Saving Zim by Dib07
Summary:
He was almost autumnal in a sense, as if he had lost the leaves of youth and didn't quite know what to do as a chill swept in. There was a gloom in his eyes, and a new slouch to his shoulders. When he held Dib's gaze in the rear-view mirror on the way home there had been something in his eyes, something that he couldn't quite say.
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 :)
Dib07: Hey. Is anyone still reading this?
Anyhoo, I'd like to thank GuardianArmy for encouraging me to give this another update! I haven't visited this story, and one of the reasons I have been holding off on it is because the world's really gone crazy right now, and who needs more sorrow? Anyways, lack of motivation has me bummed out and then this lovely writer and reader wrote a lovely review and I thought I'd better blast out another chapter.
Zimothy: Hello dear one and I hope you've had better days. The world is exhausting right now, and everything kinda feels like an uphill struggle, but I am right there with you. I hope this chapter helps, writing is the best way I can escape and writing these characters is always a comfort. I love that you like what I've added, and the improvements! I hope you enjoy this one too!
Only Irken
-x-
'Don't kid yourself
And don't fool yourself
This love's too good to last
And I'm too old to dream'
Blackout - Muse
-x-
"You are a failure."
The words echoed as he stood, splattered in the fluids of the creature he had spawned, watching helplessly as it devoured a Tallest, the colours of her iridescent blood splattering the ice cold walls and floor.
I am undefeatable.
"You could never follow the simplest of orders."
I have struggled, I have survived. Can't you see what I am made of?
"We didn't put you on Earth to frolic with the humans, Zim."
I am not defective. I do not have a malfunction! I have never failed!
He had stormed battlefields, watching bodies flutter and fall to the admission of another bomb. He had seen the lasers flashing left and right across the stratosphere as he waded through blood and mud-soaked viscera where bits and lumps of Irkens floated alongside metal debris. Crowning the red and black sky, warships strobed the ground with shafts of fluorescent pink as an upsurge of bodies rose and fell in the twinkling starlight.
In the bright and cold chamber, he paused to notice that a white circle had been drawn around him.
"You are not to step out of this circle, Zim." Towering over him, the commanding, willowy forms of his leaders stood like granite sculptures destined to strike him down, their aloof gaze as impenetrable as black holes.
He raised his bony arm in salute as their inky cold shadows drew closer. Purple was peering at him with a growing look of dissatisfaction as if Zim was a broken piece of equipment.
"How are you going to accomplish anything looking like that?" Red admonished, pointing at his broken antenna and rumpled uniform.
"And you can't even handle your own S.I.R unit." Purple said icily. "Sealing it away and abandoning it."
The hand he held in salute started to tremble as the circle seemed to draw closer around him like a noose made of wire.
Red coolly added. "Never have we had an 'invader' that's so very old. That arthritis acts like cement once it gets into your joints. And you've been on Earth for twenty two years, wasting our resources. Betraying our cause, and risking exposure."
Purple started shaking his head.
Red drew forwards and lifted up his chin so that there was no escaping his crimson glare. "I think it's finally time to give up, Zim. Stop drawing out the inevitable. Stop pretending that you are something you're not. Defectives have no place here."
Around the podium, Irkens suddenly started shouting in one voice: the noise escalating into a rapturous roar that hurt his remaining antenna: "Defect! Defect!"
The voices grew louder, the crescendo thundering through his head as the Irkens stamped their feet. He fell to his knees in the centre of the crudely drawn circle.
Death. Being re-encoded.
Was there a difference?
As he turned to the masses, there was grey sky, and a city corner blanketed in snow. Behind the capering curtain of white, he saw Dib walking away in the falling snow. He went to reach out to him, to scream for him to stop, to turn back round, not to leave... but Dib didn't stop or look back as he drew further and further away.
The circle suddenly opened and he fell, tumbling and screaming into the black, claws reaching out for someone to save him. The Tallest casually looked down the hole as he fell, his claws reaching for something, anything, to cling to. No, no! I've done everything you asked! This is not my destiny!
He felt himself coming apart, like data fragmenting away to nothing.
The figures of the Tallest grew fainter as he unravelled at the seams.
His eyes cracked open, and the dream broke apart. With stiff, painful motions of his head he tried to look around when his body was struck by fierce, icy chills that rattled him to his bones. He could hear a distant wheezing sweeping in and out of his own lungs, and the pain of each inhale had him twirl and twist his claws into the soft material of a blanket. "My... my T-Tallest..."
