Saving Zim by Dib07

Summary:

When you had it all. When old age forces you to change. When life isn't what you'd imagined. When you aren't prepared to be so powerless. When a soldier's undetermined future remains his greatest fear.

Warnings:

Zim Angst. Violence, language and distressing scenes.

Blocks of text in italics means that it's a flashback.

Disclaimer:

I do not own the IZ characters. However this story and this idea is mine. Cover art lovingly designed and drawn by TheCau.

A/N:

Before I get into it, I gotta put AmIz06 on a pedestal here. Please check out her art on Deviant Art when you can. Her work is stylistic and incredible! I was roaming DA awhile back, and saw, by chance, Saving Zim fanart by her! She's drawn our favourite space bug in that glorious funeral armour, with the Elite symbol on his head and everything! I STILL cannot get over it, and I looked like an excited goof, holding my mouth in awe and everything the entire time. A lot of detail and time and effort went into it and my heart just soared into SPACE! AHHH WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU GUYS AND GALS?! So please, please check it out! I cannot praise her enough!

An apology to RissyNicole. Our ideas for his unsprung PAK legs have a similar appeal, and since I submitted mine later, I do apologize for any similarities from her beloved story; A Parade of Indignities. The coincidence is quite amusing I have to say, both of us admirers of his PAK and its many uses! XD

Guest from 'Fudgekin Oneshot'

OMG! I LOVE YOU! Thanks so much for enjoying and loving! Maybe one day I will add to the oneshot, and just...I dunno, include extra scenes that never made it into the main story.

guestrev

I have to say I am in such grand awe of readers reactions, and how much they have enjoyed Prof. Membrane's arrival into the scene, and his portrayal!

Guest

So glad you accepted the headcanon! YES! The professor has always kept an eye on his son, even though it has never quite seemed that way. It was a lot to take in last chapter, and it brings me tides of joy to realize how well everyone has been enjoying the ride thus far! I hope you enjoy the rest!

Oof

Trust me, it HURTS to write this. Like, I'm not new to angst, in fact, I'm pretty old to it, but this chapter hurt, and the last chapter hurt. Zim's looked hell in the face, and felt the burn. Can he come back from it?

Guest

Oh dearest guest thank you for thinking of SZ as one of your favourites! SUCCESS! I only hope that the ending will deliver the same awe and memorable events as the rest has done so proceeding it! I wish I had been updating this sooner, I really do. But I'm back after my hiatus and yeah, this story's gonna end. One way or another! Thank you for joining me, and reading this story!

Guest

OMG really? REALLY?! Oh you precious reader! You started reading this at 1am, and skipped all your classes for this story? OMG WHERE ARE YOU SO I CAN BEAR-HUG YOU!? I hope you recovered from your reading binge with some good old sleep! We need to sit down and talk about it, ahaha! (oh my GOD I am nerding out!) Okay, first of all, my heart reaches out to you; this story touched you in the way I intended, stories can be so powerful, and they only work if they tickle/move us on an emotional level that brings us closer to the characters, as if we were there. With them. Thank you SO MUCH for reaching out to me, and letting me know how much you've loved this story!

Moops

MOOPS! MOOPS! I've missed ya! Don't worry, I think we've all had some bumps on the road this year. I hope all is well. It's great to hear from you, ALWAYS!

SaintHeartwing

Just a quickie reminder for you: the opinions of the characters in this story do not reflect my own. :)

CHAPTER 36 (42): This Far

'Only you can make this change in me.'

Only You - The Platters

Dib had this ugly, congested ball of bitterness inside him that would not quit and his spiralling mood was as black as it could get. He had angrily disputed with his father about the EMP blackout that he had caused all that time ago;

"This all started because of you!"

"How do you mean?"

"That futuristic developmental thing you were making? For sustainable energy? You remember! Of course you do! It created that electro-magnetic-pulse all over the city!"

"Well, yes... there were... minor implications..." His father still seemed edgy about it, even long after it had happened. The professor never failed too often, but when he did, he seemed to take each failure personally.

"Yeah well, those 'minor' implications you're so quick to sweep under your boot turned Zim's little robot into a murdering machine! Gir did this to me! See these burns? That's because of YOU! Thanks to your 'minor' implications! I'm going for a walk!"

"Son! Son! Wait just a moment!"

The sky was a slight lilac and the sun was peeping over the sleepy city with a lazy inclination. It was cloudy day, promising winds and rain from the east. The rains might persuade the snow to melt, but really, all it would do was turn it into wet, sludgy mess.

