Violet held a role of tape in her mouth as she attempted to wrap the end around her wounded shoulder without smashing herself with the black-handled metal scissors she balancing on her knee. Wandering into the room, Skoodge looked up at her and quietly commented, "You know, you could just ask someone to help you…"
"I'm taking care of myself, thank you very much," Violet muttered through the tape in her mouth. Of course, the tape made it come out as "Ith tahking care oth mythelth, thlank you vere muth."
Skoodge sighed and shook his small head as Violet dropped tape, scissors, and everything else she'd been balancing. She let out a moan of exasperation, slapping her fist against her forehead. "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" she shouted.
Quietly, Skoodge picked up the scissors and offered them to her sheepishly. She snatched them out of his hands. "Look, just don't start. No matter how nice or kind you are, no matter how non-judgmental of our height difference I'm capable of being, it wouldn't work! I have to return to my own dimension as soon as I capture Murderer Zim, and I can't take you back with me. Apparently having two of someone in one dimension screws things up royally…" she sighed. "So please, don't get attached to me! You'll just get hurt."
Skoodge frowned. "I'm not trying to help you because I'm attached to you! You just… you needed help."
Caught off-guard, Violet slowly kneeled down, letting Skoodge attend to the partially healed wound from where Tak's weapon had struck. "There, is that so hard?" he asked as Violet winced from the sting of the antiseptic.
"Actually, yes… it is… it means having to admit that I screwed up, and that isn't easy on the pride."
Skoodge set the bottle of medicine down. "I don't think you screwed up. Not everyone can be perfect all the time. Some of us can't even be perfect for a few minutes," he sighed, his voice far removed from the actual situation.
Violet sighed, then laughed a little. "You don't get it, do you? Don't make me feel like I'm starting to like you. I'll have to go back to my own dimension soon, and even a brief fling wouldn't work."
Stunned by her sudden outright statement, Skoodge laughed nervously. "What makes you say that?"
"I hate to sound like… well, like the rest of Irken society, but it wouldn't work! I mean, look at the difference in our bodies. You probably couldn't even reach my boobs."
After a moment of staring, they both broke into hysterical laughter. They laughed until their ribs ached, their lungs threatened to burst, and hot tears streaked down their cheeks.
Murderer Zim felt a hand tracing down his cheek, tracing the contours of his body. His eyes slid slowly open as he smiled down upon a tired-looking Tak, her eyes half shut. "Honey? It's four in the morning, what are you doing up?" he asked, sitting up in the bed that they were sharing. It wasn't designed for two Irkens and was somewhat uncomfortable to have them both in it, but he wouldn't have left her side for the world.
"Why did you tell Violet I was… expecting?"
Murderer Zim laughed. It had been a good little lie, hadn't it? "To get her to let you go. Violet would never, ever, EVER hurt a smeet. I know her well enough to know that. She acts like a tough bitch, but she's soft as ice cream underneath." Murderer Zim paused to chew on his lip. "That's why I never liked her, you know? She puts up a damn front."
"I put up a front, too…" Tak commented softly.
Murderer Zim paused, then sighed. "Open mouth, insert foot. I've yet to meet someone who doesn't put up a front. But Violet's… Violet's just ticked me off."
"You were jealous that she was close to Spork."
Murderer Zim put his arm around Tak gently. "You see right through me, babe… now, did you wake me up just to ask me why I told Violet you were expecting?"
"Mmmm…" she muttered.
"Tak?" Murderer Zim asked, concerned. "Are you okay? Do you need something?"
"No… just… tired…" she sighed.
"No, you sound sick…" Murderer Zim put a hand on her forehead. "No fever…"
She jerked back under his touch. "The wound… still hurts."
Murderer Zim frowned. "Let me see it." With those four words, he peeled back the fabric covering her skin. She jerked again, her eyelids shut tight to try and halt the salty tears escaping her eyes. Murderer Zim whistled, and not in a good way.
"I think it's infected…" he muttered, crawling naked out of the bed. "I'm going to get a first aid kit." Tak tried to protest angrily that she was fine, but Murderer Zim was already out the door and padding, au natural, across the base. MiMi, on constant alert, glared up at him as he walked by her, but he paid her no mind. Robot chicks weren't cute.
Passing by a reflective surface in the dark, he was a bit surprised by his appearance. The skin on his head was a considerably darker shade than the rest of the body. He almost looked sickly pale to himself in the mirror, and that wasn't sexy at all.
Whirling around, he admired his fine, hard ass. He didn't blame falling for him and his desirable backside. He would have fallen for himself, too, if he were female. At the moment, however, Tak's wound was a bit more pressing than admiring his short physique, so he continued on his way.
It's too bad more women can't enjoy my rear, he thought as he got the first aid kit down from the medicine cabinet. But, I really wouldn't want to make all the other guys in the Empire jealous. I mean, imagine what the tallests would do if they saw that I had a finer ass then them, Murderer Zim mused to himself as he thudded back across the darkened base.
Wait… imagine what the tallests WOULD do if they saw his ass. Not in a yaoi boy-love hentai way, but what if… no, no, the idea was too tempting. He couldn't… he wouldn't… he shouldn't… no, he could… he would… he should… yes… yes… that was it! The ultimate plan! Both his intelligent and carefully laid plans had failed against the stupidity of Murderer Zim… so why shouldn't an utterly stupid, brainless, horrid plan work?
"Tak, I've got the first aid kit! Tak… Tak?" The bed was empty. Murderer Zim groaned. "Don't tell me that girl is trying to get herself KILLED again!" he groaned as he rushed across the base, hot on her trail. "Tak? TAAAK! Where are you? Tak?"
