A/N: It's funny how...

...despite this story being virtually dead, with very few (if any) readers left to read it, I still feel compelled to work on it from time to time. Not always for the sake of the story, mind you, but more so for the occasional urge I get to write SOMETHING fandom-related. My other stories have all died off at this point and I no longer have any role plays to look forward to when the itch to write hits me out of nowhere. But this story will always be a place to come back to, no matter how inactive I become in the present or future. It's all I really have left in the art world nowadays as my lack of activity has made posting anything else for the most part pointless. And yet, despite that, I don't know why I feel it necessary to keep uploading this story when I could simply write it for myself (which in many ways, I do). Oh well. I guess talking to myself, whether online or off, will always be a habit of mine. I don't know whether my writing is getting better or worse, but at least it's something to come back to whenever life circumstances become too overwhelming. And life really has been incredibly overwhelming as of late.

It's taken me a while to get this chapter posted, but after dealing with unexpected health concerns in my cat, a 4 a.m. 911 call, and issues of sexual harassment at work over the past 2 months, I've finally managed to finish SOMETHING worth posting. It's not perfect by any means, and if I had it my way, I'd likely keep tweaking it for another few months, but it's time to move on and start work on the next chapter to this story. So sorry for any spelling or grammatical errors that may still exist inside the narrative. I'm trying to be better about that but still seem to struggle with the overall word flow in my writing. Hope anyone still reading this story will enjoy the update regardless. :)

ZADR Orange Chapter 205

Warnings: Extreme OOCness

Rating: M for later chapters

Disclaimer: We do not own Invader Zim, nor any of the characters from it. We do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Zim: Notgonnadie

Dib: Me

Enjoy. =3

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Feeling at a loss for words when he registered the distress infused to his mate's vehement interjection, Zim could do little more than stare back at Dib with sorrowful eyes and a deflating posture. He hated seeing Dib in such a state of inconsolable anguish, but with few alternatives available to mitigate the consequences of his own foolish actions, Zim could only direct his gaze elsewhere and heave out a sigh of compliant surrender. "I don't know..." he finally admitted after a moment's silence had failed to provide him with a reasonable answer.

"What's going on? Tell me what happened." the professor tried once again to procure an explanation from one of his two kids, staring back at them all the while until suddenly it dawned on him that something was amiss with his son's outward appearance. From where he was standing, he could just barely make out the other's eclipsed outline, which the hybrid had been attempting to conceal from him by way of remaining back first to him unless hidden behind the contour of his sister's withstanding cover. "Dib? What happened to you?" he attempted to once again take another step towards him, though this time he could more easily detect the rigid endeavor of his son's evasive movements.

"That's none of your business!" Dib snapped without delay, promptly taking a more defensive stance behind Gaz and half curling around his large belly for protection. He couldn't allow Membrane to come within proximity of him again. With his pregnancy now beyond the point of being imperceptible, there was no telling what the professor might do to him were he to discover the truth behind his current condition. Dib took yet another step back to avoid the man's intrusive gaze, all up until a sudden cramp in his abdomen had him freezing in his spot and collapsing to his knees in the wake of a false contraction.

"DIB!" both Zim and Membrane exclaimed simultaneously, though the latter was the first to spring forward and position himself near to his son's hunched forward form.

Immobilized in his spot by the swift twinge of discomfort, Dib could do little more to halt the professor's sudden advance than meet the hasty sprint with a lethal glare.

Membrane stopped in his tracks at the unexpected scowl. While such a look would have hardly come as a surprise if deployed by his daughter, he couldn't say the same was true of being stared down quite so hostilely by his son. There was more to it than just mere resentment though. Below the simmering surface of malice, there resided an under layer of unspoken terror in his gaze. He'd have to tread carefully going forward, he decided, despite the instinctive urge he had to ignore the warning glare and get right to the bottom of what had driven them to this point. As a man of science, it didn't sit right with him to be lacking in all the facts, but as a parent, he couldn't simply disregard the evidence that at the heart of this situation, he was somehow to blame.

When Dib next opened his mouth to speak, the words that left him did so on a hiss of quickly steadying pants. "Stay...away..." the demand remained as cold and inhospitable as the frown that had preceded it.

As the tightness slowly subsided to a mild ache in Dib's midsection, it was only then that Zim rushed to his love's side to cradle him in his arms. "Dib! Are you alright!? Is it real!? Oh, Irk, please not yet." he fussed in preoccupied trepidation. As shocking as Membrane's sudden appearance had been, the thought of Dib going into labor earlier than expected had him feeling far more on edge than anything else in that moment.