Dib stood out in the weak sunlight, smoking a cigarette that wouldn't last, and pondering over his misery of a life.

He mostly thought about the dream he had had. It had stayed with him, like a stain that could not be washed out.

Suppose Zim – against the impossibilities – survived? The dream was just a load of nonsense he was sure – but it inspired him to think of having a family – a child of his own with Clara. And Zim being present. But Zim was not going to get there by himself.

Dib had to laugh. It came out sounding dark and half mad. An Irken in the family? Really Dib? Are you that far gone upstairs? I'm sure Zim eats kids. And he laughed again. Laughed until it hurt.

Clara came out from one of the swinging lab doors, as if she had especially gone out looking for him. Her smile was a shadowed one, golden eyes rimmed in fatigue. She probably hadn't slept all that much either - and what sleep she did attain was a restless variety chained in anxiety. It made him angry with her for some reason. Angry because she had sided with his dad and put him up in a room with Nurse Joy. Angry because she cared about an alien she had no business with. Angry, because that dream hadn't been real.

"How are you feeling?" She asked, sounding shy and hesitant. She noted the chaos in his eyes.

He stamped on his cigarette and lit up another; knowing that if Zim were here, he would chastise him for doing so, especially with him smoking around Clara. But shit, he deserved to chain-smoke.

She stepped out into the cool, weak sunshine, hugging her arms about herself, wearing one of those frumpy cardigans she always liked to wear. She did not seem to notice the old green marks staining the left arm sleeve. "I'm making him some new clothes. And maybe a soft doll of his robot. Gir." Clara said nervously, her eyes looking more at the ground than at her tense fiancé. "I like to knit. It calms me."

"What's the point?" His words were so bitter, so brutal, that they seemed to physically slash at her.

Her eyes took on a sharper tone, and they watered with hurt. There was uncomfortable moment between them, and neither heard the beeping of traffic in the background. "The truth is painful." She said at length, hands still hugging her sides as if to warm the deeper chill from within. "But your father only did those things because he loves you. No one loved me. Be grateful for what you have." And she turned and went back into the wing of the lab, the door swinging after her. He groaned.

Yeah to go, Dib you old fool.

He was bemused by her dedication. Why she was so devoted and affectionate to an Irken she hardly knew? Maybe it was something to do with her lost parentage, having been raised in an orphanage where anything remotely genuine had ever existed. Or because he was, in her eyes, just another one of God's creatures worth protecting? An orphan that he was, separated from his own race like a pariah. Alone in a world that had no place for him. Was that what she saw? Was that why?

He thought of going after her. Thought of maybe staying outside for a bit longer, enjoying the solitude. It gave him time to think. And reflect upon the dream of earlier: of holding his baby, and refusing Zim's request to hold it. Thought of how he had turned his back on his father, refusing to help with the blood analysis. He just wanted to escape it all. To dive into someone's shoes, and live their life.

Again the cigarette went out too quickly.

He hated seeing Zim with that disturbing tracheal tube down his throat; hated how the stupid Irken had wedged himself into the corner of the lounge, having been unable to overcome his inner torments. He wished he had never severed the cord cementing the PAK to the autodoc. Wished he had been brave enough to allow Zim that mercy.

The incident when Zim had cornered himself in the lounge and what came after kept playing in Dib's head on repeat; forcing him to see those lasting moments as he relived them reluctantly - as if someone was callously hitting the rewind button, forcing him to face it over and over. Dib had committed every ounce of willpower to force these images and memories asunder, but his mental discipline was still no match for such fresh wounds, and he could not suppress it for very long.

He heard the low squeaking of the door being opened. "Son?"

Dib slowly turned, his dark amber eyes alighting on his father. The scientist looked so distraught and worried, as if he half expected to see his son placing a noose around his neck. "Yes?" Dib snapped.

"Y-You need to see this! It's better if there are two brilliant minds working on the problem at hand rather than one!" He was probably talking about that damned blood sample again.

He felt his inner walls tremble. Reality again. He didn't want to face it.

Between nightmares of the reality and of the daydreams, Dib wanted to keep himself inside his own protected solitary bubble. He'd rather be swept away by the current of loss, than walk against it.

"Dad. Why are his claws wrapped up? Are you worried he might... hurt someone? In his condition?" It was laughable. Really laughable.

"I can show you..." He said hesitantly, which was unusual, for his father normally wasn't so...undecided.

