A.n: Ok, so I said that this was going to be a one shot, but I ended up having a few ideas float around my head, and since my Wonderful Reviewers had some questions, mainly centering around the whole "Zim had lungs" thing, I decided to continue it.
Thank you do much to everyone who reviewed. You are all awesome. Totally. Dude.
DISCLAIMER: These things are annoying. I know that I don't own IZ; You know that I don't own IZ, so what's the point?
One Last Try
PART TWO: Gaz.
"Damn him! Damn his stubbornness, damn his stupid big head, damn his inability to see when someone is trying to help him for a change!" I muttered, kicking the side of my desk before throwing myself into my chair. The pointed toe of my heel made a dent. I didn't care. I propped both elbows on the desktop, cradling my head between my fists.
"I take it that things didn't go so well with your brother?" my secretary, Paul, asked, his tall, slender body leaning on the doorway. I glared at him through the hair that had fallen into my face. He smirked at the look that, when I was a kid, would have sent a man his size running for the hills. "Guess that's a no."
"I don't understand him, Paul." I stated, lifting my head and kicking back in my chair, "I'm giving him a way out! All he has to do is admit that Zim was human and he'll get out of that goddamned Insanity plea. A few years in prison is nothing compared to the rest of his life stuck locked up in here."
Paul pushed himself off the doorway and slid across the room towards my desk. That was how he moved—he slid, floated, slinked. He moved like a predator, a lion stalking his prey. His thin frame and sharp features reminded me of a knife. He made himself comfortable in one of the chairs situated on the other side of my desk.
"You know, if he's so insistent on this whole 'alien' thing, maybe being in here is what he needs." he offered.
I gave him another of my patented death glares, "My brother is not crazy, Paul," I informed him, my voice low, dangerous, "he's just confused, that's all.
"He must be pretty damned confused to think that the guy he killed had a…what was it called?" He grabbed a report from my desk, scanning it over, "Speelysnooch?"
"Squeegaly-spooch." I corrected, snatching the paper from his hand, "He thinks that Zim was an alien and his bodily functions were controlled by an all encompassing organ called a squeegaly-spooch."
"Yeah, that's it. Man, where did he come up with something like that."
"He always had a wild imagination." I answered, my eyes downcast.
"Obviously." Paul scoffed, "And he won't believe otherwise, even though you've shown him the documents from the coroner?"
I shook my head in the negative, a small twinge of guilt forming in my stomach. I knew why Dib wouldn't listen to the documentation—it was because he knew just as well as I did that the information on them was false. He knew because he had studied what Zim was for most of this life, and I knew because I had bribed and blackmailed the coroner into writing the report that I now held in my hands. It was amazing what a few hundred dollars and proof of postmortem sexual intercourse reported from more than one body coming out of his lab could do. The city coroner would know next time to at least wear a condom. The thing that got me the most is that my "blackmail" was all a rouse—I didn't know that the guy had an unethical fetish for cold flesh, I had just made a lucky guess. Nothing like a guilty conscience ripe for exploitation.
"So what are you going to do, now? The trial is tomorrow."
I shrugged, sighing, "I guess I just have to write up the report saying that he's mentally incompetent and unfit to be a part of society. He'll be convicted, tomorrow, and be stuck in one of these little padded rooms for the rest of his life." I pounded my fist on the desk, causing the lamp and my collection of random nick-knacks to shake. A picture fell over. I sighed again.
"I still think that, no matter how much you want to deny it, he's still insane. I mean—"
I cut him off with a glare as I felt a familiar heat rise within me—a violent anger that not even the 250mgs of mood stabilizers I had been on since I was 13 could control.
"Paul, don't you have something you should be typing?" I asked, my voice low and barely controlled.
He gave me a frustrated look, but got the hint, and rose fluidly out of his chair. "Yeah, sure boss, whatever." He replied, stalking from the room. I could have sworn I heard him muttering something about psychologists being as crazy as their patients, but I chose to ignore it.
Once he had left, closing my door behind him, did I let the full extent of my emotion towards the situation show. I had never been a crier, but I allowed one hot, frustrated tear slide down my cheek and plop onto my desk, staining the leather blotter a darker brown. Picking up the picture that had fallen over, I righted it, staring at the smiling faces contained within the glass. The picture was of Dib and I at my graduation. His arm was around my shoulders, a proud and silly smile on his face as I glared at the camera from beneath my cap. I lightly touched the glass over his face, and then let out a heavy breath through my nose, mental chastising myself for being so sentimental.
