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: This chapter goes to Xmimi89eR for the amazing fanart she sent me on discord! It really means a lot to me, there was a lot of love and dedication in the art work and it really brought me a whole truck of good feelings!

Guest

THIS story is what got you into IZ in the first place? I cannot think of a better compliment! Heh, I don't know if it was for the best, but man I am hyped and very honoured all the same! I'm glad you're loving these updates, and that you are enjoying them all over again! ^^

Zimothy

Heh, me too, and helped serve as Zim's way of lying, and trying to 'downplay' what he knew. I am so glad, always, that you're here, reading!


The Wire

x

Years before...

"Okay class, today I want you pairing up with a partner. This will make the lesson more fun and practical. Jimmy, stop giggling."

Dib groaned. He hated pairing up. It would have been okay if he had a friend that was exclusively his to share, but he had no friends, never had any friends, and was never going to have friends. His status of being a 'freak' and 'crazy' had followed him from Skool, and all the kids knew to avoid him as if his passion for the paranormal was just as offensive as his presence. He began to feel like an alien bordering the lives of others he could no longer understand or keep up with anymore.

At least he wasn't the only one suffering this perpetual exile. Zim endured the same ostracism, and remained on the lowermost tier of the social ladder, but the alien didn't seem to mind, preferring to stay as far away as possible from any and all 'dirt monkeys.' He repulsively sneered at whoever looked at him, and kept to the fringes of the playground during recess. Sometimes, on chillier afternoons, he would retreat to the computer room for whatever purpose, and stay there until recess was over.

But when they were always the same two without a partner, they were inevitably paired up by the ignorant Mr. Blake.

With obvious displeasure as if the human was no different to a blob of slime, Zim made his way over to Dib's desk and sat next to him.

"Now class," Mr. Blake continued while everyone else settled down with his or her partner, "today we are continuing our topic on literacy. Before the age of technological gizmos, TVs, games, and even before books and paper, storytelling was the main source of entertainment in form of characters that helped build and strengthen social bonds as well as fortifying the imagination."

"Pointless..." He heard Zim blithely hiss between his lips.

Dib quickly grew sweaty and uncomfortable whenever Zim was less than five inches from him, and his eyes would haplessly land on those skinny, pink-sleeved arms that rested on his desk. He could hear his nasally breathing, and smell his distinct weird odour. It made his insides bubble, every part of him wanting to leap and dart away.

From Zim's neck he noticed a glowing necklace. Dib glared at it without comment, trying to summarise what it was for. Zim noticed him staring, and glared back, the edges of his lips lifting into something hateful.

Just you wait, Zim. Today's going to be different.

He was careful not to shuffle things around in his duffel bag too much, knowing what he had hidden in there.

Mr. Blake started handing out sheets of paper to each pair, "I want you to write about the three major aspects of storytelling and what it can mean to the reader. These three things could be the characters, the plot, and the story's significance. I want you to write about why they are so important, and I want you to use examples from other books you've read."

Dib and Zim received a single sheet of paper to share between them.

Mr. Blake wrote the three main themes on the blackboard while the rest of the class ducked their heads and started scribbling down answers.

Dib knew he'd have to do all the work. Zim didn't read books. He didn't even know what a fucking story was.

"You humans learn such useless... uh... uselessness." Zim commented dryly, "No wonder your race is so backwards. Stories. Ha. So ridiculous."

"As a matter of fact, storytelling enhances language! And the imagination! And history!" Dib proclaimed angrily. He knew that defending the human race was kind of pointless. No one would vouch for Dib, and Zim didn't care. If anything, the Elite found Dib's defensiveness rather amusing.

"I'd like to see you try and reason your way through an Irken missile! Or imagine your way through a war! You fucking dirty pigs are so senseless learning such dirt!"

Dib pushed him with both hands. Zim fell backwards, the chair tipping with him, and when he fell into the kid behind him, it caused a domino effect until a whole line of kids and chairs were all over the floor.

"Dib!" Mr. Blake turned round from the board to give him one of his disapproving stares. "I see you are not taking this lesson seriously. Go and stand in the corridor!"