One more chance, a little more time... I didn't fail... I have never failed...
His nasals flared at unfamiliar smells; the temperature and feel of the place was something completely alien. He couldn't remember much of anything; all he could still see were the Tallest looking down at him, their look of disappointment having silently broken something inside him.
As he shuddered with pain and fever, he realized that he had failed, and gave a soft cry into the blankets.
He had done many desperate and obsessive things to avoid the horror of crippling finality, but despite his devices, principles and fears, he had still steered himself to the same bitter ends.
Irkens could not give up. They had to keep going, or face annihilation.
The weight of everything pressed on him from all sides.
The pressure to work and conquer had built like heat in a stove, and as the pages of the calendar were torn away one after the other, he grew less aware of the time he was losing, and more conscious of other things. Uninvited feelings would leak between the plates of his armour before he could lock them away again.
His feverish mind hopelessly and endlessly rotated on failure with Gir at its centre. He didn't know how to save him. All his methods and plans and power had turned to silt and ash.
He huddled into whimpers as pain coiled and tightened inside as if he was being squeezed. The relief his PAK normally granted him had gone, the soldier's salvation a long forgotten rescue, with the machine instead becoming a weight he didn't want to endure anymore.
I'm dying, aren't I? Well, it's not exactly new, is it?
During his smeethood days of training, he was taught that self-destruction, no matter how necessary, was to be a last resort. Colt, their instructor, taught them that suicide was honourable when faced with the inevitable, and that it was an expected duty to order to save the Empire's assets – for the enemy must never recover the remains and reverse engineer the PAK. Leaving no evidence was therefore crucial, but it was not the happiest way to go. Some Irkens quietly ended up going to the Fall in their funeral scuttles when violence or desperation hadn't been their ticket out. And then there were those miserable few who were too badly injured to do much else in their final moments.
The device had been issued with his PAK: a largely forgotten but crucial stratagem for any soldier alone on an enemy planet, and he started to panic when he could not feel it there on his wrist.
A bright light was turned on, and he tried to turn away as tears of pale blue dripped down his sunken cheeks and onto soft blue blankets. He smelt a strong waft of the Dib, mingled with cigarettes and blood.
"Hey, hey Fudgekin. Take it easy. I'm not going to harm you." He felt soft fingertips brush away the tears, the touch making him flinch. "Struggling will only hurt."
He tasted blood in his mouth, and couldn't pull enough air into his rudimentary lungs. Confusion was a room he was promptly cast into with no exit. Splinters of memory did little to build a picture, and he remembered only pain, and Dib in that pain. "G-Gloves... my g-gloves..."
Please...
A hand, real and tender, massaged his trembling shoulder and the back of his neck. "Shush. You're safe." The gentleness of Dib's voice only caused more tears to fall.
He did not want to look up and see what was written on his face – what he might be thinking. Soldiers were never to show weakness, and his enemy was witnessing his every infidelity.
What would Dib do to him, now that he was this pitiful and pathetic?
As his vision hazed in and out, his last calling the only thing that mattered, the human's voice remained soft and low. "I found you in the rain, sheltering between dumpsters and I took you to my home. Your wound reopened so I patched you up as best I could. Can you tell me why your PAK is blinking? What does that mean? What can I do?"
Zim didn't care for the details while his mind was being slowly torn apart.
Let me go, please just let me go...
He squeezed his eyes shut, burying his face against a pillow only to hear Dib quietly hiss. "Being stubborn isn't going to help you, little guy. I might have to run a line into you to get fluids into your body. I have some my dad's old lab equipment in my basement, and I promise you I won't know what I'm doing, but I will try, Fudge."
You're stupid. Always so stupid! I want to be alone! I don't want to be pitied! Dump me in some corner! Walk away! Let me succeed. Just. This. Once...!
He felt the human's large hand carefully massage him through blankets that were damp with blood and tears.
Why are you doing this to me, Dib? You've always wanted to walk away. I feel you could never stand the sight of me.
Here's your chance.
I don't care anymore.
Dib's voice remained only ever gentle. "The old Zim I know isn't a quitter. He doesn't take the easy way out, and he doesn't give up. I know you're in a lot of pain, but I'm going to help you." Zim felt those soft fingers caress him, helping him focus on something other than the pain. "You've always underestimated me, Fudge. I am not going to let you die."
