Note: I am personally unhappy with this part. Looking back I find that it is far too angsty and little bit OOC. Ah well. It gets better in the next part. :)

~~~

Part 2 - Hurt

Gaz knew it had been a mistake to see if Zim was okay. However she hadn't been quite aware of how incredibly bad that idea was until she actually got there. It didn't hit home until she stepped into a darkened room, and found herself at gun, or rather laser, point.

"Well, well," A snide but very familiar voice had cackled at her. "I see you've found a way into my base, DIB. Congratulations. Too bad for you that you'll never be leaving here... alive that is!"

Gaz allowed herself the smallest smirk. He thought she was Dib. Ignoring the fact that she was presently at laser point, she brought her arms forwards and held Gir's head out in front of her. "Do you want your robot back?" She asked dryly. "I found part of him."

She heard the gasp, rather than saw it. A muffled "What?" reached her ears, and then the lights flared on. She squinted even more in the almost too bright light, then brought her gaze down to focus on the little alien.

Zim looked terrible. Despite the fact that he held a laser gun in his hands and his voice obviously hadn't suffered any, the alien himself looked more than a little battered. His skin was no longer a healthy shade of green, but rather a pale pale near white color. There were dark hollow smudges under dulled red eyes that no longer gleamed sadistically like she remembered the one or two times she had seen him out of his human costume. "Gaz?" He questioned thickly as he stared at her. His hands dropped, the laser target falling harmlessly towards the floor. Then his eyes narrowed. "How did you get in here?" He asked suspiciously.

She shrugged. She was going to say 'the back way' but she was fairly sure than Zim didn't have a back entrance. "The front door." She said honestly.

"The front door??" Zim looked like he absolutely did not believe her. "The gnomes are programmed to destroy all humans that dare trespass on the property of ZIM!"

Gaz shrugged again. "Guess I'm not human then," She replied blithely. Ignoring the incredulous 'you're not serious... are you?' look the alien gave her, she reached around to her bag and pulled out the syringe the computer had given her. "The computer gave this to me." She said. "He said it's for you." She held it away from Zim as the alien reached for it. "Ahahaha." She reprimanded, burying it back into the folds of her trench coat. She gave the alien an appraising look. "Not until you tell me what's wrong with you, Zim."

Zim retracted his hand, giving her a wide-eyed look. "Wrong with me?" He questioned, sounding incredulous.

Gaz stared at the alien. Zim stared back, then Gaz watched as he seemed to think for a moment, then very deliberately pasted an innocent look on his much too pale face.

He was really bad at looking innocent, Gaz thought. She also found it very irritating when people played dumb with her. She gritted her teeth for a moment, then turned. "Damn it Zim!" She kicked a leg of a table which was situated off to her side. "Don't give me that." She said darkly. "I know there's something wrong with you."

Zim flailed his hand in the air. "ME?" He stated. "There is nothing wrong with ZI--"

"SHUT. UP." Gaz snapped. She took a bit of pleasure in seeing the alien blink at her, looking somewhat shocked. Hoping that she had convinced him to actually COMMUNICATE with her like a normal person, she continued, much more calmly this time. "Look at you. You look like hell warmed over." She sighed at the 'so?' look that flashed across the alien's face. "You haven't been in skool in over a week and your computer told me that you can't get better until you take this." She held up the syringe again.

"Oh." Gaz watched as the alien's lip curled up. "That's what that's for." He turned away. "Destroy it." He said with an abrupt wave of dismissal.
Gaz's jaw threatened to drop. After a moment she frowned. "Zim?" She questioned, confused. "But what...?"

Zim turned back around abruptly, a dangerous look on his alien face. "I said destroy it!" He hissed. And then he rushed at her.

More than a little shocked, Gaz just barely managed to leap out of the way as clawed hands came at her. She was on her feet in an instant, and running and dodging past tables in an attempt to get away. She could hear Zim following closely behind her, at least for a little bit, and wondered why she saw flashes of metal flying at her out of the corner of her eyes. She never turned around to look. Instead she made it to the back of the room and hunched down behind one of the tables; the syringe still safely clenched in her hands. "Not till you tell me what's wrong!" She shot back at the alien.

Silence followed her words... Zim didn't reply.

Swearing under her breath about stupid homicidal aliens, (or something to that effect), Gaz cautiously poked her head around the table to locate him.

Zim hadn't followed her all the way across the room. Instead he had slumped to the floor near the center of the lab, sweat or at least the Irken equivalent beading his brow. Even so, red eyes cracked open and he glared at her as their eyes met. "Nothing is wrong, stupid filthy human!" He spat at her in a low grating voice.

"Bullshit Zim." She snapped back at him, matching him glare for lethal glare. Ever so slowly she stood again. Sharp squinted eyes inspected the downed alien. "You're sick." Gaz said again. "You're probably dying." She held up the syringe, her brow beading with sudden concentration. "This is the only thing that can help you-- isn't it?" She asked curiously.

