Saving Zim by Dib07

Summary:

When you had it all. When old age forces you to change. When life isn't what you'd imagined. When you aren't prepared to be so powerless.

When a soldier's undetermined future remains his greatest fear.

Disclaimer:

I do not own the IZ characters. However this story and this idea is mine.

Cover art beautifully made by TheCau! All credit goes to her, please do not use without his permission, thank you :)

Warnings:

Character angst. Blood. Swearing.


Dib07: Hi all! Welcome to the first few chapters that have had a good dollop of polish on them, and in many cases a full rewrite in some sections, and a few new scenes or even chapters. Please feel free to review or comment, I always reply to every single one!

And thank you Piratemonkies64 for the youtube audio chapters!

For all those who are new to this story, this novel is for the adults who have grown up with these characters, and want something a little darker.

little side-note:

I thank everyone who supported my first story. If you're new to my stories then I welcome you!

Please review, same as always, it might make new chapters appear faster!


Chapter 2: Human Intervention

"That'll teach you, you stupid little child! Never mock an Irken soldier!"

Dib's head whirled with fragments of the past that came and went like an autumn wind throwing its leaves of memory around. He was never sure what started these reminiscences of a past where the future wasn't yet written, where grief and loss and age hadn't yet touched them. Hunching his shoulders against the cold winter wind that was peppered with snow, he hurried up Zim's front yard that was defended by the usual gnomes and misshapen birds. The glowing, ever-so-slightly-crooked house had never lost its sinister morbidity. The tubes on either side were cruelly fastened into the adjacent houses like leeching tentacles, and the windows still retained that eerie, alien purple glow, giving the impression that the house was alive, that the house was watching, and could devour you if you weren't looking.

The flag with the slogan 'I love Earth' shook and snapped in the wind, its metal post straining to one side. The eaves of the roof were encrusted with rows of icicles that gave the impression of teeth.

After all these years he still hesitated before the door, a fist hovering under the 'Men' sign. He rapped his knuckles on it three times and stepped back, expecting the door to swing open with the usual violence of its occupant. While he waited, he rolled up his trench coat sleeve to reveal the scar that he had received that day at the gym when he was fifteen. Zim had always kept that dangerous element about him, and it was wise to never forget that, even when Dib had been trying to construct some sort of alliance between them, though it felt more like he was trying to build a rickety shack on a windy cliff face that had no hope of staying there. He wasn't sure if Zim would ever relax enough to allow any true amity. The history between them had been too ruthless to push completely aside, and when the Irken looked at him sometimes, there was that flash of mistrust, that instant visceral fear. Touching his PAK was a major no-no, and even going near it, or stepping behind the soldier's flank earned an immediate reaction.

He ran a finger over the scar as the snowy wind plucked and teased at his trench coat.

"Okay class. Time for some Physical Education."

There was a groan from most of the children combined. No one was particularly enthused with P.E. If it wasn't cold outside, it was freezing, even within the smelly gymnasium hall that was littered with hanging cobwebs, and the hall itself always stank of old sweat and musty clothes.

The teacher, Mr. Hedge, was giving them exercise tips before they went out onto the playing field. They were lined up against the wall in their skimpy P.E shorts and shirts. From the look on Zim's face, Dib could tell that he detested the routine as much as he did, especially when he had to dress down to reveal more of himself than he liked. And his short stature was extra evident when he had to line up with all the other 'taller' children. The kids purposely bumped into him, calling him names like 'Frankenstein,' and 'gremlin,' while making faces. Dib watched as the teasing went on, wondering if Zim would reach his limit and explode outward with his PAK foray: exposing himself in the process. But he never did. He took the bullying rather well; but sometimes it only fed his anger and hatred, which was not exactly good when he could later lay it all on Dib.

After running around a miserable playing field for an hour, the class returned to the changing rooms to shower and get back into their old clothes. He waited for Zim to come to the decision of removing his shirt, and when he did, Dib bounced into the fray, snatched the shirt off him, and went running down the hall, screaming: "Zim's an alien! Look at how green he is!"