Zim was suddenly rendered powerless by what he had just said. What does that mean, Dib stink? After everything, what do you want?
-x-
Dib reached out and held the little creature's shivery hand in the warm folds of blanket. Zim was still being so...incredibly brave about it, which was the saddest thing of all. Sick-sweat veneered the Irken's huddled body, his lips grimly set as he shook and shivered with deeper cold. He was too weak to scream or roll about, and even if he'd had the energy, he was too proud and duty-bound to reveal what frailty he could still control. The Irken's continued stubbornness made Dib want to crash and smash everything in the room.
Between the moments and the pull and twist of his own interminable worry, he kept thinking about the self-destruction device the Irken had tried reaching, and the 'gloves' he spent all his breath asking for.
When you tried to ring me, what were you going to tell me?
"I've got you something to drink, okay?" He spoke slowly, giving Zim the time to reply, whether he agreed or not, but the Irken remained scarily passive and exhausted, as if fighting through the pain had left him completely shattered. "I have some water here I've boiled that you can swill around in your mouth first."
He was worried that Zim may not react or reply or care at all. His sudden unwillingness to engage with him and his situation was daunting, and Dib tried not to be discouraged by it.
"Here. Let me help you up." He gently wrapped an arm around him to carefully steer Zim upright and stacked a squishy soft pillow behind his PAK so he could rest at a more comfortable incline. The feel of his thin brittle bones felt more pronounced than they'd ever been, and he was certain the Irken had got smaller somehow. Those ice-cold and blistered claws had warmed all the way to their tips and his sunken chest and bandaged abdomen also felt warmer despite the sweat running off the invader, and he suspected he wasn't sweating from overheating, but from stress and pain.
Holding a little paper cup, he lowered it towards Zim's pointed little chin, aware that his large and expressive eyes were still shut tight. "Take a sip, rinse, and spit out. The water won't hurt, and it'll get rid of the blood in your mouth."
Eyelids, wrinkled and heavy with shadows, fluttered over crimson. Dib went ahead and pressed the cup's rim to grimy, blistered lips. Zim weakly took a sip. What he drooled back out again was a smoky cocktail of algae green with darker flecks of black. Panicky and anxious that Zim may not have the energy to stay conscious for long, he put the soiled cup down and traded it for a still-warm malt drink he had ready on a tray alongside a little cup of Calpol and an old thermometer. The malt drink had a tablet of aspirin mixed in, and though he had crushed it into a fine powder and stirred and stirred, he was worried Zim might be able to taste it, and refuse to drink. Even if he did drink it, Dib had no idea how his body would react to the aspirin.
"Drink as much as you can manage, space jerk. It's a malt drink." And you're really dehydrated.
Just before he offered it, he felt the Irken's back arch as he broke into wet-sounding coughs. His agonized squeak was enough to shore his panic to new levels and his heart raced.
"Easy, easy." Dib rubbed his back below the blinking PAK as he hacked and spluttered. The cotton blankets were starting to stick to the Irken's sweaty skin as he ran a hand down the Elite's gaunt shoulder blades. Signs he had been ignoring, and choosing not to see were now becoming blatantly apparent. It was more than just a festering injury that hadn't healed.
This cough of yours has been going on for nearly a year now.
I don't know what caused your wound, but I think there's something else... something that's been making you sick.
Dib traded the drink for an edge of blanket to wipe the tears away even as they kept falling to whisper their way down Zim's chilled cheeks and chin. "We're gonna get to the bottom of this, okay, Fudgekin?" With an arm securely tucked around the little Irken, he dabbed away the tears, but each one that fell squeezed on his heart. "I know it hurts, but you gotta stay with me."
I'm sorry for all those times I turned away.
I'm sorry I didn't say anything.
I thought getting on with my life could only be accomplished by leaving you behind.
I never even stopped to consider taking you with me.
I saw you as an enemy and a monster for so long I forgot to see you as anything else.
Body language spoke the loudest more than the Irken's barks and shouts. Like a defeated officer who had just come home bloodied from battle, he had slouched more than marched, daydreamed more than planned. And whenever he did manage to smile or even laugh, there was an element of pain behind it.