And, it was such an odd answer that for a minute Dib thought one of them was surely going insane.

"What do you mean, 'show me?' Are you trying to save the bed from damage or something?" He joked. When his father only continued to look at him, a furrow of a frown building between the ridges of his eye goggles, Dib began to suspect the disturbing nature of the mittens. No. No. Zim wouldn't do that. No way.

"Come inside this once. It's mighty chilly out here and you'll catch a cold." His father was just trying to coax him back in; and get him to face his adversities in the only way he knew how. Dib barely remembered his father ever hugging him, loving him: a pat on the shoulder now and then perhaps, when he was especially pleased with him.

"Fine. Whatever. I'm coming." It was so easy to cling to resentment. But his father was trying to prod him forwards, to move on, and to use that energy to solve his problems. That was how his father dealt with emotional issues, and possibly Zim too. Gotta work work work.

In one of the many rooms, his father was facing a thin, expansive computer screen that was organized above three other smaller variants. This room was quite warm from all the heat expressed from the ever-working machines, computers and apparatuses. It was a large room, having been built to accommodate super computers and an MRI machine, with still plenty of room for his father's superfluity of other machines.

Dib, tight with anguished impatience, grew angry when he could not make sense of what he was looking at. The large computer screens were full of numbers that whittled down in large, sprawled columns.

"You mind telling me what this is all about?"

"I thought you'd never ask!" His father said. "I need to tell you exactly what's going on, and where we are on the board. That way we can both come to a solution. I took a sample of Zim's blood not long after he was first brought in. It was what I was analysing in that Petri dish. I compared this new sample to an old one I had kept in the freezer. It's my original sample from he had transformed back to normal from his baloney-like state all those years ago! That way I have a perfect comparison of the chemical changes in his body, and what he was like when he was healthy."

"Go on." He sat on a stool, rubbing at his eyes from beneath the rim of his glasses.

"The old sample is the one shown on the left and the new version is on the right." He said, gesturing at the two descending columns on the computer screen.

Dib strained harder at the numbers, his arms stubbornly folded in front of his chest. They were scrolling upwards, but he could make no definition between them.

"As the thing on his back – sorry – I mean, as his PAK degrades, it corrodes, and during the course of his life, particles of metal or plastic components have got inside him via his bloodstream – possibly from the connectors from the PAK to his biological body. These particles break down from larger particles, and they don't disappear or evaporate. They become small on a cellular level, enough to suffocate blood cells and slow down the body's natural chemical processes."

"I don't... I don't..." He did understand, but at the same time he really didn't.

He understood the natural breakdown processes of biological things, as well as the breakdown of materials. He knew how decomposition worked. But how could he ever to know the implications of having an inorganic implant to that of an organic creature? It was connected to his spine, his nervous system, and it was also connected to his pulmonary and circularity functions. And everything that frayed from the PAK over time got consumed by his biology.

Because it had to go somewhere.

Of course, a PAK was meant to sustain itself as anything could sustain itself, but fast-forward a couple of centuries and you had a corroding shell with corroding parts. And his body was trying to assimilate what fell in through the bloodstream, as the sea tried to assimilate all the rubbish that was dumped into it every year.

"All things deteriorate over time." His father continued. "I've done lots of investigating into his PAK, and found that the insulations over his drivers, tubes and whatnot simply do not last. They have degraded. Even the interior and exterior shell has degraded. The moisture on our planet may have done this, or speeded up the process at any rate. For no other alien creature like him has come into contact with Earth, have they? Well then. Living here may be the very reason his PAK has corroded so badly. Has your Zim ever had an aversion to water?"

"Y-Yes. Severely so."

"Ah well, that explains it. Not every alien is or can ever be built and ready to deal with whatever atmosphere he happens to be in. There is always a percentage of water in our atmosphere, especially in warmer environments. Most of the time water content averages to around 4% in the air we breathe." His father took this moment to look long and silently at the divulging results on the screen, even though Dib, as smart as he knew he was, could make neither heads nor tails of it.

"Perhaps we can...we can remove his PAK...get him to live without it." He felt as naive and as ignorant as a child. He was asking his father to do impossible things, but he asked it of him anyway.

"That I cannot do. From its design, and his biology, I can easily determine without any further examination that he cannot live without it. It seems a weakness in evolution, for at one point in their history they would not have worn them. The PAK is an external enhancement and the Irken body has gone soft with its own dependency on this technology. It seems to be able to power his organs in perfect balance, and it surely contains his atmospheric processor as well as drives which I assume serve as his memory banks. He warned me of them before, fearing that I might pry too deep. So removing it will sever all nerve stimulation, effectively killing him."