He finally located her in her base, wrapped in the sheets from the bed and pacing around nervously, occasionally pausing to look into her empty experiment box. Murderer Zim raised an eye, confused as to what was going on. "Tak, I think you need to get back to bed… You're behaving very oddly."
"Oddly?"
"You scream at me if I even suggest you wear short sleeves. Wandering around the base in a toga isn't like you."
She sat down, tiredly checking a watch. "Boy, you males are dense, aren't you?"
He looked at the experiment box, which seemed to have occupied all her attention during the time they'd been there. Even when she'd been talking to him, she'd been looking at the box.
"Something going to happen in that box?" he asked.
"Oh, something's going to happen, all right…"
Violet woke up with a start. "I've been had!" she shouted.
Skoodge, who had fallen asleep in a semi-watchful manner, rushed into the room. "Are you all right? What's wrong? Your wound?"
"NO!" she cried, pounding the pillow with her fist. "Of course Tak isn't really pregnant! I made the mistake of once thinking I could confide in him and told him that I couldn't stand killing innocent smeets. Less than two days later Spork presented me with a nest and asked me to prove my loyalty by cracking all the eggs open and letting the smeets die! Of COURSE he knew saying she was with egg would be my weakness." She smashed her hand into the wall hard enough to leave a dent in the fake plaster. "I am such an idiot!"
"I don't think you're stupid," Skoodge said meekly from behind the chair he was using as the first line of defense between himself and Violet's wild fists. She was breathing hard, her antennae sticking up in a highly irritated manner, her eyes wild. "Most Irkens wouldn't have cared if they were killing a smeet or not! Doesn't that count for something?"
A hint of the acid left her eyes as she flopped back down into the makeshift bed. "You're right. It does," she sighed. "I just feel like I've been taken for a ride. I hate being taken for a ride."
"Hey, it happens to the… best of us?" Skoodge said with a mild shrug, although inwardly he hadn't quite yet come to terms with how many times the tallests had taken him for a ride by promising him status and positions they never truly intended to let him have.
Violet laughed, her voice cold as it echoed across the walls of Zim's base. It was the laugh of neither normal man nor woman, but the laugh of someone who has cultivated a displeasing taste for pain so fine it could be used as a needle. "I'm hardly the best of you."
"You might be if you stopped putting yourself down all the time." Violet stared hard at Skoodge, and he once again sought refuge behind a chair. He could only imagine what her muscular arms and legs could do to his tender, soft tissues.
"Oh… bite me!" Violet snapped, storming off to another base. The problem was, the advice Irkens most need to hear is never the advice they most want to hear.
Downstairs, Zim was in the process of concocting a giant, slobbering squirrel creature with flaming red eyes. "Now," he said aloud to no one in particular but the computer. "I expose it to the scent of that impostor Zim, taken from a scrap of fabric I ripped from his uniform during the fight, and expose the rabid flesh eating fur beast to it so that it will track down and devour that fake Zim. After all, this planet is only big enough for one Zim!"
As much as the computer felt it agreed with that statement, it felt obligated to interject. "But, sir, don't you have the same scent as Murderer Zim?"
"Do not question Zim's genius! I am the REAL Zim! Of course I smell different!"
"Unless Murderer Zim smells different from day-old nachos and weenie sauce, I really don't think there's going to be much of a difference…"
"SILENCE!" Zim shouted, flailing his arms in the air as he pushed the "scent inject" button. The squirrel coughed and blinked in irritation as an aerosol puff sprayed in its face. Zim pressed the button to release the squirrel… which, of course, headed straight for him.
Upstairs, Violet paused. "Do you hear Zim screaming?" she asked.
"Myeeeep," Skoodge replied, looking boredly in the direction of the bloodcurdling shrieks.
"Think we should save him?"
Skoodge looked down at his hands. "We should…"
"The tea will get cold," Violet interjected. "Let's finish our tea and then go bail out what's left of him."
Skoodge was about to agree. "Sorry… I'm just too nice of guy to let anyone suffer. Even if it is Zim we're talking about." With that, he pushed away the tea and headed off the direction of the screaming, laser drawn, hoping in all of his hearts that Zim wouldn't try to feed HIM to whatever was making those roaring and crashing noises downstairs.
Violet stared after him, letting her tea get cold anyway. She wasn't hungry or thirsty after that comment. Hadn't that been what her entire career as Spork's torture master had been about? Trying to relieve the suffering of the condemned, no matter what their crimes?
Violet rubbed her aching head, suddenly feeling more homesick than she had since her arrival. She wanted to go back to her own dimension. Things were clearer there, things made sense there. Everything here seemed to be in shades of gray that flowed together and turned into funny optical illusions before her dark, lavender eyes.
Not to mention that her small egg, Spork's only true heir by her, was waiting for her to return. She hadn't wanted to go to the other dimension, but the dimensional cross was wrecking havoc on her home dimension, and it was far too risky of mission for the new tallests to attempt themselves. So she'd become the default rescuer, leaving her egg in her universe's Tak and Skoodge's capable care while she hunted down Murderer Zim.
That tiny egg, more than anything else, was the reason she didn't want to get involved with Skoodge. If Murderer Zim's presence in the other dimension was causing trouble, then it meant she'd also have to return to her own dimension. Even if she could find a way to stay with him, what would happen to her son or daughter?
Violet dumped the tea into the sink. Cold tea was worse than no tea at all.
---
Promotional Ad for A Really Cool Story: www.fanfiction.net/ read.php?storyid=1402849
(Remove the space to make it work, ff.net has some kind of block on uploading html addresses.)