But damn it, why did he have to be to stubborn?
"Must be a family trait" a voice answered from the back of my mind. I groaned and ran my hands over my face.
"I thought that I had drugged you out of my head." I muttered to the air.
"Psh. It will take more than a few hundred mgs of chemicals to stifle your conscience. You should know this by now." the voice answered, seemingly closer. I moved my hands away from my face and glared at the figure that had materialized in the chair across from my desk. Where Paul had been sitting moments before was now occupied by a boy of about twelve with scythe-like hair and glasses. He wore a long black trench coat that looked a few sized too big. A giant, goofy, shit-eating grin was on his face.
"You are not my conscience." I growled.
"Aren't I?" the figure asked, still grinning madly.
"No. You are a manifestation of my stress surrounding my bother's obvious mental instability. You are a delusion, nothing else, except perhaps an indication that I should up the dosage on my meds." I stood, stalking over to one of my bookshelves, turning my back to the figure. If I didn't seem him, he wasn't there.
"You're doing the wrong thing, you know." the figure stated.
I rolled my eyes, running my finger over the spines of the books, "The wrong thing with what?"
"With your brother."
Finding what I was looking for, I pulled it from the shelf and then turned back towards my desk. "How so?"
The figure shrugged, "You're trying to make him lie." He leaned back in the chair, propping his feet up onto my desk, "What you should be doing is making yourself tell the truth."
I glared at him, and sat back down in my chair, slamming the book onto the desktop. "Really? And what truth would that be, now?"
"That Zim was really an alien bent on world destruction."
"And get myself thrown in here, as well? No thanks. I enjoy my reputation of being the 'sanest' member of the Membrane family." I opened the book, flipping through it to the page that I wanted.
"You won't get locked up if you have proof, now would you?"
I slammed the book back shut, my annoyance that my 'conscience's' persistence more pressing than my need for research, "After I went through so much effort to prove that Zim wasn't an alien, you want me to dig up proof that he was?"
He nodded, the grin still splayed across his face, his eyes full of youthful excitement.
"And, and this is just hypothetically speaking, now, if I were to listen to you—where would I find this 'proof' you speak of. I can't use Dib's research—he's the one that has been deemed insane."
"His base is still there, isn't it?"
I opened my mouth to counter, but then closed it immediately. The figure took this as an admission of the positive.
"And if his base is still there, then that would mean that…"
"His labs are still there, too. As is the Voot Cruiser…" I finished.
"Exactly." He stated, looking smug the way a cat does. "Think about it, Gaz: you find the proof that is needed to show that Zim was an alien and, not only will Dib be kept out of an asylum, but he will probably be acquitted as well. Hell, he might even be considered a hero—saving the world from an alien menace and all that"
"You would enjoy that, wouldn't you." I asked, sarcastically.
The figure shrugged. "I think that, after everything, you at least owe him this much. He's spent the last 15 years since Zim came to earth being considered completely insane. Give him this vindication, will ya? He's already saved the world a hundred times over, I think that it wouldn't be too much trouble for you to save his soul."
"The trial is tomorrow." I stated, thinking that as a way to end the discussion.
"Then I guess you should get going, then, shouldn't you?"the apparition countered.
I sighed, defeated, and stood, reaching for my coat. "I hate it when you make sense, and pull the whole guilt thing on me, you know that?"
"I wouldn't do it if it wouldn't work so well." the figure answered, fading from his spot in the chair. "Good luck, Gaz. And don't look so pissed. You're a Membrane. Saving the world is what we're here, for, remember?"
I shook my head, irritated. "I hate you." I muttered, as I opened the door to my office and set out towards my car.
-
A/n: OK, so that's it for now. Hopefully that explains a bit more and answers some questions from the first chapter. I seem to have inadvertently started a bit of a saga, here. I'm gonna try and update this as quickly as possible, but YOLT has first call when it comes to updating, so it may not be as quick as one would like.
R and R people, lemme know that continuing this is a good move on my part. :)
-j