Half naked and enraged, Zim took off after him. "Stink beast! Release that shirt or I'll cut you into a thousand tiny, TINY pieces!"

Dib yelled from over his shoulder. "What's the matter, Zim? Too slow without your mechanical struts? Or are you just plain lazy? It's because you're too short! Isn't that right?"

The flight was as exhilarating as their battles. The adrenaline soaked into him like he had just injected himself with ecstasy and he felt so alive! He always remembered these moments better than the aftermaths, the anticlimaxes and leavings after.

Eventually, as he knew he would, Dib ran out of places to run to, while Zim never seemed to run out of steam. He ended up outside again, behind an old building the teachers were using to teach Religious Studies. Caught in a dead-end, sweaty and panting, the P.E lesson having already worn him out, Dib leaned forwards, hands planted on his knees to gain back his breath, the slightly grass-stained shirt dangling from one hand. Zim came round the corner slowly like some psychopathic killer in the movies with not a bead of sweat on him. His chest wasn't even moving strenuously. How could someone be so... physically fit? And he was so small! Dib had longer legs, and had a longer stride from his recent growth spurt. Had Zim cheated somehow?

He straightened and levelled his gaze to confront the soldier, hoping that his challenge wouldn't go unheard, and that the other children would come running. He was confident that Zim didn't have any threat to employ. He was in human territory, and was miles from any of his tech.

The Irken stood, shoulders tightening, eyes levelling back at him in a low, glowering way that made him think of lions or wolves readying to pounce.

"What's wrong, space monster? Worried everyone will see how disgustingly green you are all over?"

Instead of slipping into the usual charade of insult-trading, Zim flashed out a PAK leg, something he rarely utilized in case of being seen by other humans. Its mordant point, sharper than a needle, sunk into Dib's right arm without prelude. The pain started as something small, as if the shock had dampened the feel of it somehow, but then the agony of it made him scream and drop the shirt. Zim yanked out the javelin-point with that same empty stare, and Dib's arm began to run red.

"That'll teach you, you stupid little child! Never mock an Irken soldier!"

Dib stared down at the increasing outspread of red sweeping down his arm until it was dripping off his fingers and elbow like water. His clothes were doing little to soak it up.

The soldier's eyes suddenly softened, as if he was seeing him for the first time. "Dib...stink?"

Dib pulled the sleeve back over his arm, covering up the star-shaped scar as he stood at the little purple door. He remembered doubling over from the pain, thinking he was going to die, but all that clouded over when he saw the shame fill Zim's face. Even though the alien had uttered not a word as he backed away, the apology was in his eyes.

Dib was then rushed to the nurse, and then rushed to the hospital. Most of it was a blur. He had ended up receiving twenty stitches, and as he lay in a hospital bed with his father shaking his head at him, he didn't say a word about Zim and made up some lame excuse that he had fallen on a piece of glass.

He wasn't sure why he had done it at the time, and pass off what could have possibly been the one and only opportunity to expose Zim once and for all. Perhaps he hadn't wanted their battles and games to end that abruptly. It just hadn't seemed fair, which was ridiculous in of itself. Zim was a monstrous, marauding invader, and he had been a child, overwhelmed and unprepared, and suddenly he had the power he'd been wanting since he was eleven to end the alien's dark reign. But it was that look in the Irken's eyes, that preposterous shame and guilt that blocked the admission to his father. He would reassure himself that he had been mistaken, that what he had seen was a trick of the light, or was just some other charade. A part of him had wished he had never seen it.

The scar was a reminder of what he could have done, and what he chose not to do. Zim had sustained a scar that conveyed the same weight, and a similar painful significance. Every time he looked at him it was there to see in all its shredded worth.

I didn't think he could change. I saw him only as a monster that should rot away in some lab. I had to become the monster to finally see Zim as someone who has dreams, fears. And pain.