"But... Zim! He!" He went to desperately point at him.

"I said go and stand in the corridor! Do you want a detention too?"

Dib huffed and left his desk.

He stood in the quiet, chilly corridor with his back pressed up against the wall. The corridor had become more familiar to him over the months than the classroom itself.

The alien was testing the waters, and hitting back a little harder each and every time. It hadn't been that long since he'd been struck with a PAK leg when he'd stolen his P.E shirt, and the nerves and muscle hadn't quite healed. Zim had penetrated the bone, and he had had to wear his arm in a cast for months. When the cast was finally removed, Dib was left with a star shaped scar.

And things had only gotten worse since his growth spurt, which Zim had also taken offense to, as if the human could personally control the height he grew to, and was doing it just to spite him. Zim seemed to be less afraid of humans too. Each day he pushed the boundary a little more to see what he could get away with. It was no secret that the alien was being bullied by the taller kids. They would wait behind a brick wall after school was over, drag him to one side and beat him up. Any day now they'd knock that stupid wig off his head and reveal those ugly long antennae, but Dib was still waiting on that windfall.

Zim strutted around as if he owned the place, sometimes pushing or shoving children into the walls or lockers, and wedging the toilet cubical doors shut so that they couldn't get out. He would stuff devices into their school bags, and when they opened them for class, the contents would explode, showering the recipient in flames, goo, and what might be Gir's excrement. And Dib was usually the one who got the full repercussions. The Irken didn't seem to know how to stop - he got so caught up in the moment and failed to rein in his perimeters of self-control. One day he might kill a child just for the hell of it, especially if that child happened to get in the way of his goal.

And the warzone didn't exclusively exist within the perimeters of the school either. His father and sister had come under investigation for domestic abuse. There were only so many times one would come to school looking like they'd been run over by a truck until someone inevitably blew the whistle. This also launched a brief investigation into the school, but no one had owned up to anything. The more he shouted 'alien' the more they thought he was trying to cover up the real perpetrators.

When Zim came under investigation, he lied his way through it. The Irken had been clever enough never to physically hurt Dib when there were cameras or witnesses, and so the case against him was put on hold.

Besides, who would believe that their hate-fuelled war involved nanoships, pigs, florpus holes, muffins, baloney metamorphisms and organ robberies anyway?

Dib had hoped that an end was in sight, that Zim could not possibly hide and lie and cheat his way out of trouble forever. But he was beginning to realize his father might end up in an institute before much longer, or even be in one himself when the naivety of childhood could no longer protect how others saw him. That was when he knew he had to do something. At worse, he could lose his family, even his life, leaving Zim free to conquer the world.

As he lay in the hospital bed some months before, recovering from his latest Irken-incurred injury, with his dad answering questions to the cops just next door, he knew he had to become just as dangerous. He couldn't keep running forever, with Zim chasing him with a flamethrower, throwing him into a pit of robot weasels, or trying to incinerate him with boiling hot liquids.

Their games had inevitably developed into a brutal contest to see who could destroy the other, their spate of retributions growing more desperate and cruel each time they clashed.

One of them had to pull out; one of them had to die.

An eye for an eye, right?

After five minutes of standing in the corridor, Mr. Blake stepped outside with his arms folded in front of his chest. "Do you feel like coming back into my classroom, Dib, and not causing a fuss? I am trying to teach, and every day now you and Zim have to disturb the class."

He was about to argue when the words just died on his tongue. No matter what he would say, the teacher would just look at him in the usual pity or annoyance, and chalk his name on the board for purposeful misbehaviour. He should have gotten used to being written off by now by every stupid human who couldn't see Zim for what he truly was. This personal war was a very lonely war, and his predicament seemed to be getting worse the older he became. "Yes, sir." He said with as much self-control as he could muster. He found that he was beginning to hate humanity just as much for shunning him as much as disbelieving him.

"Very good." And he led him back into the classroom where the chairs (and kids) had been restored to their upright positions.

Zim still had that victorious smirk all over his fucking face.