Despite these nightmarish facts resting upon the slew of worry he was already sustaining, his mind pictured Zim seesawing to the left, and crashing there, onto the carpet of the lounge floor after mewling weakly for Gir.

"What else?" Dib asked, wrenching himself from the memory. "Tell me everything. I have to know. And why...why was he coughing up blood before you arrived?"

His father looked down at him with tight rue. "Blood has accumulated in his small lungs. It's medically known as pulmonary edema."

"Oh...right."

The numbers on screen: categorizing billions of lines of nonsense, marching forever upwards unto infinity, dropped away entirely, and were replaced with schematics of the PAK in plain, avid detail. The professor touched the image's bottom line, where there was the vaguest little bump. "This here is a foreign article on the bottom left of your little friend's PAK. It is not made from the same material as the PAK and has a different carbonic age. I removed it, and it has caused no ill effects. I am currently running an analysis on it, to determine what it is. So far it seems to be a microprocessor."

"A what?" Dib languidly asked, still failing to fully pay attention.

"A chip. Like a CPU. Ah, it's probably nothing." He stood tall again for a moment, lapsing into another reverie of silence. Maybe his mind was busily processing solutions, results, or maybe he was waiting to see if Dib wanted to ask him anything else. So he did, without hesitation.

"So his PAK... You're going to fix it, aren't you? That's why I brought you those schematics!" It was the bottom-line of his hopes, his worries. "You can do it? Right?"

The professor rubbed at the collar line below his chin. "It would be better if I showed you. Come this way." The professor walked nonchalantly back into Zim's little ICU room again. The Irken hadn't moved – had never moved from lying on his side, chained as he was to all the tubes and wires. His head was tilted slightly back so that his throat was fully open for the breathing tube's admission. Under the blankets, the PAK legs made wayward lumps.

The professor cleared away one little thin but ultra soft blanket to reveal Zim's warm, frail body beneath. The gown he wore was still clean at least. Untying the tiny, silky threads that joined the parting down the middle, Prof. Membrane pushed the clothing aside to reveal a skeletally bandaged chest where very little flesh remained had it not been covered up. Unclipping the pins that secured it, the professor undid the bandaging, as if the time had finally come for his son to see what lay beneath. After some rough unwrapping – having to do it carefully so as not to jostle Zim around - the strips of gauze fell away, and Dib saw why his chest had been so securely wrapped.

The professor's voice sounded far away. "This is why I have kept your little friend's claws safeguarded in gloves, my boy, if he should ever wake again. This is the damage he has done."

The wounds beneath told their own dark, continued tale of pain. It looked like someone had taken a knife, and carved out random runes across the narrow breadth of his chest. It had not been cleaned; no one had had the time in the urgency to secure Zim's vitals, so it had just been bandaged. The flesh was still mottled and wet with darkly green undertones, having bled a few times following Zim's rescue. Tissue had been torn away from the seams that once held it, some of it hanging against bone – at least - Dib swore it was bone. There were contours of white beneath these scraps of flesh, which meant that Zim had torn into himself so deeply that he had started to unearth his own ribs. Had the pain been this deep; this harrowing, to cause Zim such grisly amounts of self-harm?

Maybe the PAK mostly provided Zim with potent pain relief, like some kind of automatic dispensary machine whenever the Irken suffered any level of hurt? But the analgesics the PAK willingly gave must have long been out of stock, for Zim had gone to the hard method of addictive drugs to end the problem: the rinauh injections. And when that too was taken from him, there was no escape for a body that could not manage even moderate levels of pain, let alone the agony he must have endured. So he began to tear himself apart. Like a crazed animal.

The mutilation, willingly set by one with such advanced intellect was simply horrifying.

xxx

Dib had gone outside for twenty minutes, and in that time, had smoked 5 cigarettes. He was down a whole pack, and when he came back in from the cold, he could smell the tobacco off his own skin and clothes, so he promptly changed into fresh clothes and returned with a tray with two mugs and a bowl – the mugs containing good old hot coffee, and the bowl full of boiling sterile water. However, he did not want to go back and look at Zim again. It was so hard to see him sprawled in bed, anchored by PAK legs that may or may not have nearly killed him. If the tired old Elite woke – even for a smidgen of a second – he had a nasty feeling that Zim would not speak, would not eat, and would not care.

