Chapter 13: Morning's Light
FWAP!!
Dib unconsciously thrust the covers off of himself, nearly smacking his head against the myriad of medical instruments dangling over him. He found himself breathless, with a heavy pain pounding within his breastbone. Without another thought, the raven-hair boy eased himself back onto the bed's soft surface.
The first time he had awoken in a similar bed, in a similar room, he had been so scared.
Closing his aching eyes, Dib could feel with his fingers the IV that was jabbing into his wrist. Strangely, there was no pain at all, except when it bumped against the mattress, in which a dull sting would travel underneath his skin. The fact that he could smell his own distinct scent on the pillows resting underneath his head told Dib that he had been here for quite some time. But for how long?
Dib tried to remember anything, everything, that had happened from before……..the fight in Zim's underground lab, the esoteric dream that had occurred afterwards…….had it been only a dream?
The more Dib tried to concentrate, the more confused he became, and it wasn't long before his forehead began to twinge with protest. Everything felt fuzzy…….blurred almost, as if nothing had happened at all, that it had just been a figment of his imagination.
Nonchalantly, Dib rubbed his side, which felt sore and tender, but stopped when he found that his entire midsection was tightly bound in some kind of white bandage.
"How did……." Dib muttered, although he knew the answers already. They were waiting just beneath his skin, waiting to be acknowledged.
"So……it wasn't all just some bad dream……."
Sighing lightly, careful not to provoke the pain that dwelled in his lungs, Dib tried to recall the events from before, but found all to be lost in a haze, as if they were meant to be locked away, never to be remembered. He swore that everything felt so……..real……..but at the same time so extraordinary.
That white hot light he had felt pulsating against the skin on his face, the gentle hand that had been extended towards him…….it had all felt too real. Dib clasped his hands together, trying to unearth some rational explanation to how he was still alive.
"I should be dead……." He said sadly, eyes narrowing, black-hair limp and falling in a disheveled manner over his face.
"Nel……..she should have killed me…….for what I did."
A flashbulb memory struck him like an insane rhinoceros as his brain suddenly summoned the horrific images from before: the surgical knife clutched greedily in his shaking hands, the pleasure it had brought him to lunge it into Nel's chest cavity…….the look of pain and sorrow etched in her innocent eyes, red with tiredness.
Senses hindered by the enormity of it all, Dib shuddered uncontrollably, mind buzzing, fingers numb. He didn't want to believe that she was dead…….that he had killed her…….
But he had…….and he had been happy about it, ecstatic almost.
In the end, she had saved them all, she had killed Zim……..or so he thought……
"But if I'm still alive……then so is Zim," biting his lower-lip, Dib frowned a little, his memory clearing up like the lifting of the morning fog as the sun lumbers over the horizon.
"That still doesn't explain how I got here……."
"I-I brought you here….."
The voice barely reached his ears, but Dib still recognized the voice, and was snapped from his inner thoughts almost violently. Eyes dilated with surprise and mouth agape, he twisted his head around towards the door which was adjacent to his bed.
She looked like a portrait of some ethereal Goddess, even though she was sitting in a wheelchair that was much too large for her. Her hands could barely reach the wheels that sat on either of her, and there was enough room in the sit to fit another person entirely.
But he looked past all of that, didn't even notice that her tiny feet barely touched the foot rest, as Nel, a large bandage, similar to the one Dib had bound around his ribs, wrapped securely around her forehead. As she was wearing an issued medical robe, Dib was unable to see the identical dressing encompassing her chest, although he knew it was there.
The girl looked tired, deep bags drooping beneath her doleful eyes, but a slight smile was shining on her face to counteract it. Struggling to reach the rims of the chair's wheels, Nel slowly rolled into the room, eyes screwed in concentration, her diminutive arm muscles flexing.
Dib was speechless. It didn't even occur to him that he should help her, but it was all for naught….he was still in not condition to leave the bed. His ribs were still mending, his jawbone still cracked from the punishing blows dealt from Zim's steel-tipped boots and gripped hands.
"How……how……." Dib could barely form words, not to mention an entire sentence as the frail girl's wheelchair finally tapped against the side of his bed. He wanted to touch her, wrap his arms around to, anything just to prove that this wasn't a dream, wasn't his imagination, that she was alive…..that THEY were both alive……
"I couldn't…….I couldn't do it," sitting solemnly in her chair, casting her gaze into her lap, where her hands were now clasping one another. She had to catch her breath; it had taken all of her strength to travel through the facility to Dib's room.