When the school bell rang across the playing fields, it was a burning hot summer afternoon. The sky was a low deep blue and the sun was practically burning every blade of grass to cinders. The air was sweet with the smells of pollen, melted lolly pops and sticky sweat. Kids were buying ice cream from the petrol-spewing ice-cream van parked outside the school gates, and the lollies were melting as quickly as the kids could lick them.

He walked along the border of the school, hefting the heavy bag over his shoulder, its weight causing butterflies to flutter into his chest.

Because Zim generally waited for the horde of kids to leave school grounds so he wouldn't be pushed and pulled around, Dib found him easily enough. He stood off to one side under the shade of a blossom tree, arms folded, scrutinising the mass of children as a butcher discerned a herd of scrawny pigs. Sneaking around behind him, counting on the soldier to turn, he directed the spray from the aerosol can directly into his eyes and face.

Zim gasped and squealed like he had never heard him gasp and squeal before, and he began to slash frenetically at his eyes until his panicked screams were heard over the clanging school bell.

Who knew home-made recipes could work so well.

Tucking the can back into his school bag, he dashed ahead of the crowd, knowing he had more than enough time.

The construct had been hidden away in a back alley, covered in tarp and bits of cardboard against a brick wall. When it was folded up it looked like a wooden board covered in mesh. It was crude, if a little barbaric, looking like something a farmer had cobbled together, and was a far cry from the usual magnificence of his devices. His father would have taken one look at the thing and shaken his head in dismay.

In many ways it reflected his lost innocence, of a child that had endured and endured until he simply couldn't anymore.

Hot and sweaty, Dib wrenched it out of the shadows and began to unfold it. It was heavy and cumbersome, its span about three feet wide and three feet long. Zim liked to come home using the same route – he could be as predictable as a ticking clock, and Dib would use this to his advantage. He just hoped no one else would come down here in the meantime.

The wires were long, barbed, and were sharpened into thorns about an inch or so long. They were so spiky he had already cut himself several times just welding it all together in the garage. And it was dangerous to set. If he prematurely triggered it on himself, he could lose an eye or a finger. Setting it like a mantrap, pinning both sides down until he heard the metal plate click into place, the wires lying neat and formidable in the afternoon sunlight, he took a relieved step back to admire it. Each wire was connected to a heavy mechanism pad. In theory, the whole thing was rigged to snap tight like a clam. The poisonous aerosol concoction in the can would, fingers crossed, prevent Zim from seeing it. But he still needed to be sure.

Removing his jacket, he pinned it on the wall opposite the trap. Zim would have little choice but to walk down this enclosed alleyway when each side was piled high with people's garbage.

Sweating, Dib checked his wristwatch, knowing he had cut it close. Zim would be along in about two minutes if he could still see where to walk.

He dived behind a pile of rubbish with his duffel bag and tried to stop giggling as a delirious kind of excitement steadily climbed with each passing moment, but beneath the delirious anticipation was a slow and building terror. This had to work. There were probably better ways, but to have a chance, he had to pin the soldier in place, and disable him before the PAK could turn the tables. Once Zim was stuck, the heavy revolver .44 would do the rest.

He unzipped his soft henna bag and groped for the gun he had wrapped in an old brown blanket. Holding it in his hands exacted a terrific and awful weight. Its polished barrel gleamed under the sleepy heat of the sun, its handgrip a rich chocolate color. Buying such things in Lincoln wasn't hard and you didn't even need to go very far when about every city corner after dark was littered with druggies and alcoholics willing to sell anything for money, and he had a lot of that. The only real misgiving was that simple bullets might not be enough to capsize a monster, so he had spent two nights on the trot building a prototype EMP grenade to help even the odds. He took it out along with the heavy revolver. It was not much different to a clunky Christmas bauble roughly decorated with glued bits of circuitry and hastily welded wires over a metal sphere. One throw, and it should activate, but with only one charge, and no time for a field test...

If this doesn't work...

No, don't think about it! This will work!

The wind started to pick up, as it often did during the late afternoons as summer blended towards autumn.

Dib waited and waited, sweating in the heat with his knees cramping. He dared not move in case Zim was moments away. As beads of sweat trickled down the small of his back, he could soon hear him grunting and miserably ranting, with the sounds of his clicking boot heels drawing closer.