"Is what real? What's going on with my son!?" Membrane practically begged for an answer to even one of his previously-stated inquiries, his prior curiosity over the matter quickly turning itself into panic now as he stared at the pliant form of his son nestled against Zim's front side. He wished to run up to Dib's side as easily as Zim had just done but feared that getting any closer to the duo would only result in a further exertion on Dib's part to put as much distance as possible between them. So he stayed put where he was for now, staring on from his spot with a look of uneasiness that contended with Zim's own.

Settling in Zim's arms when the other drew him near, Dib nuzzled the Irken's collarbone and lifted a hand to brush his ashen cheek. "N-No...I think I'm fine..." he reassured softly, not wishing to cause Zim anymore worry. "I-It was just a false contraction..." he then lowered his voice to a whisper so his father wouldn't hear him.

Still feeling far from assuaged by the gentleness Dib funneled into his voice, Zim tightened his hold on the hybrid before managing a sad smile. "I'm sorry...I wish this didn't keep happening..." he tried to offer his own extension of tenderness.

"Don't be." Dib sighed and forfeited what remained of his existing tension to Zim's affectionate attentions. "I think they're just upset." he spoke calmly now, though his breathing remained heavy in the aftermath of hysteria Membrane's presence there had elicited. He knew all this stressing out had been at least one of the contributing factors into that sudden contraction but couldn't help the fact his current disposition was anything but composed. Closing his eyes on a wave of immediate exhaustion, Dib then forced his body to sink lifelessly into the folds of Zim's arms.

Alarm nudged against Membrane's better judgment again as he watched his son's guard drop as limply as his body had. This might be his only chance to uncover what was actually going on here. Hesitantly, he moved to approach Dib once again. "Dib? Are you alright?" the words came cautiously at first followed by a stretch of his hand to perch upon Dib's enlarged midriff. He froze when a sensation of movement stirred beneath his palm. It brought to life a vivid recollection of something he'd experienced before. "You're..." the words barely had time materialize upon his lips before Dib sprang back to life with a jolt and slapped the extremity away.

"Don't touch me!" the reflex was nearly as startling to Dib as the action that had spawned it. With wild eyes, he scurried back instinctively and pinned the core of his mass to Zim's sheltering torso. He knew what his father had just felt though and could see his awareness of what should have been implausible growing by the second. While it was true the professor had been ignorant for a majority of Dib's early life, no one could rightfully accuse him of being stupid on top of that. He knew what this meant, and even without seeing what lied behind the boundary of his goggles, Dib could see clarity unfurling in the way that Membrane was gaping at him now. It forced a torrent of penetrating turbulence to twist his stomach into knots again, causing his muscles to tighten in dread of what the professor would say next.

Membrane struggled to find his voice at first, his mind and sense of reasoning lost in a sea of repudiation. Despite recognizing the sensation as hauntingly familiar, he waited with bated breath for reality to invalidate his initial hypothesis. Surely this had to be a dream, he told himself, as he sat in preparation for his consciousness to rip him away from his kids again. When nearly a full minute had passed by with no such occurrence transpiring though, he then reached for his arm without hesitation to pinch at his skin with two fingers. The cursory twinge of pain dismissed any remaining doubts. "But...how?" the words finally emerged from their prison as all traces of logic fled from his brain. Looking back and forth between Zim and Dib, his facial features then turned grave as the moment's shock painted his face white.

Without answering the man's faltering question, another jolt of panic traversed through Dib's nervous system in forewarning of what would come next. There could be no avoiding the truth now. His father was aware of the situation and already searching for an explanation. He couldn't reveal the details that had resulted in his pregnancy though. If he did, there could be no avoiding Zim's own exposure. The very thought had him lurching in his spot to a doubled over position.

Eyes widening, Zim held onto Dib in a tight bear hug and rocked his body deliberately to settle the rattled hybrid. "Shhh...It's okay, Dib. It's okay. Calm down or you'll hurt yourself." he shushed the teen gently, trying to quell the unstated distress that was quickly taking hold of him. In that moment, he could decipher the other's concerns at a glance and knew he'd have to take charge at this point of whatever consequences awaited them going forward. With little more than a slight tilt of his head, he then met the gaze that had as of yet to leave them.

When Zim met his eyes again, Membrane held them in a deadlock. He wanted answers, and because he knew there were none to be obtained by questioning his son, he focused his attention on the only other one there he assumed could be the father. There was simply no mistaking Dib's condition for anything else. Everything, from Dib's shape and the movement inside him to the contractions that came without warning, was exactly the same as he remembered them from the time of his wife's own pregnancies. Somehow, his son was indisputably pregnant. "How..." he began again, trying to keep his voice level and impassive. "How did this happen? How is this even possible?" he solicited a response from Zim, hoping that in some way, it would cohere with even a shred of conceivable rationale.