When Zim didn't answer her, she lowered her hand and started walking decisively towards the alien.

The alien's eyes narrowed as she approached. "I told you to destroy it!" he yelled at her.

Gaz shook her head. "I don't *think* so Zim." She returned. "I'm not leaving until you take this vaccine." She paused, then abruptly changed her mind on her plan of attack. "Even if I have to *force* you to take it." She added, a slight smirk curling the side of her mouth. With that she strode towards the alien with quick purposeful strides.

Zim's hand reached back and felt for something behind him, then swung forwards again with a sudden click. Gaz stopped dead in her tracks. She stared down at her chest where the red pinpoint of light sat again, then looked back up at Zim, her eyes wide.

"Don't come any closer," The alien instructed, his voice low and deadly.

For a moment Gaz just stood there. Then she smiled again, and continued slowly walking towards Zim. This time it was Zim's eyes that widened. His other hand came up, holding the laser gun steady. "I said *not* to come any closer, human!!" He practically squeaked with rage.

Gaz's eyebrow quirked. She suddenly had had an epiphany. She knew exactly what she had walked into here. She hadn't spent the last three years of her junior high and high skool life inadvertently hanging around the losers, goths and rejects of the skool not to know a suicide attempt when she saw one. Shooting yourself in the head, slitting your wrists or letting yourself die... it was all the same thing. She also knew that if Zim hadn't shot her already, he probably wasn't going to.

... Okay, so she was taking a bit of a risk. But then, who didn't take a couple of those over the course of their lifetime?

"Whatever Zim." She returned, the same odd smile pasted on her face. She kept her eyes focused on the aliens', refusing to look away. "You might be ready to die, but you're not going to kill me to get there."

For a fleeting moment she saw doubt in the alien's eyes. And rage. His hands trembled on the weapon. "How do you know human," He shot at her, his voice a low and deadly hiss, so very different than the manic cries and chortling she was used to. "I disassembled GIR..."

Gaz shook her head very slightly and continued walking. "I'm sure GIR can be reassembled." She said calmly. She was nearly there. Only a few more steps...

Zim was beginning to look desperate. The hands shook harder. "I almost destroyed your entire pathetic filthy *disgusting* planet!" He snarled.

Gaz's eyebrow quirked a slight bit at the mouthful, but her voice didn't change. "But you didn't," she returned smugly. Reaching out she calmly took the weapon out of the alien's trembling grasp. 'And you'll never been able to, will you?' She added silently in her head. 'If you can't shoot me, there is no way you'd be able to destroy the entire planet... too bad.'

She blinked, but she said nothing as she crouched down next to the alien. She stared back into his wide red eyes as she grasped the alien's arm and tugged the glove free. Then she looked down. Deliberately ignoring the small groaning sounds Zim suddenly decided to make, she rolled the arm over and pushed a bit of the cloth away from his skin. In one fluid motion she stuck the syringe into the pale flesh.

Zim jerked away from her quickly. Instead of lashing out, like Gaz half expected him to, he instead curled in on himself, clenching his arm to his chest. Somewhat concerned despite herself, Gaz lay her hand on the alien's pak. For a long moment Zim did nothing, and then she felt the pack under her hand shake. It was only when a strained sound reached her ears that she realized that Zim was... crying?

Something wrenched at a heart she was somewhat unaware she even had. "Zim..." She began, sure to keep her voice soft and unthreatening. She patted the pack, then switched to his actual back near the shoulder and rubbed it very very gently. "Zim..." She coaxed.

Zim didn't turn back to look at her, but when he spoke his voice was low and strained. "Do you realize what you've done?" He growled at her.

Gaz was silent. She didn't. She kept on rubbing his back though. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do.

Another soft sobbing sound came from Zim. "I wanted to die," he continued, his voice full of loathing.

That she did know. "I know you did," Gaz returned simply.

Zim turned over abruptly, and his glaring red eyes squinted at her. "And yet you didn't let me," The alien stated. "Why?"

Gaz pulled back enough to put her hand in her lap and looked up at him with the same calm look on her face as she had had the entire time. "Because I don't like seeing my friends die." She answered sincerely.

Zim gave her a brief startled look, then looked away quickly. "I'm not your friend, human!" He snarled.

Gaz shrugged. "Okay." She replied. She didn't move, only watched as the alien seemed to half curl in on himself, then righted himself slightly. For a very long moment he sat, with his arms folded across his legs. Then, slowly, he began to speak.

