It was at the very end of class that Zim returned. The unconscious girl had woken up only a few minutes after being out cold, then she was taken down to the nurse with a possible concussion and potentially broken jaw. He looked pissed off and angry, and right as he was halfway across the room to Dib, the bell rang.
Dib watched Zim as he put their school supplies away in Dib's old backpack, the rest of the class hustling to leave. "…How much trouble did you get into?"
The alien didn't look at him. He just zipped up the bag, slung it over his back, went behind Dib, and started pushing him forward. "They wanted to suspend me," he said. "I told them a vacation would be nice, but my currently disabled friend needs my help and I have to stay in school. I also told them to suck it in Irken."
"So no suspension?" Dib asked.
"They didn't say," Zim replied. "But I don't think so. I persuaded them and gave them a pity story about you, and considering how to stupid the monkey-brains running this school are, I think it worked."
"Usually people get demerits for attacking someone."
"Oh yeah, I got one," Zim said. "But I don't care. I'm the superior being, not them."
Dib smirked. "Still think you're better than everybody, huh?"
"No, I think we're better than everybody," Zim replied. "Everyone else is just a stupid."
"A stupid?" Dib said. "Everybody's a stupid?"
"Yes, because 'stupid' is a noun," Zim said jokingly. "How a species like the humans become a dominant one doesn't make any sense. I still can't figure out what's wrong with everyone here."
Dib leaned back a little, his face tensing when he felt a pain in his head. "Everyone's got something wrong with them," he said. "It's just that some try to make it other people's problems while others keep it private."
The pain…all what Dib could think about was the throbbing, sharp pain in his head. The medicine had worn off by the time it was seven at night and the headache was severe enough to the point where he could only lay face down on his bed, in the dark, with no noise. Zim had gone home to make sure Gir hadn't blown up the base. For the first time in a couple of weeks, he was completely alone for a few hours.
He brought a hand up to his head and he gripped his black hair, turning onto his side a little since his body decided that maybe going into the fetal position would help a little. It didn't, but he stayed curled up anyways. He moaned. All what he wanted for the throbbing to stop.
In some vague way, he had a small wish to be back in that splendid little era of time where he was alive but not born. No one had the capability to remember being born, or any time before it, but he imagined that the peace and warmth of just floating in the fetal position and having no worries or pain would be wondrous. He could still remember how wonderful his mother had been to him. She had, in a way, been his only true friend. Then one day he came home from school and learned that she was in the hospital for being "just a little sick," as his father had put it.
Bastard. Yes, it made sense that he wasn't going to explain to his eight-year-old that his beloved mother had a brain tumor so deep in her head that it was going to kill her any moment, but Dib still held a small grudge against that. Being only eight, Dib was always ecstatic whenever she came home from work, so he was just disappointed that he didn't know when she'd come back, not worried that she was going to die. He waited by the window for her until it was dark outside, just waiting and waiting and waiting for her to drive up to the house, get out of the car, and welcome him with a hug and a kiss.
Except that day, she never came home, and the last time he saw her alive, she was unconscious in a white hospital bed. He never got to say goodbye to her, never got to tell her thanks for all the kindness. He never got to thank her for being the only person in the whole world who was kind to him. Never got to say thanks for bringing him down to the park, thanks for telling him to ignore the world and follow his own desires, thanks for telling him that whatever he believed in is real if he believed strongly enough, thanks for being his friend. There were lots of "nevers" in his life after she had died.
A short while after she passed away, somewhat towards the middle of his first experience with depression, he became obsessed with the possibility of her being a ghost. All he wanted to say was "Thanks Mom, I love you," and he never got to. He wanted to find a way to talk to her ghost and though he was as young as he was, he pursued it fervently. He spent day after day and night trying to talk to her. He tried to get EVP recordings, tried to capture anomalies with a night vision camera his father had in the basement lab, tried everything he could.
But nothing came up. There was just silence. Nothing appeared in the pictures. Once he put out a small piece of paper in the center of his desk and said, "Mom, if you're here, just move the piece of paper." When he checked in the morning, it never moved.
He used to call his mother's old cell phone before his father canceled it and threw it away just to listen to her voicemail message. The recording would always say, "Hi, I'm not here right now, I've got two kids in my hands, heh. Leave a message!"
