Metanoia
a transformative Invader Zim fanfic
by J. Random Lurker
Morning came and went, deep night yielding up to ashen day; a sullen overcast sky opened above the world, hinting of storms.
Dib slept through his first alarm, his second alarm, Gaz screaming at him from the bottom of the stairs, Gaz screaming at him from the top of the stairs outside his bedroom door, and Gaz at his bedside yanking his head off the pillow by his limp, crooked hair-scythe to glare at him up close- even this last brutality elicited no more than a soft groan from the boy.
"So... are you dead or what?"
Dib was not answering, so Gaz yanked off the blankets and examined her brother blandly.
The released air from beneath the heavy covers smelt of damp gauze, musty skin and blood; the bandage had turned dark in places. Dib's tiny chest was moving, though, shallow and ackward.
"nnh. Fine." Gaz released Dib's hair, letting his head thump dully back into the pillow. She left in a black-coil cloud of resentment; today she would have to walk to skool alone.
Dib lingered in darkness.
Hours later, as the sun was shrinking behind the skyscrapers of the distant city, two spindly metal legs taptapped their careful way around the edges of Dib's bedroom window. Two thin black gloved claws added their grip to the windowsill, scrambling for a hold, knocking over Dib's collection of toys resting there.
With a grunt of effort and the help of his additional pak-legs a very irritated Zim thrust himself into his enemy's room. Zim righted himself and put his hands on his hips. "So THERE you are... I suspected as much!"
He frowned at Dib's failure to do what he was supposed to do in turn. He was supposed to leap up, shout things, throw small objects with pointy edges, and rant. But he was just... lying there, pale and wet.
"Hm." The Irken crept closer to the bed; now it was his turn to examine the human. He was curious and skeptical; he knew humans slept and therefore Dib must also sleep- and he'd seen Dib sleeping before. From the security of his control chamber, through secret hidden cameras, Zim had watched Dib fall asleep more times than he could remember. He had studied the human's face from a hundred angles and memorized every expression, waking and sleeping alike. But this was a different sort of laying-out-sprawled-across-a-soft-platform, he thought. The face was all wrong, the eyes all taut and lines around the mouth and lips tense.
Prod. Prod. "Dib."
Prod. Prod. "Dib!"
Prod. Prod. "DIB!"
A bead of sweat trickled slowly down the back of Zim's neck. And in him rose a feeling that wasn't quite dread, and wasn't quite despair, and wasn't quite triumph. It was the strangest feeling he'd ever felt- because it was like no feeling he'd ever known. He looked on the ruin of his enemy ... and he felt completely blank inside. Zim didn't like new feelings. And he especially didn't like it when Dib was the cause of them. The alien shook out his head quickly, antennae flapping in the air. He snapped his fingers angrily in front of Dib's face. "Enough of your MIND GAMES, Dib! Wake up, NOW!"
Amazingly, the human did. Dib groaned, pale face contorting as his eyes opened and the dreary world around him came into focus.
The first thing Dib realized was that Zim was in his house, and in his bedroom, and staring down over him. "Zim! H... how did you get in my house?" Dib attempted to sit up, reaching instinctively to pull blankets over himself as if that could shield him. realizing how phenomenal a mistake this was when he suddenly felt something inside his chest grind tangibly against something else. He flinched and immediately lay back down.
The Irken shrugged, tossing out a vague gesture with his hands in the direction of the open window. The pit of his spooch still felt strange, coiled up with anger and full of that weird and empty not-feeling-things feeling. "It doesn't matter."
And Dib realized Zim was right. It didn't matter. He was -tired-, infinitely tired. The memories of yesterday came rolling in; Gaz telling him she hated him, Tak's ship dying, his own voice whispering to the stars that he was so terribly afraid... He closed his eyes against it all, wanting to shut out the world.
Zim strode over to Dib's desk chair and sat backward in it, leaning his pink wire-arms over the back of the chair. He idly rocked back and forth, pushing the chair with the balls of his feet, making the rollers attached to the base squeak.