Depression had emanated from the bug for a long time, but Zim had never revealed anything other than surface level stuff. He liked to gripe about a lot of impersonal issues, but whenever Dib risked asking about his private affairs, he would snap back like a loaded spring.
The Irken's military life was very different to his own, with orders that had to be followed, missions to be carried out. Circumstances did not matter. If you didn't win, you lost, and no amount of contemplation could take away the sting.
"You gotta take a sip, little guy. I've dissolved a tablet of aspirin into it. We need to tackle the pain. Please let me help."
Zim's arthritic claws would weakly grip and then fall loose. Drawing him close until his burning head was resting against his chest, he drew the mug to parched and slightly open lips. Zim finally started to sip down some of the drink while Dib shivered with fear and worry.
Were you trying to reach me in the rain?
Even when I had turned away, you still tried...
I was so selfish thinking I was the only one with problems, that I was the only one who was alone.
You stopped looking after yourself when I stopped looking out for you.
Zim choked up fluids he must have swallowed the wrong way, his strengthless sobs scarcely heard over the rattling gasp of his lungs. His eyes partially opened, but the orbs beneath those heavy burnished lids were opaque and completely blank. A clawed hand tried to reach up as if to hold onto something, or someone. Dib eased his fingers around those tiny claws, and felt them tighten in return.
Despite his untiring persuasion to keep the little creature awake, it was a battle he inevitably lost. Zim's dark and vacant eyes closed as he fell entirely limp in the human's arms. Dib shakily put the drink down, the rim marked in green, and wrapped his arms around the little bundle, trying not to break, and trying to keep it together.
The PAK had stopped rumbling and grinding like something had got clogged inside but the ominous red light continued to flash.
If his PAK really was an all-healing, all-curing device, then why the wrinkles? Why the stiffness in his joints? Why the continuous coughing? You really think a machine this sophisticated would let him get...old?
I need to take him to his base in the hopes that his computer can help. I'm sure he has a medical bay somewhere in that hi-tech underground cathedral of his, but if he does have one, why didn't he take care of this earlier? I know he's short-sighted and doesn't look very far ahead, but it just doesn't make sense, even for him.
As for the bloodied gloves that supposedly contained the prerequisites for detonation, he retrieved them from the bin and fished around inside the tiny velvet for something tiny and silver to come falling into his palm. He gave it no further investigation, fearing the solidness of the thing and the impossible craftsmanship that had clearly gone into it. He put it in a plastic container (as if that could, you know contain the explosion) and he threw them in the trash can outside.
The rain had weakened to a dull drizzle and sparkling soft sunshine started to emerge. Through the partly opened curtains a strong bar of gold light fell on the middle of the lounge and slowly spread outwards. Large golden puddles littered the ground outside, and as the rain waned, the grey clouds scurrying away, bands of blue opened up.
When he shut his eyes, he tried to imagine the Irken running through the rain with Gary close behind him. Whenever sirens drew close by, wailing down the street, he would raise his eyes to the window, fearing the police would promptly park outside, but the sirens would always carry off into the distance, leaving him listening to the drips of rain and the shallow, laboured squeaks of an Irken struggling to breathe. He didn't want to think, much less believe that Zim wanted to end it, and that asking for his gloves couldn't possibly have meant anything...
Just as he was deciding on how best to get the Irken to his car in the rain, there was a knock on the door. Zim was lost beyond the veil of exhaustion and did not hear it, but Dib tensed, wildly eyeing the main foyer. There was another series of concussive knocks, shortly followed by the scream of the doorbell.
"Dib?" He could hear her muffled call. "Open the door! It's cold out here!"
He moved like some tin toy that had rusted up inside. His mouth was dry, and his eyes were dry, and when he moved he didn't feel all there. He took time and care easing Zim back down and tucking him up before shuffling more than walking to the door. When he opened it he blinked stupidly in the streaming morning sunshine as if the outside world belonged in a dream.
She started to smile before she saw him, her eyes taking in the questionable stains on his clothing and the tumble of sweaty hair sprouting limply from his head.
He tried to smile back. He stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him, feeling the chilly wet stone soaking through his soaks. Clara looked at the closed door and then at him and his shoeless feet. She tried to smile again but it came out as a thin, grimacing line. Her hair had been brushed into bronze curls and she was smartly dressed in a grey dappled coat that was fizzy with the wool it was made from.