"That stupid, fucking child! I'll make him pay for this! Thinks he can sneak up does he... thinks he can... aghh it hurts!"

Dib held his breath, shirt sticking to his skin, knees burning from squatting for so long, but he didn't dare move. Shivery, clammy fingers squeezed on the gun's solid, brutish grip.

Keep ranting, Zim! Don't pay any attention to where you're walking! You stupid asshole!

Zim stopped mid-step, pawing miserably at a bleeding eye, and narrowly squinted at the jacket hanging on the wall. The sun had slanted down in the sky, catching the protruding wires at an angle. Everything was so bright to look at, and his damaged vision presented this soup-blurry world where colors spilled and ran into everything. "The Dib?" He snapped, stooping clumsily towards the jacket, "Why did he leave...?"

The wind blew harder down the throat of the alleyway, knocking the wig from his head. He went to reach after it, his left boot stepping into the wire.

Dib had not miscalculated. The boards snapped into a sandwich, the Irken caught in the middle. The barbs sunk in like nails, crucifying Zim's left hand, chest, throat and left antenna. The harrowing squeal was too high-pitched and harrowing to be a mere cry of pain. Dib had never heard him make such a sound, and it rooted him to the spot behind the pile of rubbish, too afraid to see what he had done. But as much as he tried to tune out the noise, he couldn't block out the thrashing sounds: of a body failing against metal and concrete the way an animal would flay and thrash in a snare.

More distressing shrieks followed the thrashing struggles – screams that made his ears, head and heart ring.

He broke from cover, gun in hand, to finally see what he had done.

Zim lay pinned in the wire's sandwiched embrace, claws scrabbling against pavement, legs kicking weakly and randomly. His damaged eyes were screwed shut, body futilely tensing with wires crisscrossing tightly over his chest and throat. He was visibly shivering, one antenna diving down and up as pain poured into him.

Dib stood, gaping in disbelief at the indomitable monster he had finally brought down: the creature that could slap away any trap or hurt or plot and keep on coming, wounds vanishing before his very eyes as if the Irken was made out of self-repairing metal.

"Z-Zim...?" As he approached, he saw the left antenna wrapped in toothed wire. As Zim pulled and thrashed, the wire began to pull apart the feeler, strands of it severing away from the main stalk like unravelling thread.

Serrated, rusted points of metal squeezed deeper into his chest as he tried to turn or push or thrash. Apple green blood appeared around his neck. Again Zim twisted and pulled in the mesh, each attempt causing more wounds and more bleeding that soon terrified the boy.

Stop, please just stop struggling!

The cries were horrible, sounding like a mewling kitten mixed with the wretched, chalk-scratching screams of a cornered seagull. Dark alien fluids peppered the pavement in thicker droplets.

He might die. This thought shot through his terror and bewilderment – causing a small fraction of uncertain relief to surface. He can't come for me! He can't escape it!

The soldier's PAK suddenly exploded to life, and a strut emerged, firing blindly. It took Dib a moment too late to realize and went to duck, the pink plasma bolt flying over his head, only to hit his jacket. In an instant nothing remained of it but smouldering shreds.

He peeked out behind a turned over trash can, watching the evil looking turret helplessly pivot and turn as if whatever functioned as its CPU was as frazzled and as broken as its owner.

He's using it in public! This is what I wanted! No, this is better than what I wanted! He's disabled! Someone's gonna see this!

I'll be... I'll be famous!

It's over at last! I've won!

I don't need to be afraid anymore!

The miniature gun swivelled frantically around, trying to aim directly down to target the trap pinning the invader. Another bright pink shot went off, melting some of the mesh, but when the next shrieking scream followed, he realized Zim had struck his own arm, and the stink of sizzling meat and blood had Dib stooping to the floor, hot bile rushing up his throat, with vomit spewing on dirt and garbage.

Hopelessly turning again to alleviate the pain, the concrete under his arm now blackened and scorched, the turret fired another streak of livid pink, the shot going completely astray to create a burning hole in the nearby fence.

