A/n: It's 2am. I should be sleeping, considering I have to wake up in 9 hrs to meet a friend for lunch and then work my ass off till 1am, slaving away for rude people who don't tip well, but I'm not sleepy yet, and I feel bad cos I haven't updated, yet, so, here ya go. Be grateful. Or something. The episode I'm referencing in here about Dib no longer pursuing the paranormal for a short time is one of the unmade ones. The script can be found in "The Closet" section of , if anyone's curious.

Disclaimer: I don't own Zim, though I do own all the DVDs (including a defective disk 5. Oh disk 5, why must you forsake me!! weeps)

For three years—up until our freshman year of high school—Zim and I played out our roles as "hero" and "short, green, megalomaniac alien bent on world domination". We were children (or had the maturity level of one) and fought as such, using water-balloons and muffins, with the occasional nano-mech or DNA warping serum thrown in for shits and giggles, because we were, after all, very intelligent children. He and I became central figures in each other's lives, so much that the one time I decided that maybe paranormal investigation wasn't for me, and attempted to take Dad's advice and study "Real Science", I was miserable and Zim spent a month on the couch eating snacks to comfort himself. I'm surprised it never occurred to be before high school that he and I had more in common than originally was thought. Both of us were outsiders, longing for the attention that only the other could lavish upon us. He fought for acceptance from his leaders and race, while I fought for the same thing from my family and peers. To each other, we were no longer invisible. To each other, we were important. To each other, we were everything. Which is probably why I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was that rainy November day when Zim's world came crashing down around him and he turned to me for help picking up the pieces.

I was making dinner that night (frozen pizza), getting ready to settle in for the night in front of the boob tube and "Mysterious Mysteries", when I head the knock. It was soft; hesitant. I called for Gaz to get it and then remembered that she was at the mall, camping out because the new GameSlave3 was due in stores at midnight. Glancing at the timer that I had set on the microwave, I hopped off of the counter where I had been perched and made my way to the door. I had almost reached it when the knock came again, a little softer, a little more hesitant, as if the caller was re-thinking his visit and was only knocking in hope that no one was home.

I was only partially surprised to see Zim on the stoop when I opened the door. No, strike that, I wasn't surprised in the least to see him out there. He had come by on numerous occasions to brag about one "ingenious plan" or another (after all, what was the fun in coming up with the plans if I wasn't snooping around to stop them?), but what did spark my curiosity was that it was raining. Hard. And by the smoke that was coming off of his arms and face, Zim had done a pretty half-assed job of bathing in paste before leaving his base.

For the record, Zim hadn't changed much since elementary school. But then, neither had I. Or Gaz for that matter. Zim had grown little over the past few years—reaching barely 5 foot even--but the spurt had been enough that he no longer fit into his Irken uniform, and had taken to wearing normal clothes to make up for it. At the moment he was wearing a part of low-riding blue jeans and a red button-down shirt with a pair of black converse hi-tops. The fact that he was wearing canvas shoes in this storm made me unconsciously hope that he had remembered to put paste on his feet, though I doubted it, considering the condition of the rest of his body. His wig was matted down to his head with the rain, though I knew that when it dried it would be magically reform itself back into the Elvis do that everyone had become so accustomed to.

I had ditched the trench coat long ago, though I still preferred black jeans and t-shirts with little faces or sayings on them. The surprising thing was that Gaz had adopted the coat one day from its place in the Goodwill bag, and wore it daily as an accessory to her whole "Skater-Goth" look. She claimed that it was only because it was the only one she could find that wasn't real leather (she had become a vegetarian after that whole "Shadow Hog" ordeal, and was not hypocritical enough to wear the skins of things she couldn't stomach eating), but I knew somehow there was another reason, though I never thought highly enough of myself to really search for it.

Zim and I stared at each other for a few seconds before he lowered his eyes and found something interesting to look at by his feet. I was taken aback enough by his show of submission that it jerked me back into the reality of the situation. Zim was at my door. In the rain. On fire (or close enough to it to be smoking). I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the house. He may be my greatest enemy, but I would rather he not be killed by his own stupidity. That was my job. Or something.

"What do you think you're doing?" I demanded, "It's pouring out there! What is so important that you forgot that whole 'being allergic to water' thing? You're newest plan to torment me could not be that interesting."

Zim was still looking at his shoes. "I…I want to call a truce," he muttered.

I wasn't sure I had heard him right. A truce? What was the catch? What was his angle? I voiced these thoughts without really thinking about it. My inner monologue had a tendency to be not-so-inner that way.

"There's…there's no catch. It's just…" He trailed off and suddenly looked up at me, "Can I have a towel or something? It's cold in here, and I seem to be wet." He asked, strength coming into these words that was absent from the others.

"Uh, yeah, sure, Zim. Hold on." I replied, hesitantly, turning towards the stairs. I turned back towards him, "Just so you know, in case this is a plan to lower my defenses or something, I'm just doing this 'cause you're dripping on the floor. I have the security cameras on, so I'll know if you move from that spot, Space Boy." We both knew that there were no security cameras in the house, but it made me feel a little better to threaten the alien. Things felt much less weird that way.