And my dream? What about that dream, Dib? Is it so foolish to hope?

Yes, yes it is. Zim would never hold my child. He never had the heart. Never had the kindness.

But he loved a robot, didn't he?

To escape these thoughts, as if he was trying to escape himself, he carried the tray to the room, knowing that Clara would be there, like she always was. He'd have to face her too.

He pushed open the door, and felt the warmth of the room from the cold corridor he had just left. It made his glasses fog up temporarily.

Clara had gently lifted Zim up as much as the tubes had allowed, and coddled him, blankets and all, into her arms in the hopes of reaching out to him. He looked incredibly tiny and ill in her arms, a framework of all bone. His head was resting on her chest. His little legs were cushioned by her other arm. The heavy PAK legs were left to fall where they chose to lie.

"Where's dad?"

"Asleep. He hasn't had much rest for over twenty four hours. I... I didn't know your father and Zim had already made an acquaintance until your father told me. I know it was a great shock for you."

"Yeah." He didn't want to sound too hostile about it. The betrayal cut him, not as deep as before, but the pain still registered. "The two had a little clubhouse going. Behind my back. I don't know who's more foolish. Me or them."

"I just wish you had all been more open and honest with each other from that start."

Dib nodded. That he could agree with. Then he motioned to the bowl. "I'm going to clean his chest up. I wasn't going to, I kept holding off on it, thinking he'd..." He stumbled on the next word: found he couldn't say it.

"...How are your burns?" She asked, changing the subject.

"Better, thanks. Look, I'm sorry for shouting at you earlier. You did the right thing. You both did, when you hired that Nurse, and got my burns treated."

Her smile brightened.

He brought over the bowl of water, a towel and a pot of light pink soothing cream that happened to be one of the few items Clara had rescued from the Elite's home before it blew. He was getting much better at reading Irken from his long exposure to the alien language, and could read simple symbols. The cream, as stated on the plastic casing, read that it was an antiseptic suited for sensitive Irken skin, and promoted healing while offering pain relief when applied directly on the wound. There was a caution on the bottle, saying that it was a strong agent, and should be used sparingly.

Irkens never messed around when it came to medical interventions. It worked.

"Okay, Fudgekins. Let's see what we have here." He intoned, knowing full well that Zim was deep in sleep and could not hear him. But he wanted to chat to him; and had a nagging need to hear his replies, his reciprocations. Zim had been silent for much too long.

He unrolled the blankets, letting them fold at Zim's lap. Only, the Elite had tucked up an arm against his chest, and held this insecure position, even in sleep. It tugged deeply at Dib's heart, and he could feel his eyes begin to sting with tears. He fastened them away before they could appear, and he gently took hold of Zim's mitten and drew it down to his lap.

"Do you think he's in pain?" Clara asked, as if it had been on her mind for some time now, and had no one to ask up until this point. Zim was a lot different from the animals she had treated, but even so, he no longer had the power of speech, and was just as mute now as all her previous patients.

"I don't think so. My dad doses him with heavy pain relief every six hours. It's strong, like morphine. I think it's called norcine or something. But we have no idea how this norcine reacts with his enzymes and if they last longer or shorter in his system than it does ours. And I've got a nasty feeling all this rinauh he takes has increased his natural tolerance for any other painkiller, making it harder for conventional drugs to work."

"All those drugs the police confiscated were his?"

"Yup. What, you think they were mine?" He said, fooling her with a spurious 'shocked' expression.

She smiled back, though it was less steady than his.

He stooped downwards to unfasten the soft ribbons at Zim's gown, allowing the material to slip down each side of his bandaged chest. Then, unclipping the pins, he unravelled the dirty bandaging to reveal the damage beneath. Some of the slashes had been done at different angles, each one levelling a new frustration at himself: each one cutting deeper. This must have been going on even before they had tried to secure Gir, before Dib had walked through plasma fire. It was not just a sign of pain however, but undoubtedly one of depression. The destruction of Gir, and the loss of Dib had given way to the pleasure of madness, and in that madness, Zim had tried to find solace through pain.

As a soldier, he had been taught aught else.

"Clean the cuts first." Clara said, moving her arms out slightly towards her fiancé so that he could access Zim's chest better. "Then apply the cream. Make sure there's no clothing or fabric in those cuts. And don't worry if you make it bleed again. You've got to make sure there's no chance of infection."

"Okay." He was glad for the help. He wasn't great when it came to all things medical, even the darn basic common-sense stuff. He had a tendency to clench up when faced with blood, and being an adult hadn't fixed that.