Zim tightened his hold on Dib, the professor's sedate tone putting him more on edge than the query itself was. "You honestly don't know how your own species reproduces?" he returned in a voice just as collected as he'd answer any other topic of scrutiny with.

"STOP PLAYING GAMES WITH ME!" the professor then erupted, reaching out to grab hold of Zim's collar so he could yank the disguised extraterrestrial up onto his knees. "He's not female! So how is this possible!?" he demanded again, this time losing his cool to a hasty surge of temper that had been building since the moment he'd confirmed this wasn't a dream. Struggling to maintain control of himself as he bit back a fugitive curse, he then continued his interrogation in the same brusque tone one might accuse someone of committing a crime with. "It's not physically possible for a male to become pregnant. Not a human male, anyways." he reasoned gradually. "So then just what exactly are you!?" he shook Zim in his grip, his brows knit into a surly scowl that only defined the look of desperation the rest of his mental intellect was conveying.

This time it was Zim's turn to lose his composure. For the life of him, he'd tried to be patient with the human. But his tolerance was quickly splintering and he could already feel his hands forming themselves into fists for how desperately he wished to punch the man in front of him. With an icy glare, Zim grounded himself to the floor with unanticipated strength before hurdling himself up abruptly to force to professor into a sitting position. "I AM IRKEN!" he roared as he tore the wig of his disguise off and towered above the fallen Membrane. "I'M AN ALIEN! Your son has been right about me this entire time and all you've done since day one is PATRONIZE him! And of course, once you found out he was gay and in love with me, you flipped your lid and disowned him! So you can just BACK OFF!" Zim shoved Membrane away from him, effectively tossing the man a good few feet away from them as he stood at the ready to protect Dib if need be.

Releasing his hold on Zim at the shove and hitting the ground hard upon impact, Membrane braced himself against the floor with a groan, half preparing himself to hurl back a few choice words of his own until his eyes caught upon Zim's true appearance. He froze at the sight of genuinely imposing antennae and the exposed mechanical limbs that had sprung out in Zim's defense. This had to be a dream, he told himself again. A NIGHTMARE EVEN! Speechless in the face of what truly appeared to be a bona fide alien (and a seething one, at that), Membrane scrambled away from Zim in horror, as though he were the devil himself. "Y-You...You're lying!..." he choked out in denial, all the while looking to Gaz and Tak for even a smidgen of collateral disbelief. "You're lying! EVEN IF I DID BELIEVE YOU ABOUT BEING AN ALIEN, THAT STILL DOESN'T EXPLAIN HOW IT IS THAT MY SON IS PREGNANT!" he hollered his argument again, his world beginning to spin now as he darted his eyes to each bystander currently watching this madness unfold.

Narrowing a look of disgust onto the raven-haired man of science, Zim watched with blatant disregard as the man started to sway unsteadily. "Because I made him an alien too." he clarified, in spite of a part of himself that no longer felt obligated to explain his actions to anyone. In that moment, all that mattered to him was Dib's safety. He didn't care what he'd had to disclose in the process. He knew the stress of trying to explain his way out of such an impossible situation would only serve to fluster the still shell shocked hybrid.

Within a matter of moments to that confession, Membrane could feel himself starting to tremble. It wasn't possible, he told himself again, as his gaze swept the room once more before landing itself onto Dib. If such a thing had actually occurred, then why was it he hadn't noticed the change before now? To him, Dib was nowhere NEAR as green as Zim appeared to be, his complexion having only gained a whisper of jade to it following his transformation. And his antennae, which Zim so boldly advertised now, were still hidden in the soft tufts of hair that had always been a characteristic of Dib's natural appearance. Yet the swell of the teen's unmistakable baby bump and prominence of his pupiless honey-gold eyes faced the professor with a paradox that even his level of intellect couldn't unravel. Again his body wavered as he absorbed his son's extrinsic features. It was too much, and before he could fight off the nerves that were wreaking havoc on his sanity, he saw his surroundings blur as a curtain of darkness encroached on his quickly faltering consciousness.

Standing back in silent observation, meanwhile, Tak clicked her tongue on a snub remark as she watched Membrane crumble to heap at the center of her living room. She then turned to face the lavender-haired girl stationed diagonally behind her. "Well, I suppose this explains now where your brother got that tendency to faint from." she commented blandly, all the while lacing her words with that same callous sass she most often responded to most minor annoyances with.

