Complications chapter 4
In the last installment, we saw Zim managing to both destroy the threat to Earth and collect the Cordanians' two prisoners. The Cordanians are less than happy with this turn of events, but screw them. They suck anyway. Dib has merely lost a lot of blood, but Gaz has had an alien device implanted in her skull. What, on Earth, can Zim do with his two passengers?
....can't believe this is happening, can't believe I'm doing this...
Moving with more concern for speed than safety, Zim's Voot Runner screamed down through the atmosphere of Earth, swapping the bejeweled blackness of space for a moonless cloudy night. The sticky orange light of streetlamps was the only illumination in the cul-de-sac where Zim lived, and by that light it is difficult to tell what is real and what is flickering shadow. Anyone watching the strange green house at the end of the road might have taken the Runner's landing for a waking dream, a trick of the dark. The stillness of a summer night once again filled the neighborhood, the faint high-pitched howl of the ship's jets cycling down to a standstill.
"Computer!" Zim yelled as he popped the cruiser's canopy and lifted Gaz out as gently as he could. "Prepare two therapy couches in the medical unit!"
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Red light pulsed regularly in the warm darkness. Dib drifted easily, sweetly through dreams, as he had done so long ago in his mother's arms. He was utterly weightless, suspended in a gentle world of comfort, aware only of a rhythmic rushing which he eventually supposed to be his own heartbeat. Somewhere in his recent memory he could sense an actinic rush of pain, but he was beyond pain now, far out beyond pain and pleasure, simply floating in the void.
And as the void embraces him, he begins to dream; and ceasing to dream, begins to remember.
Six years old, and running after his mother along the wide white beach they often came to on vacation. Six years old, still two years away from the glasses he'd wear for the rest of his life, one year away from the accident that would change his life forever. Gaz had been five, and could still get away with being carried piggy-back, but he was a big boy now, six years old, and he didn't need to be carried like some kind of baby.
Oh, how he'd wanted to, though. Especially afterwards, when there would be no more rides, no more swinging from their hands as they walked along. How he had wished he could never grow up.
Gaz hadn't wanted to understand. Neither had he, but he'd had little choice; Dad was no help at all, and none of the others seemed to come up with a convincing story other than the truth. She was dead; she was gone; she was missing in action, absent without leave, vanished, disappeared. The truck driver was mildly concussed and would be facing time for drunk driving. She was simply gone, along with the Volvo wagon and the shopping she'd done that morning. He had understood, but he hadn't wanted to.
And time shifts, and moves ahead suddenly as it does in dreams.
Ten years old, now, and hardened, at least as much as a kid hardens on the outside after years of struggle. Gaz was addicted to the games, and Dad scarcely spoke two words to them unless prompted. He was alone. Utterly alone. And in that loneliness he discovered his own obsession, and it became a companion for him in a world that had offered him little more than ridicule. His obsession was his life.
And what kind of a life is it? A darkened one, dimly lit by computer screens and night-vision goggles; a frantic one, ever-watching, ever suspicious. A life that allows no relaxation, no complacency, no fun.
But he is losing the thread, and the images separate like beads on a broken chain, and fall away from each other; and he is once more floating calmly and comfortably in the red darkness.
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Zim rubbed his eyes, bleary with exhaustion. Outside the night had given way to lemon-colored dawn, and birds were squeaking absently in the trees. He had managed to extract the implanted chip from Gaz's hindbrain, but he had no idea if she would come out of the coma the Cordanian drugs had induced.
When, he corrected himself firmly. Not if.
He looked down at her lying white and still under the pink glow of the vitamin-lamp, her violet hair slipping down the pillows like silk, like the strange silvery snow he'd seen on cold planets. She looked very vulnerable and very young, all of a sudden, and he found it hard to believe this was the girl who had saved his own life as well as her brother's with the skill of a seasoned medical officer. She must have had to grow up fast, Zim thought. Too fast. Was she ever allowed to be a child?
He smoothed the tumbled hair away from her face. Come on, Gaz. Fight it. You're stronger than this, I know you are, don't give up....
Abruptly he turned and fiddled with some of the monitoring equipment. This was utterly ridiculous; he had no reason to feel as concerned as he did; he was on this wretched planet to take it over and to subjugate the humans to his will. Why didn't he just toss them out to fend for themselves? Did they deserve his superior alien technology?
He couldn't answer that. Nor could he bring himself to destroy Dib, not even when the human lay utterly defenseless in the cradling arms of Zim's own medicomp. He stared down at that hated face, closed and empty in the depths of unconsciousness, and could not do it.