He dabbed the cloth in the bowl after testing to see if the water was cool enough, and gently began to sponge it over the narrow strip of Zim's gory ribs. Within seconds the cloth came away mottled in shades of blackish green. And, as Clara had predicated, the deepest cut began to bleed again, the indents filling up and spilling over the tatters of flesh.

He tried to spy for any nestled bit of fabric. It was just as well Zim wore colourful clothing, making any stray bit of material easier to spot. Luckily there was nothing to remove, and Clara overviewed the procedure just in case he missed something.

During this process, Zim's chest cantered up and down at manipulated intervals, each lungful of air mirroring the expansion and deflation of the compressing air bag beside him: monitored and controlled by a computer. The tracheal tube kept Zim's mouth open slightly, just enough for the tube to run between his front teeth.

"He's going to make it." Clara said. He looked at her, and tried to see the reality of it, and couldn't.

"Don't get too hopeful, Clara. Besides, even if he does survive to an extent, and say we ameliorate his PAK, he has nowhere to live. His base was a part of him. It served his needs, his security, and his sanity. Without it, he'll only go crazy. You saw what it did to him when he heard the first explosion. I think it triggered the heart attack on the instant and that it had nothing to do with his PAK."

"You really think so?"

"I do. My dad can patch Zim's PAK up all his likes, but it's his spirit inside that's broken, and can't be fixed. I've never much liked to see things from his perspective, as we once considered each other the great bane of our lives, but I can see now why his base was so important to him. If I were stranded on another planet, alien to you and me, with no chance of getting back home again, I think I'd go crazy. I think...keeping him alive is...pointless. It took me awhile to come to terms with this. And now, seeing all these slashes on his chest, it's something I can ignore no longer. We should just...pull the plug. Let him die."

"But he has us."

"He doesn't know that. Fear of humans has blinded him to things like compassion and kindness. And even if he believed in those things, he's a soldier, born and bred. He was taught to treat compassion as weakness, and kindness as pity. And both those qualities he abhors."

"Give him time, Dib! Time to settle, time for him to get to know us! We can provide a new home for him! A new life! I want to teach him how to live, how not to be a soldier! We're not pulling the plug!"

He liked her optimism, he supposed, even though it was unfounded. She was a very maternal type of person that naturally had so much unconditional love in her heart.

He sighed, and rinsed the cloth back in the warm water. The once clear liquid had soured into a murky green gloom that made him think of lichen and green paint. Again he dabbed the cloth back over ripped skin, trying to be careful and not to disturb the ragged lips of flesh that had been sliced wide. It took him another three minutes to mop up the old blood, and though some of it bled anew, it did look better, even if all he had done was accentuate the damage. Then, using his hands after quickly sterilizing them under a tap nearby and using antiseptic to wash them with, Dib smeared the pink, analgesic Irken cream over rib contours and on open slits and furrowed gashes. A lot of olive green came away on his fingers, but more cream got on the wounds. He slathered on probably a bit more than he should, but, judging by the severity of the injuries, he had applied as much as he thought Zim needed. The task done, Clara gently shored him up against her as Dib wrapped his chest up in new sterile rolls of gauze after making sure all the ECG pads were in their correct positions. All the while, Dib kept one ear trained on the continuous bleeps of the ECG.

Dib tenderly helped lay him back down again in Clara's arms, tucking up his gown, retying the ribbons and covering him with the baby blue blanket.

xxx

The professor was trying to tease one PAK leg back into its assigned port. He was manipulating it gently at first, like easing a plastic arm joint that had popped out of a vinyl figurine by applying the exactness of pressure at the right angle.

But, when this did nothing short of giving the professor an aching arm, he applied rougher pressure and an alternative angle while Dib held Zim's little body down gently while his father pushed and shoved against him. The topmost joint of the PAK grated inside its aligned port by about one inch before it was rejected again with a coughing jar of gears, no matter how hard the scientist strained.

Either the gears that fed it back inside had all seized up, or Zim needed to be mentally inclined to accept them. Regardless, they were not going back in by themselves, or under the duress of rough persuasion. The professor mumbled his discourse, having been at this for thirty five minutes or so, thinking the task to be as simple as easing a book back into its assigned slot on a shelf. Turns out, it was harder than getting a cord of rope through a needle hole. Especially when each PAK leg was a rebellious rod of metal that was cumbersome to get around, the points of each being so sharp that they had begun to score marks into the bedding, and risked cutting through wires and tubes that catered to the intensive care of their patient.