"Oh, will you just SHUT UP!" Zim sniped after a moment's silence had managed to neutralize the prior tension. To say the very least, he wasn't in the mood for haughty retorts right then as he turned himself back to Dib and attempted to offer him some comfort. A flurry of movement quaked beneath his attentive petting, signaling the distress that even their smeets could easily detect.

Shooting Zim a glare for the unsolicited back talk, Tak otherwise ignored the male's insolence in favor of keeping her focus trained on Gaz. If anyone was going to be in the right head space enough to decide what happened next, it would no doubt be her. "So, what would you suggest we do with him?" she inquired coolly, creasing a frown of indifference to her face as she gestured with one hand to the prone body of the professor. To her, it wouldn't matter what course of action they took to resolve this, her own identity still safe for having had the forethought enough to don her disguise prior to opening the front door."If we leave him as is, there's no telling what he might do. But if we wipe his memories a second time, no doubt he'd just go back to searching for you two, same as he did the first time." she surmised matter-of-factly.

With an irritable sigh, Gaz reached to pinch between her eyes. If there was nothing to be gained from repeating the same action, then maintaining things as they were seemed a more sensible recourse. After all, what good would it do them to live in constant paranoia that they might be discovered again? It was nuisance enough having to deal with it even now, let alone multiple times in the future. Lifting her gaze to Tak's, Gaz then nodded to confirm her decision. "Leave him then. We might as well see what he has to say after waking. In the meantime, do you have a cell or some sort of holding chamber we can put him in until then?" she asked, figuring it best they not take any chances.

"Will a cage do?" Tak offered as she snapped her fingers once to signal her computer's compliance. Without so much as a groan, the computer obeyed and deposited a widely-set cage into the center of the open living space.

Gaz eyed it with ambiguous scrutiny. "Yeah...I guess that will do for now." she concluded before stepping up alongside the female extraterrestrial to assist her with the task of hoisting the man into the barred enclosure.

Hardly paying the two females any mind at all meanwhile, Zim remained immersed in his attempts to alleviate his mate's lingering anxiety. Though the hybrid remained silent in the midst of his sister's forward-thinking proposal, Zim could see in the frail color of his cheeks that the teen was visibly shaken still. It made him wonder whether he'd made the right choice in revealing his identity the way he had. Second-guessing his decision, he tilted his head forward to rest against Dib's forehead. "I'm sorry..." he apologized meekly, suddenly feeling guilty for the state the hybrid was in. There could be no fending off the ramifications that were certain to follow them now.

Quivering in Zim's arms for a further handful of seconds, it wasn't until he heard Zim's apology that Dib finally managed to pull away from the Irken. With a dazed expression, he traveled his eyes up to meet Zim's. "S-Sorry?" he repeated the word wearily. "But for what exactly? You haven't done anything wrong. I should be the one apologizing to you for all that." he stated simply, feeling awful that Zim had been forced to get involved at all. Despite what the other believed in that moment, he knew the risk that Zim had just taken had been for one reason and one reason only: the sake of his and their smeets' well being. "I love you, and nobody, not even him, can tell me otherwise." he resumed resolutely. "It's just not fair that you have to be taking his shit too now." he spat out his words derisively as he leaned himself forward to once again bury his face into the front of Zim's uniform.

Drawing Dib close to him when the other absolved him of any fault in the situation, Zim merely shook his head at Dib's argument and dismissed it with a sigh of objection. "That's not true, Dib. You know that better than anyone else here. I'm the one who made him forget in the first place...And because of me, you're now having to go through this all again." he countered repentantly, hating himself for the pain he'd caused the other as a result of his thoughtless recklessness.

"It's worth it so long as I can be with you in the end." Dib breathed out on a shaky exhale, nuzzling the Irken's neck and permitting his antennae to play on Zim's cheeks affectionately. They'd already been through far too much to allow anything of the sort to come between them again. So clinging to Zim even tighter, he resolved not to be beaten by this unprecedented development."...Besides, it's not like I'm not used to this sort of thing already...He's never been one to listen to us. It's been that way since practically the time that our mom passed away. So I can't see why he'd start now." he pretended not to be affected by the frankness of his words, though his voice wavered on a note of broken wistfulness. He just had to keep reminding himself that this was nothing new to him. There would be no point in dwelling on the temporarily fleeting notion he'd had that the professor actually cared about them, let alone believed any of what he'd just witnessed with his own two eyes. The man still hadn't accepted any of what Zim had told him, even after the other had exposed himself as an alien and asserted his sanity as being of sound mind. "...Maybe...we would just be better off wiping his memories of our existence altogether..." he suggested. "After all, at least then, he wouldn't feel compelled to look for what doesn't exist to him." he said in a whisper that belied his genuine feelings about the matter.

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A/N: And there you have it for Chapter 205. Until next time~