Panic turning into a scream, heart drumming thunderously in his ears, Dib darted out of cover and threw the EMP grenade. It bounced, rolling just short of its target before popping like a firework. He didn't stop to notice that the power to his wristwatch had died.

The infuriated scream came immediately after, and the 'gun' dived reluctantly back inside a now sparking PAK as if the energy Zim needed to sustain it had vanished.

Spent, panting, the Irken finally lay still on his side, eyes sporadically opening and closing. Dib couldn't tell if he was gathering his strength for another attempt or if his insuperable energy had been successfully denied.

Something glistened in the hot sun, something pink. Dib warily approached, gun sights trained on the panting Irken, and snatched it up. It was the necklace he had been wearing earlier in class. Hanging from the broken chain was a glowing vial that seemed to hold a drop of the cosmos inside.

Believing it to be to some evil and preordained device to conquer the world with, Dib slipped it into his pocket.

He decided to say something. He should say something, right? This was his victory: the moment he'd been wanting since Zim had dropped into his life like a fucking anvil. But in that moment, with the creature twisting and turning and squealing again, no words would come.

He stared at the evil he had made, an evil he had once thought he had been so incapable of making.

Slowly he lowered the gun until it loosely hung by his leg from slack, cold fingers. He turned round, to escape, from the noise, from everything, but before he had taken a step, he heard Zim's breathless rasp. "D-Dib... d-dun't... dun't turn... yor b-back on m-me... you can't leave..."

Rage transcended the despair and he spun back round. "Shut up, you stupid alien! You don't get to ask for anything, not after what you've done to me!" His own shout sounded feeble to his ears. Finding the courage, hands shaking, he rolled up a sleeve to reveal his penitence in the form of a star-shaped scar. "I'm getting you back! For everything! You can't suddenly quit your own war just because I've finally trumped you and your whole shitty operation!"

Zim managed to open one lilac eye before squeezing it shut again as another stroke of pain convulsed through his body. As he twisted and turned, additional barbs penetrated new places, some going deeper, and no matter what he tried, he couldn't relieve the sudden pressure growing in his chest.

"Well? Go on!" Dib cried, "Save yourself! Cut the wire! It isn't so hard! Or are you so pathetic you can't even do that?"

Black bloater flies were gathering in the greasy air, attracted by the blood. The sky spun round and round until he wasn't sure which way was up or down. One arm was so entangled he couldn't bring it to his chest, and when he pulled and turned, he gave up the pursuit of trying to untangle himself when sudden pain snapped through his head. His judgement, hearing, orientation, all of it had melted away. Dib had become two wobbly forms morphing in and out of existence, and sometimes he would become a monstrosity of four arms and four legs with two heads.

He could feel his antenna severing apart even when the PAK's central brain and processor was a messy jumble of mixed signals absent of direction.

His chin hit the floor after trying to push up with his shoulders, the boards opening, only for his strength to run out too quickly. His vision was blighted by lines – each time he opened his eyes he was confronted by the same cage – the same misery. The pain was breaking him apart, with no PAK to analyse and anaesthetize it.

Claws digging into the dirt through gaps in the mesh, he pulled harder, knowing he had to get out even as the barbs sunk deeper. The light-headedness was a thickening cloud, with everything dizzyingly rocking and blurring.

Dib stood watching, morbidly engrossed by the dark oily green pooling beneath him. A burnt arm, the glove and sleeve now nothing but smoking tatters, lay outside the sandwich of boards, erratically twitching.

He took a step back, not wanting to be part of it.

"D-Dib... worm..." The boy's ghostly eyes flashed down to his, "don't... don l-leave..."

The boy stared at the droplets of emerald shining brilliantly in the late summer sunshine, confused by the Irken's desperation to get him to stay. Then his hands were working on the wires before his brain had sped up to the situation, and he was pulling and tugging on flesh ripping hooks as blood sluiced between his fingers.

Zim's eyes rolled into the back of his skull as the world spiralled away. He was aware only of that terrible sinking. Dib's peering, horror-struck face turned into a shadowy blotch upon a red sky as he lay in the thorns. When he was flopped onto his side, the hanging wires around him bejewelled in glistening emerald, he did not notice that he was free.