When the rebellious prosthetic would not obey, having tried to tame its unruliness (for each PAK leg tended to fold and snap back really easily as if each one held a tight spring) he attempted it on a different one, knowing the results would be the same but trying anyway. The PAK legs just added unnecessary weight to Zim's frail body and sometimes obstructed the professor's work. They were also ungainly constructs, that it made manoeuvring their patient around all the harder. And when so straightforward a task became a task from hell, the professor now saw only one solution. When he told Dib of it, the young man shook his head.

"You can't rob him of these too! He's lost everything else! You...you can't! You just can't!"

"Son, he would benefit more without these constructs."

Zim losing his possessions had been a steady but consistent progression. The idea of the Elite losing another vestige of himself was just inconceivable. He could already hear Zim's imagined shock and rage in the back of his mind: his predicable reactions to his mechanised defences about to be amputated from his wellbeing. They were robbing a soldier of his last gun: his last part of Irk. Of home. The very thing that epitomized his race.

"You... you can't!" He blabbed, purely on autopilot. He had been on autopilot in fact, since he'd woken from his fainting spell. He hadn't quite felt like himself, and had, in his numbness, felt incomplete. Now, in this uncontrollable maelstrom of emotions that highlighted his futility, he could only harden his stare at his father, reeling at what he intended to do.

"These leg prosthetics demand power from this cyborg-PAK device, power he had no longer afford and they are an unnecessary weight. Once I remove them, his PAK will be much lighter, which will mean less strain on his heart, and his arthritic joints will benefit as well."

"But they act as his shield! His mental security! They mean much more to him than their material-functionalities propose! Dad! Don't remove them! Please!" But he knew that his father's mind was made up, and that there would be no persuading him.

The idea of Zim having no PAK legs sounded so perverse. So wrong on every scale. It was a sacrifice Zim may not be prepared to handle. But already his wayward father was moving to some units, looking for tools Dib could only imagine as he began preparations to actively remove Zim's prosthetic-weaponry.

"He'll get used to the idea, I am sure." His father said noncommittally, focused banally on his approach. He located the right tools for the job: a metal cutter and its power cord. "Now place that mat under him. I don't want to cut into the bed, there's a good boy."

Dib functioned with as much feeling as an android bereft of purpose: stung as could be in a maelstrom of indecision. He slipped the mat under Zim, minding the network of wires as he did, and it encompassed the PAK legs as well: doomed as they were to be eviscerated from their master. Dib had always seen them as pious things with a life of their own: serving multiple purposes for their Irken commander: such as bolstering his personality, heightening his distinction in mentality as well as his physicality, and of course supplying him with self-assurance. Now, like everything else the Irken once possessed within his unfailing stringency of protection, they too would be removed, cut bare, and carted away like abnormalities.

"No..." Dib tried to say, when really all that came out was a limp, pathetic whimper.

"Step back, son, and cover your alien friend with a blanket. This shouldn't hurt him, it's only metal." He said, as if dismantling Zim of his most-dependable gadgets was no different than removing a diseased limb from an indifferent tree that would have no trouble growing it back. "Your friend won't mind too much, once he gets used to the idea, like I said."

Dib was too lost in surprise to reply. He had about come to the end of his emotional endurance, and just complied woefully: placing a woollen blue blanket that encompassed Zim's body and some of his head. His father plugged in the power cord, affixed it to the cutter, and powered it up, testing it to see how finely the metal razor disks turned in their sockets. It was like listening to the menacing buzz of a chainsaw. The disks spun so fast he could not see the individual blades turning or the occasional blot of grease on them.

"Shouldn't we sedate him?" Dib called above the well of noise, fearing Zim's fear should he wake in the midst of their plan to amputate his prosthetics.

"No, no," his father returned, "his body cannot withstand any more of those sedatives. It'll only make him sick." And, without delay he shifted the first PAK leg so that it lay halfway across the bed, its pointy end hanging over the coverlet like a stiff tail. He stood over it, like an executioner standing over a prisoner readying to chop off their head. Then he lowered the cutter, aiming for the first joint leaning out of the port at the topmost configuration of the PAK. The cutter was now alarmingly close to Zim's actual PAK – the cyborgentic heart of every Irken.

Sparks flew, and the shriek of metal being cut was deafening. Dib pulled himself closer to Zim's general littleness, cupping his head into his arms and holding onto his mittens as his father bent, the cutter labouring as it ate into Irken material. There were colourful sparks of blue and gold: flaring upwards like the tendrils of a firework. They flashed into the glass of his father's goggles, and the lens of his own spectacles.