Despite the ceasefire between them – a ceasefire that felt close to breaking sometimes, it was still peculiar in the way that Zim stiffened whenever Dib drew too close, especially when certain proximities took place within the range of his PAK or his home. Zim never allowed him to get too close, even when Dib took pains to never show any hostility. But sometimes all it took was a sudden hand gesture during amiable conversation to cause the Irken to flinch and tense up, his soldierly instincts reactivating in a heartbeat.

Never truly finding comfort in the presence of the other, he loathed coming to the old bug's home where personal safety was never a guarantee either. They had a communal meeting ground that was neutral – and it perfectly suited their individual securities and pride. Going to your enemy's home turf was never an easy endeavour; it started a psychological battle before the real ones began.

In all these years Zim, you still somehow manage to make me feel like a little boy again.

Gathering what courage there was to find, he lifted a hand, tightened it into a fist and knocked another three times on the alien's door, hoping against hope that no one would answer.

-x-

It didn't matter how swift his responses or how well he patched up the damage, as something else leaked, or a pipe burst, with fires spreading faster than he could cope with. His PAK would adjust to the demand of the scenario; dumping whatever tool he had need of in his awaiting hand, but the requirements for the task demanded quicker and faster reactions, each one needing a different tool or skill for the repair until he didn't know which tool and which action was required of him. He would spin around, jumping from one area to the next until he was caught in-between demands, only to fold there and then to the floor, and drop whatever wrench he had been holding to hold his head and scream.

Someone was calling from beyond the flames and snow, but the words could barely be heard over the hissing and roaring of the complaining machinery.

Sweat ran down like oil along the crease between his eyes. Slowly he looked up to see the robot standing there with tears in his bluish green eyes. "Gir?" He spread his claws over the robot's face to stroke those tears away, but the fire was spreading. The ceiling began to fall away, segments of it landing around them. Things cranked and popped, his safety and security melting away before him. "Computer!" His scream ran off into the dark above where only a vacuum remained for the fire to ascend towards. He pushed himself back to his feet, and when he went to run forwards, claws reaching for the console as the flames took it, his PAK fell off, its curved shell spinning round and round on the shiny floor. He stopped, spun on his heels to dive for it, and the PAK sunk down into dark waters of starlight. He fell with it, one hand still trying to grab it.

Rushing far below him in the ink of the cosmos were the exorbitantly coloured and decorated Irken warships as they marched onwards to destinations unknown. They flashed by without stopping as if they no longer remembered or cared that he was still trapped at his station on Earth. He wanted to shout to them, hail them: remind them that he was still here! Doing his duty! To not forget him!

The PAK tumbled further and further away from him, its pink light a fading beacon in the abyss. A distant, heavy ticking held sway over him, and as the PAK fell further, the ticking slowed down.

He raised a hand to the dark and passing ships, about to cry out for help when clawed hands came and clamped his mouth shut.

A hoarse scream somehow flew out of his throat anyway and his eyelids flashed open, his body falling forwards. His claws landed on soft cream coloured blankets as if gravity and ground had suddenly and spectacularly materialized. His vision fluttering into panicked focus, chest raucously heaving for air, he saw something large and fuzzy stand in the midst of his blurry world. A hand reached for him, and he went to leap backwards, his PAK connecting with something solid. "Zim? It's me! It's okay! You're safe!"

He opened his eyes wider, clawed hands rushing to defend him. The blurred figure materialized like the creamy blankets had done, and a scruffy young man with a ridiculously long scythe of hair peered back at him. His worst fears had come at last, and there was no use keeping true to his pretences as scalpels and drills would descend to cut him apart.

The hand tried coming for him again, evoking a scream from his croaky vocals.

"I'm, I'm sorry," came a bewildered voice, amber eyes softening behind the glasses, "I didn't mean to frighten you." His hand retreated at once, and he stepped back. "Take it easy, okay? You're still out of it." Zim's right antenna crept upwards as he struggled to comprehend the human's words. "You must have had one hell of an accident."

Accident? He could not correlate with what Dib was saying. He didn't have accidents, and even if there happened to be a mishap in the base they were well-contained, and his computer mopped them up with perfunctory ease. Dib liked to think that Zim; Irken elite, was accident-prone, but he begged to differ.