"Is everything okay?" She asked, her voice on the shrill, worried side.
He felt sick to the pit of his stomach, and struggled to even look at her. Maybe she would laugh at him, or maybe she would leg it to the cops. He snapped his eyes shut, and saw Zim's tiny body hanging in stasis, eternally lifeless and eternally perfect behind a wall of glass.
Slowly he pulled out a wonky cigarette from the pack, jammed it into his lips and lit it.
"You look awful! Are you sick?" She even went to touch his forehead as if to confirm the fever she suspected.
"We... we gotta talk." He managed out of his sore and dry throat. He stared at the stone steps he stood on and noticed that they were starting to crack. A weed was sprouting through a particularly large fracture. It jutted out, thin and weedy, with one crumpled yellow leaf still attached to it.
Her face paled. "Dib... what's going on? Have you been painting all night?" She leaned forwards a little as if to smell for cannabis or alcohol.
"...Paint?"
"Your clothes! They're covered with green stains!" Her confusion was slowly steering towards agitation. Dib had always been a dependable and rather routine kind of guy, acting by the book, and attending to her wants and needs without hesitation. Now he was unrecognisable and closed to her. Though they were standing face to face, he was suddenly as distant as the stars.
Clara clutched at the straps of her handbag, her other hand fiddling with the brown buttons of her coat.
Dib took a drag from his soggy and drooping cigarette. "What would you say if I found an injured alien and ferried it home?" He asked, eyes as flat as stone as he stared obtusely at the weed growing from the crack in his front doorstep.
Her face dropped as if he had just admitted to a felony. He looked so grey and gaunt in the sunlight. "Why... why would you do that?" She wasn't sure if this was a joke or if he was being hypothetical again. The sombre topics he came out with were very random, and usually gravitated towards conspiracies or the paranormal one way or another. "Look. Let's get you inside and cleaned up. I'm sure this can wait..."
"Please listen to me. It's Zim." He took a breath. "He's an alien."
She was ready to break into a smile. "Sure he is."
"This isn't a joke." He patted his pockets a moment, shook his head and bumbled back inside after unlocking the door. When he returned moments later, he was still shaking his head in a chronic way as he relocked the door behind him. "Here, look." He produced a wrinkled photo that looked old and tatty as if it had been jammed in a pocket or a shoe for the better part of a century. "It's a photo of Zim wearing his disguise." In the photo, Zim was leaning an elbow on the table, grimacing crookedly into the camera. Beside him was a line of empty whiskey shots.
Clara looked up at Dib again as if she could see his sanity meter dropping like the mercury in a cooling thermostat. "Maybe I should call your father."
"No, wait." He flicked away his half-smoked cigarette and produced a black ink pen. "Can I burrow your lipstick?"
She gave him that look again before relenting and handing him the red lipstick from her handbag.
Feeling like a magician about to reveal a trick he smeared the tip of lipstick into each of Zim's eyes. When they were both fully coloured in, he used the black pen to draw on two antennas. "That's what Zim really looks like. Remove the contacts and the wig and you have yourself an alien."
"Is this a prank? Are you pranking me? Because it's not funny!" Her eyes were widening and a flush was starting to creep along her pale cheeks.
She had given the photo a dismissive glance as if the real issue was her fiancé. "I'm not laughing. He's inside the house, bleeding to death. But you know about animals, right? You can help him!"
She took a step back. "I'm studying zoology! I'm not a veterinarian! Why are you saying these things to me? Is it because you want to get rid of me?"
"No, no that's not it at all! Will... will you just look at him?"
"I saw Zim two days ago in the supermarket." She defended. "You're making this up just to scare me!"
Dib unlocked and then opened the door for her. His eyes behind the wire-framed glasses were remarkably dark. "Go on in then and see for yourself."
She glared at him, waiting for the punch-line. When he just stared back, stooping in the doorway, she defiantly stepped inside, noticing the strange odours almost at once. Dib shut the door and followed her in.
He suspected that she might suffer sensory overload and faint. He could almost see the prison bars before him. "In the lounge." He said flatly.
Clara wasn't sure what she was supposed to be looking for or what to expect, and imagined some large plastic toy propped in place to give her a scare. The malodorous smells told her that something was up despite her misgivings, and Dib's wild behaviour only frightened her.