"Zim! Zim! I've got you out!"

Hands forcibly shoved his side. He was dimly aware of his head rolling uselessly on the dirt, of the fire blood sky burning against his semi-closed eyelids. A trickle of panic weeded through the numbing anaesthesia as an arm braced his shoulders and slowly lifted him upright.

A barrage of cries and sobs met his strangely distant hearing. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Just... please, don't kill me!"

He went to open his eyes, confronted by shifting blobs and blurry shapes. The red of the sky was too intense to peep at, so he squeezed his eyes shut again as the world angrily rotated. He was certain he must be rotating too, and when his squinting eyes landed on glints of cold wire less than a foot away, he remembered with a pained groan.

Dib was snuffling and weeping.

Feeling dizzy and cold, Zim looked down at the limp claws lying on his lap. The gloves that hugged them so tightly were tattered shreds, exposing mangled skin and welts still smouldering away like meat that had just come out the oven. One wrist had been gouged open. Bright green slowly dribbled down the burnt sleeve in hypnotising rivulets, but it was the sudden, unsettling shifts and clicks in his PAK and the telltale stink of burning ploxum that worried him.

With an arm perched behind him to keep the invader from flopping back down, the human swam into view. "Look at me! Please!"

Zim did so, hardly understanding why it was so important.

"I'm sorry! I'm just a kid!"

Blinking stupidly, the alien numbly looked at the trap less than a foot away. Its boards lay loose and partly mangled. Dib must have used a penknife to cut through the wires as some had been severed, while others had been bent and twisted as if he had grappled with them by hand.

You got me out.

Why did you change your mind at the last minute, Dib? Are you frightened of enduring me, and yet frightened of going all the way?

You almost had your victory.

You don't know what you really want, do you?

His hearing had completely gone on his left side. With his eyes gently sliding to a close, he could no longer tell which way was up, and where north and south were anymore as if everything had been switched around. He was a broken compass without a magnetic direction.

Something was hanging down by his head, like a thin cord or loose bit of rope. He was suddenly too afraid to touch it, and discover what it really was.

Dib ran a dirty, green splattered hand under his nose. His voice was thick with tears. "You don't know what it's like to be scared every single day! Of how my father sees me! You think I enjoy these battles Zim? I'll let you have the world if that's what you want. I just... I just want my life back..." Tears flowed down his cheeks, and they would occasionally land on Zim's face. He waited for the droplets to burn him.

Dib went quiet for a moment, snivelling and choking, and the old Irken thought his little breakdown might finally be ending when the boy would suddenly burst into fresh tears again. That was when he saw how young he truly was. Dib's hard shell had come away at the seams, revealing who he had been really fighting all along. He believed he had been fighting a warrior, someone who matched him on the playing field, but the tears revealed a mere child barely on the eve of adulthood.

He dimly looked over at the mangled trap again, seeing something small and black flutter in the barbed teeth like a piece of ribbon before realizing in horror that it was part of his antenna. The remains of it hung against his head, swaying in the breeze like a broken swing.

A blanket of darkness seized him, the PAK an unresponsive, burdensome weight, and when he next opened his eyes he was not looking up into red sunlight anymore. He was resting in shadow, and lying on something softer. When he regained focus, he found himself looking up into Dib's tear stained face. The human was sitting against a brick wall, with his head on his lap. He was faintly aware of how bizarre this proximity of spaces was, and that someone might come by, and see the green and the antenna. He pressed his claws flat to the ground and tried to lift himself up into a sitting position. The world slipped to the left and he dropped heavily to the floor, surprised at how easily he had been robbed of balance.

The world sounded so strange and indistinct, with a metallic echo following every sound. The nerve endings in his broken antenna began discharging angry, agonizing fireworks that ran to their very tips.

He tucked one leg under him, and slowly did the same with the other. After giving himself a moment to see if the world might stop spinning, he lifted himself upright and took a step. He smacked his head on concrete, finding himself back on the floor again with the sky sickeningly floating just behind his eyes. He placed a hand on his forehead in the hopes that would stop everything from moving. Overcome by a splitting cracker of a migraine he'd never suffered before, he threw up his half-digested school lunch on the pavement.