His senses were sluggish as if he had been shot to the eyeballs with anaesthetic concoctions similar to his homemade rinauh drugs. "D-D-Diib... w-wherz..." The voice that came out of his throat was not his own. It was croaky and frail. When one arm tried to lift up his uncooperative upper torso, his elbow slipped and he went down again. But the short landing was a soft one. Any moment now, he'd hear the shrill whirr of surgical drills, and smell the chemical stench of hydroxide and antiseptic chlorides, but his tiny slit nostrils could only detect smells infused with the heavy pungency of Dib, old cigarette residues, coffee grounds and sweat.

His broken and smooth antennae twitched at the detectable tick-tock of a nearby clock, and the vibrations of the February winds outside that were accompanied by a distant flurry of cars. Why could he not hear the pulse of his computers, and the steady humming of the air ducts?

Dib's profile grew clearer until he could see the shiny outline of his glasses on his prim little nose, and the gold amber of his eyes. He wasn't holding a drill or a scalpel in either hand. As he looked down, he saw cotton blankets cupping his body as he reclined on a couch of questionable cleanliness. He did not recognise the room, and his lips parted to show his teeth as he lurched back, only to push against the pillows supporting his PAK.

"You're at my place. I took you here." The Dib confirmed. His look was one of incredible pity and bewilderment. It made the blemishes under his eyes look larger from behind his glasses, and he was speaking softly, like one would speak to a wild and frightened animal.

Whenever the human so much as moved, be it a gesture of the hand or a turn of the head, Zim recoiled with a jerk, heart leaping against his little ribs. "Stay b-back! Stay! Don't comm n-n-ner me!"

"I'm not here to hurt you." Dib spread his fingers out, inciting surrender. "I had to patch you up! You were bleeding all over the place!"

He jerked the blankets down to reveal his gaunt and naked torso, and on that torso were spirals of gauze that had been wrapped and secured around his slim abdomen. On his left side under his ribs was a damp green stain.

"Please, little guy! Will you calm down?"

"Imm naked!" He snapped back, his voice somehow croakier than before. The ability to shout and curse and yell had been unfavourably disabled. "Wherz my uniform? Why 'en't I at home? In m-my base? Wherz Gir?"

"If I tell you, will you please take it easy? I put my neck out for you, you know!" Dib said, opting to kneel by the couch as if he had the permission to stay there for as long as he desired.

Zim's right antenna hitched forwards for a micro second before drawing back. He then hurriedly pulled the blankets up to his chest in an attempt to remain dignified. "Then stop staring 'en tell me!"

"Okay." Dib took a breath, his shoulders dropping from the tension they had been holding onto. "Just don't kill me, or freak out. About two hours ago, Gir called me on the phone." He noticed Zim's snarling grimace weaken in light of this fact. "...Said some nonsense about sauce. I thought it was just another one of his pranks. I went over anyway, thinking you'd had another accident or something."

"I don hav' accidents!" Zim claimed in a strained squawk that still managed to hurt Dib's ears.

"Sure, sure. I went to your spooky house, and Gir answered the door. I followed him in, and I found you on the floor, lying in a pool of your own blood. How do you manage it?"

Zim leaned against the backrest of the couch, his faintly wrinkled eyes staring in that numbed and absent way whenever something did not meet his expectations or go the way he'd planned it. His side screamed at him to lie back down, but he refused; frightened of looking vulnerable, frightened of Dib's intentions.

His mouth and throat were dry as he thought back to the moment, back to the glaring red eyes and the pensive ticking.

"I thought you were dead, in all honesty." The human blithely continued as if he had a rapt and appreciative audience. "You really fucking scared me, Zim." Then he paused and looked about him suddenly, his eyes not meeting the Irken's for a long moment. "I wrapped you up in my coat, ran back to the car, sat you on my lap and drove you here as fast as I could. Gir's at your base, keeping it safe. I also kinda didn't want him in the way." He paused again, as if he was letting it sink in, and allowing Zim the time to fill him in on what had happened. His eyes behind those glasses did not look away this time, but all the Irken could do was gaze blankly down at the blankets and the pale knuckles of his gloveless claws, forcing Dib to forgo caution and ask directly. "So, what happened? What gave you that very specific injury?"

