't matter when the project's finished. Now tell me, Dib is...distraught?"

"I dunno. He knows you've been seeing me."

"How is this?" Zim said angrily.

"It's Dib, he just knows. How much longer is this going to take anyway because I can't keep covering for you."

"Maybe a week. Gir is incompetent, you know that. I need you until it's finished."

Gaz smirked. "You're damn lucky that I'm into all this, otherwise I wouldn't have lifted a finger for you." Zim's sour expression softened, then saddened at her words. He had hoped that Dib's feelings would have played some part in her participation in his "project," but she was completely selfish. He ticked her off a long list of people who didn't care about Dib, or as Zim thought numbly, me. These thoughts rambled onto other things. Gaz would not be part of the larger picture. In essence, he was using her as she was using him, but his use was far more important than any pathetic plans this human girl would ever conceive in her lifetime.

"I will see you tomorrow then." Zim ended the conversation. He returned to his new base of operation in the city, near to Gaz but near to Dib. He was halfway between their worlds, sandwiched between the city and the suburbs. Both places were vile hovels. It was all the same, humans were all the same. Gaz was a human. She was lost in the myriad thoughts of humanity, though she tried to liken herself to something demonic and inhuman. She played her games, stuck to the ground, eating pizza and wallowing in the human filth of pity and egoism. Dib was never a human. He tried his best to be a good human, but he never succeeded.

Zim oversaw his project with great ire and admiration, his contemplation of the thing before him never fully complete and always torn.

He recalled a day when his skin was something to be feared. Dib would have bowed before the shadow of an Armada come to cleanse the surface of the earth, and in the fleet overlooking the oceans and mountains was Zim, looking as the earth's pearly skin was ravaged.

tbc.