Zim would never have said so aloud, but he felt profoundly stupid at this moment. His initial thoughts for coming here had all involved Dib being... not so clearly and pathetically BROKEN. But now he was here, and he would feel like an idiot if he were to simply LEAVE again without doing something to justify the trip, and that stupid FEELING of whateveritwas was gnawing at him; something was wrong, he was SURE, but he didn't know what it was. And the Dib wasn't talking, which wasn't normal either...
Squeak, squeak.
The silence was thick and ackward as the minutes dragged on. Zim's antennae twitched up at the smallest noise that came from the bed, but Dib did nothing except lie there and breathe unevenly.
Zim finally exploded. "SAY something!"
Dib's eyes remained closed; his voice was flat and weary. "Something."
"RRGH...! -HUMAN-...!"
It was an effort to talk, and Dib really just wanted to be left alone; to sleep, to rot, whatever; he no longer cared particularly. He felt immensely heavy, as if his personal gravity had tripled, and his blood had turned to solid lead in his veins. "Go away."
"Make me. Get up and MAKE me, pig! Stop LAYING there with your... your not moving and not talking!"
"Whatever." Dib twisted slowly, with a deep groan, and rolled onto his side, facing the wall.
Zim felt the blood rushing to his meatbrain and scowled, shoving himself across the floor with his feet. Clawed hands grabbed at Dib's right shoulder and tugged him backward and flat; the human's eyes were angry for a moment, hazel and glinting, but only for a moment before dull weariness swept back in. "Don't ignore me," Zim hissed. A surge of energy that was almost fear chilled his spine and he tightened his grip, shook Dib a little. "I will NOT be ignored by the likes of YOU! I could KILL you! It wouldn't be HARD!"
Some deep part of Dib resonated as he caught the Irken's wide-eyed glower; he felt a strange stirring at the base of his stomach. He wasn't sure what it was, but he suddenly felt an incredible, almost overpowering urge to cry. There was something in Zim's eyes... something that moved inside them that almost hurt to see. And there was something... something deep, something dark, inside him, too... Dib frowned, struggling to grasp it with his muddled senses, to capture the emotion and pin it into place, but Zim took his frown as defiance and began to shake him.
Zim screamed and flexed his claws deeper into Dib's shoulders, his voice rising, taking on hysterical notes. "I can kill you! I can kill you! I CAN!"
Dib reacted on instinct: his strike was crooked and clumsy, but the slap that he landed on Zim's right cheek was still enough to halt the Irken's ranting. Zim froze, raising a hand to his face, rubbing it where it ached, suddenly sullen- then he snatched Dib's wrist, yanking the human's arm off the bed, and returned the blow with his free hand.
Dib's face twisted to the side, gasping into his pillow, and his cheek erupted with color as tiny blood vessels shattered beneath his skin. "Feel better?" mumbled Dib.
"Quiet," replied Zim tonelessly. The Irken extended his spiderlegs from his pak, the metal limbs lifting his feet off the floor. Using the grip he already had on Dib as leverage, he pulled the human out of the tangle of bed and blankets entirely, and locked his arms around Dib, holding him against his chest and covering the human's mouth with a gloved hand. Dib let himself go limp, and be pulled up- not resisting, but certainly not cooperating either, concentrating on making his body hang heavy in Zim's grasp.
Discomforted by Dib's lack of struggle, Zim pressed his hands and arms down even tighter before he reactivated his spiderlegs and began to move. In moments they were through the bedroom window, down the side of the house, and scurrying at speed through the shadows.
- - -
A/N: Thanks to Senri for encouragement and a bit of beta. 99 percent of my energy is focused on my original character works these days , but I thought it'd be fun to come back and revisit the Zim boys for a short time. I can't promise when I'll be updating again though.
jrandomlurker (at) yahoo (dot) com