The beginning realization of the futile mission.
Sometimes Dib saw his life in the cracks and textured bubbles on his ceiling. Late at night, when the crickets outside his window chirped and the house was quiet, the ceiling held a web of ideas and thoughts. It was hard to get sleep sometimes because his mind worked a thousand miles an hour even on the days where he came home exhausted.
Even now a scene was unfolding in his mind, as he thought back to earlier that day; a Sunday afternoon, a dastardly plan that turned out to be pathetic but none the less led to a strife, followed by an extended chase. Or it would've. Except Zim spent a good ten minutes trying to get a stubborn piece of tape off his hand that he'd gotten stuck to him while crawling around, he guessed.
It reminded Dib of a cat, by how frustrated the Irken got. They were working together for the first time in months, the last time had been against radiated giant spiders. This time is was all about yet another alien who was out for revenge against Zim and was by extension tearing apart the planet searching for the irken. Dib had considered just turning his enemy in but, the one searching was kind of a huge jerk. And he hated indulging jerks.
They had just barely escaped when the alien (named Hax or something like that) had broken into Zim's base. They tore out from the back door and ran all over town, hiding in alleyways and crawling through bushes. Zim complained the whole time. And eventually they had even taken refuge in a department store, hiding in the clothes racks, losing their pursuer in the aisles of snacks.
Now they were a mile away and out of breath. He sighed and leaned against the building they were hiding behind, hoping for a breeze to take away some of the heat and his current predicament hit him like a brick to the head. He was hiding from something sinister, with his worst enemy, the greatest threat to this planet and Dib felt like it was perfectly natural. The idea made him cringe. Zim finally got the tape off his hand by sticking it to Dib's coat.
Dib stared up at the ceiling, brows furrowing in silent thought. The rough plaster morphed into a face, into the face of one of his fellow students who had ran out of their fourth period class, crying. He had no idea why. Something about a boy and a hive of bees.
It wasn't why it happened that got to Dib it was the pure emotion on the girl's face as she'd pushed him out of the way in her haste to get out of the door. There was pain, sorrow, anger and she showed it to the world in a most dramatic fashion. Everyone in the class murmured amongst themselves, curious and wondering why she'd been sobbing quite so hard.
Her face had been flushed and the tears were running down her face. It was faintly disturbing to Dib. He'd cried twice in his life. According to his father, once when he was brought into the world, he'd given out a loud, upset cry that lasted for a an hour or so, before he'd settled down, and merely observed . He was a very quiet child (at least when it came to crying) who had learned to communicate early on and had no need for tears when he could yell or gesture violently. The second time was in the middle of Ms. Bitter's 5th grade class.
Dib quickly dismissed the memory, not wanting to think of how they'd all seen the unbelievable; a huge hulking monster had literally burst through the ceiling, snatched his enemy up and then rocketed back into the sky and they had STILL mocked him, still made fun of him and refused to see.
It was a dark moment. He'd begun to think that maybe it really was a lost cause.
As a boy who had a father who knew only cold science and a little sister who knew only repressed rage, Dib had never had anyone to encourage softer emotions and while, he didn't find them weak necessarily, they were very foreign and almost repulsive. In fact, Dib's favorite tshirt was a fair representative of his most common emotion. And when it deviated it was to frustration, curiosity, satisfaction or rarely, fear.
Perhaps that was why he'd felt like there was a wall between other kids his age and himself. That and his bigger than average intellect. They probably sensed it as well. And as a rule, humans were adverse to anything that was different.
Dib rolled over so that he faced away from the ceiling. He needed to sleep. Not spend hours contemplating his life, in all its over complicatedness. The boy forced his eyes shut and tried to even his breathing out, to give himself over to unconsciousness. But, behind his eyelids images flashed red and black; Zim yelling by his side, a girl crying uncontrollably, and the faces of his peers as they laughed at him. He eventually fell asleep but, a seed of something dark and painful nestled in his heart.
Something that had been forming for years. Something that only now he was fully aware of. Resentment towards his fellow humans. He'd been able to push it away, to drown it in action until now. Now no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much Dib fought for them, tried to make them believe, it was there. And as the months flew by he became aware of how much it had grown. Until it was a poisonous vine around his insides.