He curled his toes at the memory. "M-My uniform?"

"In the washing machine, going round and round. It was saturated in blood, Zim! You couldn't possibly expect to wear it in that state?"

Dib's face was tired-looking and pasty pale, and he noticed the green stains on various parts of the human's clothing, even showing up against the black of his pants, with apple coloured stains tinting his hands as if he hadn't had any time to wash it away. It didn't make a lick of sense as to why Dib would go out of his way to rush him out of his base and all the way here. What purpose did this serve for the human? What did he hope to gain out of this act of 'charity?'

"Why'd you do it?" He asked in a growl.

The investigator shrugged which again made the slight invader flinch. "Honestly?" He rubbed the back of his neck, evading eye contact. Eventually he shook his head, then wished he hadn't so much as swallowed when each shy movement caused the Irken to recoil. "Come on, Zim. We've known each other for over twenty years. Don't you think that should count for something?"

"I think you're up to something." He imparted, not afraid to show his suspicions while he kept looking to the human's hands to see if weapons or handcuffs might materialize: anything to prove his certainties that the human had ulterior motives.

Dib just rolled his eyes at the Irken's general stubbornness. "If I was up to something I would have done it a thousand times by now. So what happened?" He leant back a little, slowly folding his arms in front of his chest to inhibit Zim from reacting quite so suddenly. "You're very good at avoiding the issue. I know you better than you think."

The Irken looked at him, jaws clenching tightly. He was done with the conversation. It was easier to protect oneself by placing barriers between him and the world than to trust or rely on anyone. "I fell down some stairs." He blurted whilst maintaining eye contact. He went to bring his knees up to his chest when a tug of pain told him that that was a bad idea.

"You don't have any stairs." Dib said patiently.

"I DO!" He tried to yell it, but his voice only delivered a rusty and pathetic squeak. "I can't believe you took me from my base!" He snarled, wincing at himself whenever his vocals kept crumbling into hoarser croaks. "You touched me! Ripped off my military uniform! I smell like you! It's disgusting! My base? You could have destroyed it!"

Dib smiled sadly for him. "You were so cooperative when you were asleep, Zim. But just to remind you, I've sorta just saved your life. You owe me, little green thing."

"I don't need you or your smelly help and I owe you nothing! My PAK takes care of everything anyway! All you've done is made me feel stupid!"

"Uh huh." He replied just to tease him, but it hurt to smile. Green blood soiled the front of his shirt, some of it having soaked through to his skin. He hadn't had time to change since taking the little unconscious creature home, tucked in his arms as if the soldier weighed next to nothing. Even though he had wrapped him in his coat, the blood had trickled onto his pants and car seat. He had pretty much driven like the devil down those shy three miles to get him home, thinking that even then, he'd arrive too late. The colour had yet to return to the creature's cheeks, and though the invader was using the blankets as barriers, there was little he could do to conceal the shivering. Every once in a while, as if cold, or trying to hold in pain, Zim would tense, snarl, and grab at his chest.

"You okay there, Zim?" He asked.

The Irken quickly dropped his hand before audibly grunting and then kicking back the blankets with his good leg to try and shimmy off the couch. "I am not your prisoner! I am leaving!"

Dib patiently drew closer to catch him in case he should fall. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. Your wound hasn't been stitched up, and you'll only make the bleeding worse. You need to lie down and wait for your body to heal first."

His quiet, softly spoken words seemed to only deepen the creature's rage. "You'd be surprised at our superior healing rate, human! Not that a dirty monkey like you would ever understand! Now out of the way! And bring me my uniform at once!"

"I told you, it's in the wash!"

Zim more or less toppled down the couch and landed painfully on his rump. He let out a snarling hiss of pain, his thin tongue darting out between his lips like the tongue of a snake's.