She walked hesitantly into the lounge where the drapes were semi-closed across the window. In the pale light she saw something small bundled in blankets next to the radiator. A green and smooth head was poking out, and on top of that head were two antennae. One was so long that it curved towards the back of its skull while the other was crooked and split down the middle, ending in two frayed tatters. Watching her reactions carefully, Dib came over and grabbed an edge of blanket, pulling it down to reveal the little Irken's gaunt and naked upper body.
Clara slapped a hand over her mouth and walked back so fast that she bumped into the TV. The TV rocked but didn't fall. Dib's face was almost blank but his eyes were glassy and soft. "This is Zim without the disguise he wears in public. He isn't dangerous. Anymore."
"You're... you're lying! It's fake! It's... a puppet or something!" She went to run for the door.
"No! Please! You've got to understand! I don't know what else to do!"
She tried to open the door and in her panic forgot to flip the latch. He tried to grab her from behind and she hit him.
"No one else needs to know!"
"I don't care! This is crazy! You're crazy!"
You're crazy.
The words hit his centre: those same words had been barked at him again and again, not just from the kids in school, but from his sister and father. It was as if he had never grown up, and had never climbed that precarious social ladder to get away from the stigma.
She flipped the latch and ran out. Dib didn't follow and watched her leave, knowing that his future was crumbling to pieces. He might have fifteen minutes to gather his things and make a run for it.
He slammed the door shut and then just stood with his back to the door, trying to hold everything in.
Well, that's everything I've worked for down the plughole.
He kept seeing the pain drawn across her face, that look of betrayal and sudden resentment. And everything started to hurt.
The voices started to rise; pushing him deeper into the pit of isolation he had known since he was little.
My life had meaning. I might have had a future. Am I cursed? Did I truly love someone, only to let them go?
His life, successes and livelihood seemed more like illusions so easily knocked down.
He angrily hit the back of his head against the plaster wall. He tried to hate Zim for what he had done, however indirectly, but he just couldn't do it.
Dib numbly glided into the lounge, fists clenching, throat constricting, with the scythe of hair falling in front of his eyes. He supposed he deserved this kind of rebuttal for not going ahead with it, for when he had merely stood there covering his ears and eyes from the screams as the sunlight flashed on strands of wire.
Did you really have to land here, Zim? Why did you choose to settle in this godforsaken city when you had a million other places to pick from?
Get a grip! You gotta focus!
The authorities will need to take a statement from her, and they'll need a warrant. They can't just bust in without probable cause!
When he went to grab the car keys with a little alien emoji attached, he paused, eyes going hollow at the memory that was as clear as a cutting shadow in bright sunshine. It wasn't just what he had seen in the rear-view mirror when they were leaving the Earlstone Mansion. Those eyes had never changed since that day. Gir had found this strange and ugly doll which had brought up something between robot and Irken, and he hadn't thought of it until now.
Has he been sick, for that long?
He knew. And he never said anything.
He walked into the lounge and bent down beside the old Elite. His breathing was slow and ragged, each timid inhale emitting a creaky sound as if his chest was boggy with fluids. Peeling back warm layers of blanket, he checked the binds of gauze and thick plaster, incredibly relieved that he hadn't bled through the last layer. His bent and smooth antennae rested limply across the pillow with no expressive inclinations, and his worm-like tongue poked between his dry lips at an angle.
The monster that had dropped into his life like an H-bomb had been reduced to a weakened, powerless creature beneath his shadow, though the reversal was not one he welcomed.
"What are we gonna do, goofball?"
Zim could not take another car ride. Even moving him from room to room was not something he wanted to try and do, and increased the risk of a seizure.
Even if I did somehow get him home, what the heck am I going to do once I get there? Will the computer just ask me to pull out his PAK and... plug it back in again?
Dib felt his burning forehead, aware that the Irken was still weakly shaking with chills.
I can't rush him in this condition. If I can keep the idiot toasty warm, and don't bump him around too much, I think he'll make it.
He faintly groaned at the irony. See what you made me do, Zim? I had to choose you over a girl, can you believe that? I have finally gone insane.
Don't kid yourself, Dib. She never really loved you.
The regret kept on punching. He had hoped that Clara would understand, but he knew now how foolish he was in trying.
Am I doing this for you, Zim? Or the promise I meant to keep?