She too remembered the altercation in Zim's lab, although it was much clearer then Dib's recollection. Even when she didn't want to, Nel could still hear the thunder overhead as it traveled through the earth into the laboratory, could still see the look of disgust and fury on Dib's face.
It had been her fault. Everything had been her fault.
"I couldn't kill anyone…….I don't want to be the monster you must think I am," Nel finally spoke again, forcing back a sob, "I had the choice……I had a choice for the first time……please forgive me……"
"Nel……." Although Nel had the fortitude to conceal her sorrow, Dib was now the weaker of the two, and tears tumbled down his face as he carefully took her face into his hands.
"I could never call you a monster. You were never a monster……that was me…….I don't even deserve to breath the same air as you."
His hands were calloused and rough, but to Nel, they were the only pair of hands that she ever wanted to feel against her face. Although her cheeks red with embarrassment and despair, she was still happy to be with him again……no matter what he had done in the past…….
She could see beyond all that now…….she could see beyond the ties to her lineage now.
It was nothing more then the past.
"Can you, can you forgive me, Nel," realizing that she was becoming lost in thought, Dib spoke again, a little bit louder this time. When she looked back into his eyes, he almost shuddered from the impact she had on him. With one look, Dib felt incapacitated, helpless almost.
"I……I didn't know……."
It was true that he had been tricked by Zim. However, it didn't make up for the fact that he had believed him, his one and only enemy the entire time, that he had made the decision to stab Nel, that he had almost killed her.
It had been his fault. Everything had been his fault.
He felt like a Neanderthal to have been coerced by the slime that was Zim. How could he have been so gullible, so childish……..the entire time he had been so absorbed with his "mission" that he failed to realize what had really mattered at the time: the girl who sat before him now, eyes downcast, probably on the verge of tears.
Dib could only imagine how much his immense betrayal was weighing down upon her.
Nel continued to gaze into his eyes, and in return Dib struggled to maintain eye-contact with her. Neither of them blinked, neither of them said another word.
The silence began to settle in. Dib wondered how long this was going to last…….he wouldn't have been surprised if she felt compelled to leave him forever in this bed, to never look back at his disgusting face again.
Any other person would have done just that.
"Dib…….I had the choice……." the icy silence shattering with Nel's hushed words, she slowly unclasped her fingers, and used them to pull Dib's hands away from her face. Dib felt the weight of conclusion crashing down upon him with her gesture, not sure what to expect except for her repulsion.
"I choose to live."
"I'll understand if you never want to see me again, Nel……" Dib said as she removed her hands from his, putting them back onto her lap. He momentarily let his eyes fall from her face, used his free hands to wipe away the tears that silently slid off of his cheeks.
"But please hear this……I…….I never hated you……..never……."
It took him by surprise then, as Nel pushed off from her wheelchair's padded seat, clumsily lunging onto the bed, into Dib's arms. With all of her remaining vigor, she held the boy in her lanky, thin arms, careful not to rest too heavily on his broken ribs. Nel could no longer hold back her emotions as she hugged Dib, as her own tears of happiness, as well as those of pain, freely sprung from her eyes.
Dib could feel his heart soaring now, thumping with elation as he returned Nel's embrace, still dumbstruck and half-confused.
"Dib," she managed to say as she reluctantly pulled away to look Dib in the eyes again. This time, though, there was an even broader smile playing on her lips, eyebrows pulled upwards, her eyes sparkling for the first time in who knew how long. Dib felt as if it had been an age since he had seen her smile so. With just this glance did he feel his own strength return gradually.
"I want to learn, learn what it means to be human……I may know about my origin, but I am still…….still a human…….please help me learn."
The emotions between the two seemed on the verge of boiling over as there lips finally met at last, their lonely hearts touching one another, becoming one. The boundaries of anxiety and misery melted away as they hugged one another, realizing themselves as two human beings, both equal, both needing one another.
Nothing in the world, not a World War, not an apocalypse or an Armageddon could bring Dib down to the realm of sadness now……not when he had his light to cling to, not when he had his Nel once more to keep him safe, his reason to smile and move forward.
He knew there would be moments of perplexity, of misfortune, perhaps even suffering. But those were all trivial compared to the second chance Nel was giving him now. This sacred child, this angel of his……his second chance at life.
It didn't matter if his father had created her, if she had been treated as a puppet, as some toy before……from this point forward, she was no longer a science project.
She was Nel, nothing more, nothing less.