"Do you ever listen?" Dib approached, and Zim paled under his towering shadow. The human hooked his hands under the invader's armpits and lifted him onto the couch where he recovered him with the blankets. With uncommon gentleness, he pushed him back down onto the pillows. The fire in Zim's side was spreading, causing his chest and left leg to ache miserably in sync, and he barely resisted when human hands guided him down to rest.

"This is stupid!" The little invader coughed. "I'm lying on a filthy couch! In your filthy house! You're going to do something to me! I just know it! The fucking FBI are on their way! I swear on the Tallest!"

"I'm making you some tea. You can drink tea. I've seen you have it before." He started moving away, and suddenly, and for no reason, Zim didn't want him to go. He hadn't been close to death in awhile, and maybe it was the temporary vulnerability, the extremes of exposure to a foreign room, nude and injured that made him feel this way. A soldier was supposed to be comfortable alone, no matter the circumstances. His military indoctrination had prepared him for all eventualities, but all the training in the known universe had little power over natural instinct.

"D-Dib?"

Dib halted in the doorway and turned to him expectantly. His face was carefully blank of expression.

Zim baulked against these inexplicable and ruinous desires. "Just... just get my stinken' uniform you useless ape!"

"You've upgraded me from monkey to ape? I feel privileged." And he left the room.

Zim sunk back down, the pain making him shiver even though he did feel warm. He turned his head slightly so that he could discern the parlour room window. It was dark outside, and every so often he'd see a passing flurry of snow. His right antenna picked up the sounds of the human moving about in the kitchen, and every now and then he could hear the clink of porcelain and the thump of cupboard doors closing. While his mind was free to roam, his thoughts turned down a dark path as he remembered the way Gir had looked at him with a hand deep in his side. Without his powerful Irken computer, he had no way to be sure how bad the internal damage was, but with this amount of blood still trying to pour out of him, he had a feeling Gir had gone through his spooch. The PAK was whirring away like a washing machine, working hard to repair the damage, but it was usually much faster at repairing him than this. He tried not to dwell on it as he stared at the window, but he found it very hard to remain patient when he was stuck in an unfamiliar place with next to no control.

Dib presently returned carrying a plastic tray. On it were two steaming mugs of tea, and between the mugs was a plate piled high with ginger biscuits. He settled the tray on the coffee table after shoving back the piles of UFO magazines to make space. That awkward and uncomfortable silence lingered between them for a moment as Zim studied him and what he'd brought as an offering.

Dib broke the ice first, as he usually often found himself doing. "Luckily Gir saved you too. If he hadn't have called, I think you'd be pretty dead, Zim. You'd better thank him." He said this mildly; as the human had no idea what had transpired. Who would ever suspect that robot, after all?

Dib waited for an answer, still looking childishly bewildered when he didn't get one, as if the Irken's quietness pained him. Uncomfortable in the silence, or because there was little else to do to keep him busy, he got up and closed the curtains, blocking off the swirling flurries of snow.

The phone started to ring in shrill, raucous tones. Zim jerked back up again only to dive under his blankets, squealing.

"It's probably just Gir checking up on you." Dib closed his hand over the phone, picked it up and answered without further ado. "Yeah?"

There was silence for a beat before Zim heard the soft tinkle of Dib's patented laughter. He warily lowered his frontal-blanket-defence and peered, nonplussed at the human who was busily chatting on the phone. "Yeah, dad. I know. I experienced it too. No, everything's okay. It all turned on by itself. Didn't even need to re-discover my fuse box. It did scare me a little. What? It affected the whole city?" There was a pause, and he could see Dib's eyes flickering to and fro as he listened to the other end of the line. Zim sat rigid, his right antenna erect on his head like an aerial transceiver. Dib shook his head and chuckled again, and for just a moment all worry and tension dropped from his face, making him look ten years younger. "It's okay, dad. I'm fine. Yeah. You too. Bye now." He ended the call and looked over at his frazzled guest. "That was my dad. It's fine. I didn't tell him about you."

"What did he want?"

He looked distracted. "He was telling me that Lincoln and most of America had a blackout. There was an EMP disaster at my dad's lab. It was something experimental, or so he says, but it wasn't shielded properly, and it downed anything electrical."