After the voice ended, there would just be total silence on the other end of the phone. Dib left hundreds of silent voicemails, never saying anything as he dialed the number over and over again to listen to that recording. He just wanted to hear her voice, even though it wasn't going to talk back to him. He liked to pretend that maybe if he dialed it one more time, she'd pick up. Someone would. But nobody did. He only got an eerie quiet.
There was this small device called a white noise box he got several years earlier that's supposedly meant to let disembodied voices filter through rapid frequencies of white noise, so Dib worked on acquiring one. Determined, he managed to get his hands on one eventually, turned it on, and tried to talk over the loudness to see if someone, anyone would respond. Instead there was just the unnerving sound of the white noise coming from the box, and silence. Dib would just sit there lonely in his room, trying to talk to a dead person who would never come back. He didn't want her to be dead. He just couldn't accept the fact that his one friend, the one person who loved him, and the one person who made him happy, was gone.
Normally children will be told by their parents that, in the event a loved one, a friend, or a pet dies, that they went to a special place called heaven where they'd be happy forever, waiting for everyone else to eventually come and join them. Dib wanted to believe in a god and wanted to think that his mother was up there floating on a cloud in heaven, happy and smiling, waiting for the day her little baby dies so that she can hold him again in her arms. Dib wanted to look forward to the day he'd get to meet that wonderful woman again. He wanted to look forward to dying and wanted to see it as a passageway from one existence to another. He just wanted to believe in something, something that would give him hope that he'd be reunited with her.
Instead, he was an atheist. He had no god, no heaven, no hell, no devil, nothing. He believed in ghosts and alternate dimensions, and he believed—knew, actually—that creatures didn't just simply stop existing after death. Hell, he had even summoned a supernatural creature once named Mortos der Soulstealer. He knew that death wasn't the end, but it seemed to have been for his mother. She was just gone. Erased from existence. Where was she?
Maybe she was on a cloud, waiting patiently for Dib and Gaz and Professor Membrane to die so they'd all be a happy family together up in heaven, away from pain and hate. But Dib didn't think there was a heaven. He envied the religious.
Dib told himself to stop thinking about it. It always made his eyes water and always made him just…sad. Really sad.
He thought of Zim instead. Zim the enemy who became a friend. Zim the friend who had the possibility of becoming a potential lover. Zim the possible lover who could lead to the possibility of potential marriage, and Zim the potential marriage partner who could lead to the possibility of potential reproduction, and poten—
Dib opened his eyes. "Oh my god," he said. "I didn't just think that. No, I did not just think that…I don't want to…no, just no…"
Yes, they had kissed several times now and he had feelings for Zim, he'd admit that, but they weren't boyfriends. They were friends with Dib having to depend on Zim. But wasn't that what love led to? Friends, partners, marriage, possibly babies if one so desires, and a whole life together? It just dawned on Dib that he could, quite literally, be choosing Zim to spend the rest of his life with.
Or he could be making a terrible choice. They could be totally incompatible, completely horrible for each other, and that would end in a tragic heartbreak and possible depression (at least for Dib, anyways). They'd go back to being enemies again, but Dib wouldn't be able to fight someone he had loved. The thought was a little overwhelming, to say the least.
His scrunched his toes together. He liked the thought of having a boyfriend. He had been wanting one for a while, but he was so hated and outcasted at school that he knew it was impossible. Maybe he should just go for Zim anyways. He liked the alien.
Dib reached over and grabbed his phone. He dialed Zim's number, and after three rings, the alien picked up.
"Hello?" said the familiar voice.
"Hey Zim…" Dib said. "Are you uh…gonna come over?"
"Of course I am," Zim said. There was a slight undertone of stress in his voice.
Dib smiled a little. Zim had only been gone for a few hours, but he already missed his voice. He loved it when he laid down next to him on the bed and snuggled him or slept. He liked having Zim be the one to push him around in the wheelchair. The fear of incompatibility was still there, but the excitement of having someone care about him was stronger. Yeah, he wanted Zim. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, just…give me a few moments, okay?" Zim told him.
"That's fine," Dib said. "I'll see you soon. Love you."
"L…love you too, Dib-worm," Zim said, then he hung the phone up.