"Tougher than I expected." The professor confessed loudly over the procession of the hiss and shriek of the cutter tunnelling powerfully into metal.

Dib was pretty sure the subtraction of his PAK legs wouldn't hurt. He tried to think back on their glut of battles, trying to surmise if, during their private wars, they had been compromised before. Zim had gone through quite a bit of personal damage during their 'games' and he was pretty sure the PAK legs had no internal biological nerve structure – just mechanical. Zim remained locked deep in sleep, his good antenna pressed against his head, its length running under the blankets. His breathing and heart rate kept to a passive monotonic cadence.

Seeing these unchanging signs brought Dib immeasurable relief.

From the noise, Clara poked her head in through the doorway, having been woken from her sleep. She was in her pyjamas, wearing a pale cream gown. Her eyes, rimmed in fatigue, searched him and his father for an explanation to their collective madness. Dib noticed her and shook his head apologetically. "They've got to come off." He mouthed the words, worried his voice could not be heard over the constant din. She seemed to get the message, but looked no more enlightened. Just dazed. As if they had done great wrong by making a weighty decision without her consent. Then, watching the proceedings for about half a minute, she shambled away again, back to make some more coffee.

Dib sighed, gently dug his fingers into Zim's mittens, and watched his father deepen the cut down the first PAK leg segment. Within it was a whole hub of thick wiring, all nestled and compacted together like follicles, or fibres, made for precise movement from the cerebral PAK connection driven by Zim's brain. These too were severed through, exposing their filaments as they departed from the port. The professor got to the underside, not stopping until the whole leg was divorced from its mooring. Then, without its anchorage, it slipped down the bed and hit the wooden flooring, creating a dull, dead thump.

Dib watched its departure, feeling all the more heartbroken to see it lying there, now useless, like a severed organic limb. He almost expected to see blood trailing after it.

With it now gone, the port successfully closed, tucking all of its severed filaments back in, having been open all this time to emit the leg.

Three remained.

As if spared from all emotional grievances, the professor bent down and continued the thankless job, proceeding without pause to disconnect the next PAK leg. Dib tried to imagine what it would be like without them. Really, from a human perspective, it would make little difference. They were just cosmetic implements, designed to give the soldiers an edge to their combat styles. But to Zim it might be a horror personified.

It took his father a good twenty minutes to cut through and disconnect the other three. After each one was unceremoniously detached, the adjoining port closed automatically, as if relieved to do so. The metal dust leftover from the duty was all hoovered up, and Zim's protective blanket was dumped in the waste disposal unit. Free from such gangly things, Dib could now see what his father was trying to make him see. Without them, Zim was almost four times lighter, and they could finally get to him without these long things impeding their work.

The professor rested the legs out lengthways on a nearby bench, manipulating them so that they ran taut and straight. Now they looked like foreign museum exhibits from a lost age. And they too looked old. Each leg had its own history of marks upon its metal sheathing, showcasing all the dents, scratches and blemishes Zim had accumulated over the years, like a car's worn chassis. It implied their heavy usage: Zim's fallback tools. His stability. Now they were redundant things, lying here on this bench like discarded junk.

Even so, he admired their toughness, their alien elegance and reliable design. Though they now served little purpose other than to forever be a passing curiosity, Dib would always keep them.

And, ever the inquisitive overseer to all things paranormal, he scooped all four into his arms to better determine their weight. He was astonished at their combined burden. For a full grown human, the load wasn't all that much. They could weigh about as much as 2 or even 3 kilos, given their almost- hollow design, sleek flexibility and slenderness to better their fit inside the PAK and to provide the Irken with additional support. But nevertheless they had to be a burden on someone so small and equally as delicate: an inescapable weight Zim had to carry on his back at all times.

And now that he held them, cradling the military constructs in his arms as their flexing joints dipped downwards, causing them to run limp without consolidated purpose, he realized how very small and dainty they truly were. For years he had always imagined them to be larger and longer, having faced off with Zim and his PAK legs numerous times as a child.

Having not heard Clara come up beside him, she ran a hand round his back, and squeezed him. He reciprocated by leaning into her, his arms full of metal rods.

"Now it's just the barriers in here." She claimed, and she pointed to her head, indicating Zim's mental warfront.

Dib07: An old proverb - 'For things to change, old skin must be shed.'