I made my way into the bathroom for a towel and, after a thought, to the clean laundry basket for some dry clothes the alien could change into. I settled on a baggier pair of Gaz's jeans (the ones she claimed were for "fat days", which just made me wonder about the sanity of the female population, seeing as I noticed very little change in my sister's body type on a day to day basis) as mine would be way too long for him, and one of my shirts that still barely fit from elementary school that I wore normally when working on Tak's ship. I retreated back down the stairs and was surprised yet again by the alien, this time because he hadn't budged from the spot he had been when I left him. He was standing just inside the door way, facing the stairs as if waiting patiently for my return. I began to wonder if Zim was seriously ill.

I tossed the towel and clothes to him and motioned for him to follow me back upstairs. I gestured to the bathroom. "You can dry off and change in there. Then I want to know what the hell is going on." I stated, trying to sound more grumpy than curious. He nodded and then lowered his gaze again as he walked into the small room and shut the door behind him. After a few minutes the door opened again, revealing a clothed and much dryer looking Irken, sans wig. At my eyebrow-cocked expression he ran a hand through his antenna and muttered, "It was wet. Made my head burn. I left it on the sink to try. You don't—"

"It's alright, Zim, that's fine. It's not like I don't know you're an alien. Now let's go back downstairs and you can tell me what this whole 'truce' thing is all about." He nodded and started towards the stairs. I followed him, closely, not wanting him to get the impression that he was welcome nor that I was comfortable with him being here.

I followed him into the living room where the first notes from the "Mysterious Mysteries" theme were coming from the TV. I glanced at it, and then back at Zim. Then, realizing what was more important at the moment grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. He and I sat on opposite ends of the couch and, after a few moments of awkward silence, he said. "I got a call from the Tallest, tonight."

I was unimpressed. "So?"

He sighed and looked down at his hands. He no longer wore his gloves and I could see that each finger was tipped with a small black claw. I remembered his excuse for that being an affinity for black nail polish. Something that got him beat up by an upperclassman who had called him a "fag". "They…they won't be calling me any longer. They said that the 'joke was no longer funny' and that they were going to block my signal frequency from now on." His words were coming faster, now, the emotion he felt taking over, "That I wasn't an Invader to start with. Which is true, I guess, seeing as how my Pak still has me coded as a 'Food Service Drone', but I am an Invader. I have to be. If I'm not than who am I?" I realized that he was no longer speaking to me, really, but I didn't mind. I was too busy trying to piece together the meaning behind his words.

"Your mission…it was a joke?" I asked, bluntly. He snapped out of is monologue and looked at me, his eyes pained behind his contacts.

"Yes. The…the Tallests wanted to get rid of me, I guess. They weren't expecting me to find a planed at all, actually. They thought I would just…wander around space for eternity. Die when my fuel and air supply ran out. Hell, they even put paperclips in Gir's head to make him stupid. They told me he was 'advanced'." He snorted, "And I was naive enough to believe them! Like that insane hunk of metal is advanced technology. Ha! He cares more about his stomach than his mission. Gods, I'm such an idiot." He let his head fall into his hands. Neither of us said anything for a long time. I didn't know what to say to him I was never god at comforting gestures, not really remembering the last time one was offered to me, and while his lack of a real mission technically made it so that he was no longer my enemy, he wasn't exactly my best friend. Or was he? This explanation he was offering didn't give reason to why he was here of all places. Then it dawned on me—I was all he had left.

It was then that the smell of smoke reached my nose and I remembered my pizza that was now burning in the kitchen. I swore under my breath and launched myself over the back of the couch, running towards the source of the smoke, praying that nothing was on fire. I opened the door to the oven, and, in my haste, grabbed the pizza with my bare hands. It was, of course, hot, and I pulled them away with enough force to send me flying backwards, a sharp pain in my tailbone announcing that I had landed on the floor. My hand reached back instinctively to hold my injured back, which made my mind remember that I had burned myself and I yelped again in pain. , which caused me to knock my hip into a kitchen chair, which caused me to grab that afflicted part of me, which made my hands hurt again, etc. My strange, painful dance around the kitchen halted at the sound of laughter from the doorway. Zim stood there, bent in half with his hands on his knees, laughing his head off at my predicament. And not his normal manic laugh, either, but a good natured sound just above a chuckle that I didn't know the alien was capable of making. After staring at him in shock for a few moments, I realized how ridiculous I must have looked and joined him in his laughter, in some strange way sealing our truce.

A/n: I think I'm gonna stop it there. The next chapter will be entirely a scene in the present to make up for the lack of that part of it here, but it's now 430am and I am already frustrated by my inherent lack of ability to type tonight for some reason. The backspace button has gotten more love in the past few hours than it does when I'm trying to type something drunk which says a lot for my mental state right now, I guess.

But I'll try and get the next chapter up with in the next few days. As always, it would be nice to get a few reviews to tell me how I'm doing. I was sad cos I posted the last chapter right before the freeze out before Thanksgiving and so I didn't get any feedback on it. I was really hoping for some, seeing as it was one of the more emotionally draining to write. Ah well. But a great big THANK YOU to all 5 of you who have reviewed so far. It makes me feel all warm and smooshy inside. (Mmm…smoosh filled goodness.)