Again...


His enemy was located, according to the document he'd stolen, on the sixth floor. Dedicated to the dangerous patients. Accurate. While most of the time, Dib was a nuisance, he was also the most dangerous human on this planet. The only enemy worth fighting. The guards proved to be no challenge. Not for a member of the Irken elite, anyhow.

He shot at a camera that followed him along the wall. It exploded into little pieces, wires short circuiting. A quick glance at the chart. Almost there. Zim winded his way down what appeared to be the same, white hallways. It felt eerie. Where was everyone? Wasn't this a hospital of sorts? Where were the people? Just as he feared he was lost, the door came into sight.

He shot the entrance off, slipping inside and noticing an immediate difference from the rest of the building. It was darker here. Much darker. Only the emergency lights shone dimly against the white walls. It was grungier. And he could tell it was inhabited by people. Their cries and yells echoed off the ceiling.
Zim nearly turned right back around and ran hallway back up six floors. He shook himself off the irrational fears. Dib was close. Just ten doors to the right. They all looked the same, with no numbers to keep track so he counted them out loud. His own voice startled him. From behind each of the metal doors, he could hear the patients.

They must've heard the ruckus he'd caused. He stood in front of the 10th door and charged up his pak legs to shoot the hinges off, since he did not know the code to open it. Bright pink lasers cut into the metal and it fell inward. Inside, the room was pitch black, the light from the hallway somehow not managing to penetrate the gloom. But, his superior irken eyesight finally managed to grow used to it. In the corner, Dib leaned against the wall, a small grim smile spread across his face. The human had no glasses and his normal clothes were replaced with white pajamas. Dib pushed away from the padded wall.

Bright red lights began to flash, a loud alarm screeched while a deep voice boomed over and over. "security breech." Zim covered his antenna against the horrible sound. The human was right next to him in a flash, hands clenched into fists.
"Let's get out of here shall we?"


And again...


Dib had no idea what he was doing, something that was becoming more and more common as of late. Besides messing around with Tak's ship, his knowledge with irken aircrafts was minimal. That was something he would have to remedy. Right after he safely piloted and landed Zim's voot cruiser somewhere in a nice grassy inlet. His fingers flew over the control panel, pressing buttons that looked like they could be helpful as the ship spiraled to earth.

Zim sat limply in his seat, face surprisingly peaceful in unconsciousness. Dib was going to kill him if this crash didn't. Zim began to slide forward as they fell down, down, down and Dib threw an arm over the idiot's chest so that he didn't slam into the control panel. The pressure from the falling altitude threatened to knock him backwards but, Dib was stubborn and he wasn't going down until he was safe. Until, they were safe.


And again...


Zim whimpered. The human had been under water for too long. Wasn't it something like a minute? They could hold their breath until then and then they exploded? He huddled underneath the boy's trench coat, his shield against the sprays of ocean water. "D-Dib…?" He asked the waves to return the boy. When two minutes passed, Zim peeked over the edge and saw nothing but, ominous darkness where Dib had dove in to catch fish.

The whimper turned to a scream. "Dib!" The idea popped into his head that maybe the human was dead and briefly a celebratory sensation took over but, it was snuffed out by the thought of being here alone, of being on earth without the human. It seemed bleak and boring.

Zim let the trench coat drop and put his boot on the edge of their lifeboat, looking into the dark water. This was insanity. This was…stupid and necessary. He held his breath and with only a twenty second hesitation, plunged into the water to find the Dib.


Then what is four?

They saved each other. Again and again. From other aliens, from bullies and poison. From freak weather and crashing space ships. They would never admit to doing it and if they did it would always be met with an excuse. 'It's to repay a debt', 'he has something I need'or 'I want to be the one to end his miserable life'. Which was true in a way. But, neither noticed how the years flew by and the number of rescues piled up.

It was just another tangle, another knot in a complicated relationship that just grew more and more so that it was hard to tell where Zim ended and where Dib began and vise versa.