"They sent me here to die," He mumbled. He glanced at Gaz sideways, only to discover that the human girl was still looking at him expectantly. After a moment he looked away again and continued. "I didn't believe it. I refused to believe it. Even when people told me the truth, I just pushed it away. Even when they tried several times to have me killed somehow..." He stopped for a moment, before swallowing and continuing. "For years, I pushed it away." He whispered. "Even when I really knew it was true." He paused for a moment, placing his chin on his knee. Gaz when to touch his shoulder, hesitated, then pulled away again.

She waited.

She didn't have to wait long. In a low halting tone, Zim told her everything. Everything from his blotched mission on Operation Impending Doom 1, to convincing the leaders to let him be a part of Operation Impending Doom 2. The tiny insignificant planet they sent him too, on a mission that he was supposed to die on. The years upon years he spent trying to take over the planet and nearly always failed for one reason or another, most of the time because of her brother. The day, much more recently, when the tallest finally decided that they had had enough. "Leave us alone Zim." They had said in not quite as nice of words. "We don't want to hear from you or see you ever again. And if we do, we'll kill you, do you understand?"
He still was in denial, even at that point. It wasn't until he did contact them again, and then it had come. Right from the Armada its self, a mysterious package. Therein contained was a device that blew the lower portions of his base to bits, almost to the point of un-repair. However he had designed his base to take a lot of damage, and it had repaired its self anyway and fairly quickly. Not nearly quickly enough... because by the time it was done he had realized that he was dying.

"There was something in that bomb," He said, almost wistfully. "I started getting weaker. It only was about a week ago that I realized... what a compete fool I had been." He shook his head. "I realized that I had nothing left but you stupid pathetic HUMANS. And then... and then I went to skool and realized that I didn't even have that." He turned to her then, his red eyes blazing with rage. "I was angry. I was so angry. I am ZIM! I was going to kill ALL of you filthy worm monkeys, take out your world with one magnificent blast originating from this location." He pointed to the floor with a grand flourish. "I told the computer to start working on another bomb, a bomb that would blast this pathetic mud-ball to bits. And do you know what I discovered?" He sneered right in Gaz's face, and the girl calmly backed off a bit. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT I DISCOVERED???" He shouted.

Gaz shook her head soundlessly, one of her eyebrows raised.

Zim put his head in his hands. "I discovered that GIR... that stupid, meddling, insane THING," he made a violent gesture in the direction of the disembodied head Gaz had brought into the room with her. "Had told the computer to focus all of its energy on finding me a cure. They ganged up against me! Their master!!" Zim held his head in his hands. "And no matter how many times I yelled at them, and screamed at that stupid DISOBEDIENT computer, and *hit* it, it wouldn't relent. That computer refused to let me leave this disgusting mud ball in the blaze of glory that I- ZIM- an elite Irken Invader-- deserved!"

There was a long silent pause. Then -- "So I think I went insane." Zim said softly.

Gaz stared at him, refusing REFUSING to let herself smile. It's just that Dib had accused the alien of being insane... how many times? When the alien turned to glare at her she merely looked back at him solemnly. "I tore Gir to bits. I locked down the base. I retreated to this room, assured that if I would be joined by anyone it would be your meddlesome brother. I RELISHED the knowledge that if he came I would at least have the delight of being able to destroy him, DEFEAT him, and rid myself of his filthy human disgusting-ness, once and for all!" He shook his fist in the air again, then lowered it slowly.

"Instead I got... you." He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. "You Gaz." He stared at her. "What are you doing here? Where *is* your meddlesome brother?"

Gaz shrugged. "At skool." She replied.

"And he did not wish to come to witness the final moments of the life of ZIM?" Zim asked.

Gaz shook her head again. "I'm sure he would have loved to, but he couldn't get in," She pointed out. "I came myself." She added.

Zim gave her a beseeching look out of the corner of his eye. For a long moment he just studied her, and then his antennae fell back across his head. "I wanted to die." He said, sounding more than a bit put out.

"But you didn't." Gaz replied.

He looked at her.

"Do you still?" Gaz asked after a moment.

"I--" Zim faltered. Gaz raised her eyebrow again as she watched Zim. It looked like the alien was visibly struggling with her question. He sighed.

"I. Don't. Know..." He finally muttered, so softly that she could barely hear him. This time the small alien did curl in on himself, his head lowering to finally thump gently on his knees.

Gaz was silent for several more seconds. Then she lifted an evaluating eye at him. She thought for a moment, then decided on a course of action. "Well," she said abruptly. "Come on." Reaching out she grabbed Zim by his arm and bodily hauled him to his feet.

"What..?" The alien stumbled slightly, uncertain as what to make of this new change of events. "Where?!" He demanded to know as Gaz began to drag him towards the door.

Gaz turned and gave him a harsh appraising look. Zim almost seemed to wilt under her scrutiny. Then she did something she rarely ever did on purpose-- she smiled. "We're going to my house." She announced, turning back about and continuing to pull the alien after her.