Okay people, I know this might not be the best fic chapter ever, but I tried!  Also, it was done yesterday, but my editor-type-person ended up dropping out, and I had to find a new one. -_-0 sorry about that.

Another thing, eheh-heh, I've kind of hit a mini writer's block, so if anyone could tell me where they'd like this fic to go to from here…? 

Disclaimer:  if I owned it, well, I would have more than pocket lint in my pocket, I believe… (Translation: I DON'T OWN ANYTHING!)

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Foggily, Dib opened his eyes. Everything was blurry, something he wasn't accustomed to with his glasses. Then he realized, the metal frames weren't resting on his ears. And he was dry. The last thing he remembered was the street. And rain. The sky. The sky had been crying for Gaz and his Father. Just like he had been crying. So how did he suddenly become dry, and lose his glasses?

Confused, Dib sat up, squinting around the room as if it would help improve his vision. A blanket slipped off of his chest and lay in folds on his lap as Dib looked around, still confused as to where he was. Unfortunately, Dib's eyesight was so bad that without his glasses that, apart from the couch he was resting on, most everything else was an odd blur of color. The most he could tell was that the couch he was laying on was pinkish, and the floor of the room had some kind of ugly checkerboard pattern of bright red and dirty orange.

Dib blinked and finally noticed a shiny, reflective object standing in a doorway, where the color of the floor changed drastically from orange and red to purple and blue. The shiny object moved and yelled, "MASTEEEER!! THE BIG-HEADED KID WOKE UP!! Why is his head so big?"

Even more confused, Dib looked around the room, as if asking for an answer. He finally got part of the mystery when a familiar voice rang through the house. "Be quiet, GIR, I'm trying to mend these… things!"

A pang of uneasiness shot through Dib, he was in Zim's house. How he got there, he didn't know, but it wasn't good. A forlorn thought drifted through Dib's mind; would he be able to rejoin his family in the afterlife if he let Zim kill him?

Dib sat up quickly, tossing his legs over the side of the couch. Making a move to get up, Dib was quickly restrained by a metal cord that seemed to have come out of a painting behind the couch, high up on the wall.

Taking no notice of any of this happening, the metallic object Dib assumed was Zim's annoying little robot hummed and walked over in a carefree way to sit next to Dib on the couch. The TV was clicked on. Dib couldn't see anything happening other than a bunch of blobs of color moving on the screen.


GIR set to watching TV, and Dib watched the colored blobs idly, thinking morbid thoughts and continuing to mourn his lost sister and father. It took all his effort not to let the tears come again.

From what Dib assumed was the kitchen, he heard a couple of harsh words in a different language, said by a voice that was unmistakably Zim's. He turned his near blind eyes to the doorway GIR had entered from earlier, and saw a green colored thing walk out of the kitchen. The figure, which he assumed to be Zim, was holding something in his hands, and Dib got a sinking feeling, wondering if this would be the end of his life. Killed by his enemy after losing all that really mattered, while trapped.

Even Dib couldn't gauge how surprised he was when all that happened was his vision snapped into focus, and the house set him back on the couch, under the un-contacted ruby gaze of Zim. It seemed Zim had been in possession of his glasses, and had been cleaning them.

"What were you doing, stinkbeast, trying to get killed either by the germs or the cars?" Zim demanded, resting his gloved hands on his hips and glaring at Dib.

Dib's mouth had dropped open by this time, and he immediately snapped his jaw shut. A fleeting look of helplessness covered the human's face, quickly replaced by a mock anger that Dib obviously couldn't put his heart into like before. "What I do is none of your business, Zim."

Zim's eyes looked Dib over critically, but the shielded boy was too tormented by his inner thoughts to notice the loss of the usual fiery hatred that sparked the Irken's eyes before. Finally, the Irken asked, voice quieter than it was before, "Why won't you tell me why…?"

Dib glared at Zim again, and stood up. By this time, GIR was actually paying attention to Zim and Dib instead of the TV. "Because it shouldn't be relevant to you how I choose to die, or if I chose to at all." Dib's voice went shaky at the word 'die,' and the mask of anger broke for a second. If only a second, Zim saw the haunted, pained expression flit across the boy's face. "Why would you even care, anyways…?" Dib hissed, turning his face to the side and attempting to quell the wave of emotions rushing through him.


Zim resisted the urge to sigh, and turned his own head to the side, the other way. If the human was going to try and be difficult, well. He'd find a way through Dib's barriers somehow. "It's simple, Dib-monkey. I want to have the pleasure of killing you myself. You can leave now, the computer won't stop you." Zim turned, walking back towards the kitchen and the entrance to his lab.

Dib had turned his back on the Irken, biting his lip and clenching his hands until his nails bit into his palms, but despite this, the stream of tears still made its way down his face. Coming to something of a decision in his mind, Dib turned towards Zim, not caring how his enemy saw him, and spread his arms. Adding the finishing touch, Dib spoke, voice a bit unstable, betraying that he didn't want any of this to be happening. "Then, kill me now."

Zim stopped in his tracks and spun around, nearly falling with the speed he did so. The surprise was evident on the Irken's face. Even GIR seemed to understand what Dib was saying, and the implications of it, and the robot turned off the TV.

There was a moment of silence, as Dib's tan eyes stared across the room into Zim's ruby-red eyes. Zim straightened his spine, making sure his body was completely in his own control, and then walked slowly over until only an amount of inches separated the Alien and the human.

After a moment's pause, Zim reached out in an almost intimate gesture and wiped away one stream of Dib's tears. Retracting his gloved hand almost immediately, Zim looked straight into Dib's eyes and said clearly, "You're not dying today, Dib. Computer, restrain the Human."

Metallic vines shot out from the walls of the house and wrapped around Dib before the human could make a move. Dib was lifted up off of the ground and, struggling, he was taken by the computer down one of the halls in Zim's house into a bedroom of sorts. Zim turned, walked back into the kitchen, and flushed himself down to the lab.

The only figure left in the living room, GIR, finally deemed it the right time to watch the rest of his program. The TV snapped on, and the noises of an old monster movie echoed through the near-empty house.