Zim frowned, causing his eyes to crease up a little from their bottom lids. "EM...P? An electromagnetic pulse?"

"Yeah. My house went on the fritz for like, five minutes. I thought you were playing a trick on me or something."

If what Dib was saying was true, then his base and PAK had been equally affected by it. "Will it happen again?"

"No, I don't think so. After all, it cripples us. Everything we use is pretty much electrical." He suddenly looked at Zim in a panic, realizing that he had just said too much, but the soldier looked so out of place that he doubted he was thinking about global domination right now. He kind of got the gist that something like this had happened to the proud Irken as well, and that might help explain his wound. A nation-wide blackout didn't happen every day, and Zim turning up with a massive hole under his ribs didn't happen every day either. Or maybe he was just clutching at straws. Maybe the two events weren't related at all. And he wasn't surprised that the Irken was choosing to not fill him in on the particulars of the 'accident.' Zim had always battened down on the particulars of anything personal, especially if he had any problems: a conduct not that dissimilar to how human soldiers behaved. Taking him out on private and explorative investigations had not loosened him up, or allowed Dib any kind of leeway into his private affairs or difficulties.

"Here." Dib picked up a mug and offered it to him. "Drink it while it's hot. I've put two teaspoons of sugar in there. Nothing else."

Zim struggled to sit up, but he took the mug after giving a meek 'thank you.' He cradled the drink using both claws and sipped tentatively at the hot liquid. It soothed his dry throat, and the heat helped to ease the shivers. With each sip, his spooch gurgled in discomfort. To the human's untrained ear, these gurgles sounded a lot the rumblings of an upset stomach.

As Zim sipped down the drink, wary eyes compulsively flickered to the human as if he still expected an ultimatum from the investigator.

"You're going to sleep here tonight Fudge. And first thing tomorrow morning, I promise I will drive you back home."

Zim perked his smooth antenna at him like he was raising a questioning eyebrow. "I'm still trying to destroy Earth, you know. Perhaps you are more stupid than you look."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." He drank down his tea in mere minutes and grabbed a biscuit. "I'm calling it a night, Zim. It's three in the morning. Eat the biscuits if you're hungry, but I'm going to bed. No funny stuff while I'm gone. I mean it."

"I'm in no mood for fun." He said, taking the phrase literally.

Dib just shook his head and left, leaving the main parlour room light on. Zim sat, nestled in his blankets, feeling his spooch twist and turn as it tried to digest the liquids he had taken. Straining his right antenna, he listened to Dib's footsteps with all the paranoia of a wounded soldier alone in enemy territory. First he heard him go into the kitchen to do some clearing up, then he heard him tread his heavy way upstairs, and for awhile Zim could just about hear him open some drawers, turn the faucets on in the upstairs bathroom, and then all went very quiet. Trying to overcome his crippling one-sided deafness, he listened with a chronic and intense stare, glittery eyes riveted to the ceiling in fearful anticipation. The clock click-clacked on, his eyelids drooped, and his vigil began to melt down the middle.

Eventually he drooped against the pillow, antenna perched for noise, but despite the amplified exhaustion that was mostly PAK-induced, he couldn't sleep very well. The smells he kept sniffing were nauseous. Everything stank of the Dib and everything was dirty. There were old crumbs on the rug below, and the couch smelt distinctly of cigarette smoke. Dust clung to the coffee table, and old beer stains littered most solid surfaces that he could see. Humans lived like savages. They even ate like savages.

He did not like the silence. Occasionally a car would flash by outside, dispelling the dull calm, and the motion of the clock on the mantle was more irritation than comfort. Lying on this couch, in this open parlour did not make him feel safe. In his base, deep in his honeycomb, the computer was always humming, and the machinery and tubing had their own music. He would listen to the harmony of his paraphernalia wherever he went, and sleep beneath the warm, hissing vents, tight and cuddled in a far corner where he knew he was safe. But when he touched his side and felt the warm wetness there, he knew that wasn't always true.