The sun was a gold stamp in the sky, and though time crawled along, he still fearfully expected someone to pull up outside and hammer on his door with every passing moment. In the meantime, dry-eyed and tired, he carefully eased his sister's old shirt with the slogan 'Evil Never Rests' on the Irken by gently pulling it over his head and then delicately slipping his arms through it in gradual stages before easing it down past his hips. He was aware that Zim was all bone, and struggled to stay warm despite the blankets. The sweats and chills were a problem, as if being soaked by the rain had done more harm than originally thought. He wasn't vomiting the aspirin back out, and Dib hoped this was a good sign, but the fact that he was still unconscious wasn't so promising.
He inspected Zim's hands to find that the skin had started to knit back together, though the process was slow. The open sores along his neck were also less clammy and didn't feel like mush every time he touched them. But sitting here, waiting, frayed his already frazzled nerves. What if Clara tried to get in touch with his father? His father had the key to his house, and would be able to just waltz in. Then there was Gary, who would catch wind of her claims sooner or later.
He lay down beside the Irken and cupped an arm around him, feeling too tired and shell-shocked to do much else. Being careful not to put any weight on the Irken's chest, he rested his ear over his heart as the afternoon sunlight burned through the partly closed curtains. Zim had finally stopped shivering.
Dib closed his eyes, listening to heartbeats that were almost too faint to hear.
Everything was packed and ready in the foyer, but he wasn't ready to move him even though he was aware that taking the Elite home was the only solution. He was not well versed in medical practises, but he knew enough that there was no sense in hurrying a creature he didn't fully understand when he did not know his condition, and if the agitation of travel would only prompt more bleeding.
There was a rasp of breath, and burnished eyelids flittered briefly. "D-Dib? Dib w-where... wh-where...?" He squinted as if he was peering into too bright a light.
Dib gently scooped a hand over a bony protrusion of shoulder. "I'm right here, Fudge."
"St-stay... pl-please s-stay..."
"I will." The tears came, unbidden, uncalled for, and they spilled down pale cheeks.
"Am... am I safe?" He asked in that brittle croak. His eyelids kept slipping back down.
"You're super safe, Fudgekin. But you gotta stay calm. Can you do that for me?"
"I don't k-know..." The exertion, of words or the grief, brought up apple-green froth from his lips.
Dib slowly sat up, feeling that awful chasm of panic close around him. His antennae, the most expressive part of him that he could interpret almost as well as any typical human expression, were little more than wilted dead stems.
He got his hands under him and gently lifted his head and upper body. "Easy, little guy, easy." He rubbed the area around his PAK as he quietly shattered inside. "Let's take you home, okay?" You can't wait any longer...
"Don' k-know wher' home is..."
He kept Zim upright against his chest, the Elite's otherwise blank features turning into pain-filled winces that exposed the frailty he had been trying to hide. "I'm gonna keep you warm, okay?" He put the badly-stitched-custom jacket over Zim's shoulders and helped steer his little arms down the clipped sleeve holes. The old soldier complied with closed eyes, his tongue poking out of his lips again.
Dib threw on his own coat, bundled the Irken in a blanket and lifted him from the nest pile. Cuddling him to his chest, he slung a bag over his shoulder, opened the door and splashed through the puddles as he made his way to his car. Sunlight fell on Zim's white and pasty skin, and emphasised the dark purple shadows hugging his sunken eyes.
He slipped in behind the wheel with Zim bundled on his lap before anyone could see what it was he had. He turned the key in the ignition and flung the car into reverse.
Zim mumbled into the material of his shirt, each choked cough sounding watery. Dib had no idea what to do once he arrived at the Irken's home. Zim's military base was one of the most secure and dangerous places he'd ever come across. He had got inside in his youth, and more recently when he'd rescued the Elite after Gir's phone call, but that last intervention was only because Gir had given him entry. He had been in there seconds without needing to fiddle around with any equipment or go any deeper, which was nigh impossible without access.
"Zim, are you still with me? I need to access your base, even if it means bypassing your security." He kept his eyes on the road, but when he got no reply, he looked down at the little bundle. "Zim?"
The Irken's heavy head was resting against his chest, eyes closed, bluish-grey lips parted to emit laboured breaths. He lifted his eyes back to the road, one hand kneading the Irken's shoulder whenever he had a moment to do so. The narrow green house with its glowing windows soon came into view over the brow of the hill.