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There is a grey shore, a terminus where grey lapping water meets silky grey sand. Mists obscure the horizon, but it feels as if the water goes on forever; as if there is no farther shore. Figures are congregating on the mutable sands, silently. It is as if the ears have been covered with mouse-fur, utterly soft and very quiet.
Gaz waited, with the rest of them. There are no words spoken here; there is no need for them, as there is no need for tears, or joy, or gratitude. There is only the soft greyness, going on forever.
A dim shape takes form, out in the mists over the water. Gently it approaches the shore, pale waves lapping against its prow. The boatman wears a dull grey coat, and his hair hangs over his face; perhaps he has no face. He does not need one, here. With a slow rhythm the single oar rises and falls as he sculls the boat towards the land. There is no sound as it comes to rest on the grey sands. One by one the figures on the shore approach the boat, climb in, take their seats. The boat rides no lower in the water with each additional passenger.
And it is her turn, and she is not entirely unhappy to feel the old, smooth wood beneath her fingers as she begins to board.
But now there is a sound, from somewhere, in that furred silence. A sound which seems to cut through her daze like broken glass, and wake her heart again to pain she thought had ended. Someone was crying, somewhere, far away from the bitter peace of the grey shore.
No one has cried for me. Ever.
And in the mists she feels a hand take hers and press it, hot with desperation, holding her in a world that had given her up. The strength of that grip wakes her own strength within her, and she begins to feel the shore recede into blackness as she holds tight to the hand that pulls her back. She feels warm wetness on her face. Tears.
In the lab the howls of alarm signals stuttered and died, as Gaz's heartbeat smoothed out again, her breathing deepened, her brainwaves jerked back online. Zim bent over her hand, clasped in his own, his tears falling like rain. He had not known what it was to cry until she had begun to fail, and for long moments he had wondered what was wrong with him, what caused the hitching pain in his chest, the sting in his eyes. Only after his pale tears began to spot her pillow had he understood. He was grieving.
Irkens didn't grieve. It simply wasn't part of their mindset, their society.
But Zim couldn't convince himself of that, and he had bent over Gaz's limp hand, sobbing as though his five-chambered heart would break. He wished it would. He had never known such agony.
And suddenly it had happened—her vital functions revived, her chest heaved in a sudden deep breath. He was still in shock, still unable to understand what was happening to him, what had just happened to her, when she opened her great gold eyes and found him.
"You're.....crying," she murmured, something Zim couldn't identify flickering in the depths of those eyes. She reached up shakily and caught a tear on the tip of her finger, regarded it with bemused interest.
"...Gaz......" he managed, helplessly. He had not known his true feelings for her until he had thought her to be dying. What could he tell her? What could he tell himself? Irkens had no word for what he wanted to say. He doubted humans did either.
"Crying...for me...?"
"I thought you were dying!" he hissed. "Your heart was about to stop. I thought....I thought you were...." He broke off, burying his face in his hands.
Gaz's eyes flickered again. Slowly, weakly, she sat up in the bed, took Zim's hands away from his eyes, met his ruby gaze with her gold one. "Hush," she said, and kissed his hands, and put her arms around his neck, and kissed him softly on the lips.
"I...." he gasped. She cut him off.
"...love you, Zim. I love you."
He slid his hands into her hair and sought her mouth with his own, as a dying man in the desert would seek water. The tears that still welled in his closed eyes were tears of pure and unspeakable joy.
She moved all day in the protective circle of his arm, her head resting on his shoulder. Dib still lay under the medicomp's care, regenerating the blood he'd lost to the Cordanian experiments. Gaz's neck still hurt where the chip had been shoved into the back of her brainstem, but she would heal. Gir had disappeared somewhere after they'd returned from space, taking the money Zim had given him for cupcakes along. Presumably he was still ensconced at the 24-7, eating his way through the stock. Zim didn't care. He didn't care about anything except the unbearable sweetness of Gaz's presence in his embrace, the way she seemed to glow. It occurred to him that the cure she'd given him for the alien disease last month had inserted some human blood into his body. Perhaps he was being influenced by human emotions because of that.
He found, quite happily, that he didn't care. Irken relationships had no meaning for him. What he had discovered in that heart-stopping moment when he had thought Gaz was gone forever had changed him. It seemed that, after all, he could love.
Wheeee! Next: The Conclusion. What are they going to tell Dib? What is the Cordanian Guild going to do to Earth? How do they explain their absence to Membrane? And....most importantly....where did Gir go?