"Ooh..." The boy produced a tissue, knelt down and handed it to the Irken. Zim managed to lift himself up on one elbow and begrudgingly wiped his mouth with it.

Dib went to find his wig, and when he returned he tried placing it over his mangled antenna.

The helpless pained scream made the boy go completely white. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean... I m-mean... I didn't want to... but..."

"Get a-away from me..." He went to get up again, only to find that he still couldn't balance. He wasn't sure what wasn't working – the PAK – or his body – and sunk frustratingly back to the floor, trying to contain the grief as much as his etiquette would allow.

Dib hovered above him, a hand reaching out. "I... I didn't mean... I didn't mean to... to do this... But... but I didn't turn my back on you... okay? You've got to promise me the same!"

"Sounds... s-sounds like a d-disgusting alliance." The very thought made him feel ill.

"Yeah. I guess it does. But it doesn't have to be forever."

The red sun descended, twilight followed, and there came another dawn, another day, and Zim never went back to high school. He didn't even leave his base. Dib would often walk to the fence, looking across at the scrubby lawn, the weathered gnomes and the crooked satellite. More days and nights followed until he worked up the courage to come as far as his front door and try to look in through the musty windows, only to be impeded by curtains blocking his view from the inside. Eventually, when the winter was colder than it had ever been, and there was still no sign, he finally knocked on the little purple door.

He learned that the Empire did not look kindly on those who were broken.

As the seasons blew in, casting the world to grey, the soldier's impairment only grew like cracks in porcelain.

When Dib hit his thirtieth birthday, they spent the night at the Treaty playing Black Jack. One half of the table was filled with empty bottles and glass tumblers, the other half piled high with candies such as hard boiled sweets, chocolate covered truffles and peppermint lollies. They were holding bets using the candy. Zim usually won on most occasions if he could concentrate for two seconds, ending the night with a towering pile of sweets.

Tonight, Dib was in the lead, having won more chocolates than he knew what to do with, but Zim's mind had been elsewhere for the entire evening. Dib surmised that it had something to do with a plan that had gone tits-up, or he was homesick despite the invader's immediate insinuations that he suffered no such thing.

Dib hated to pry; earning scowls and hard-searching-stares whenever he asked the soldier a question, but Zim was the one who came forward. "Dib. What is happiness?"

He had to look twice at the disguised alien. "It's a feeling you get... when something or someone makes you... happy."

"Like what?" Zim asked with uncharacteristic sternness.

Dib shrugged. He could not describe happiness. It was something one could only experience through life, if one could experience it at all. "It's a warm feeling inside. Like being... loved. It makes you... happy."

"And what is the purpose of this... happiness? Does it give you... power? Youth?" He leaned his lower jaw against his clawed hand, his gaze a little too attentive.

"No, no, it's nothing like that. It's well, it's like joy. To be... fulfilled. Contented?" He attempted, trying to give something that might relate to the Irken, but Zim only sat there, looking intensely at him. "Urm. Pleasure?"

"Like destroying?" He curtly replied.

"No, no! That's evil, Zim! That's not happiness! Destroying something might please you, but it isn't what I'd call happiness."

"What makes you happy?"

Dib shrugged again, feeling uncomfortable. "Family, I guess."

"Oh." Zim said, looking down at the table, his attentive stare melting at the edges. "I don't have one of those."

-x-

Why had Zim asked such a stupid question? What had he been looking for?

As he stood in an alien base smelling of blood, panic spilled through him like ink, arching through every numb and clawing thought. He did not understand why it hurt so much. He wished he could take the pain, and throw it back into oblivion.

He thought of Clara, of how he had let her go, and the future he might have had. That hurt too. Everybody always leaves me in the end.

The further he got to the exit, the closer he came to escape, the worse he felt.

"What makes you happy?"

The doors to the conduit opened soundlessly, and he stared, incredulous and dumbstruck when he found himself back on the top floor, staring at ripped wallpaper and ruined carpet. He did not remember stepping into the conduit, and did not remember telling the computer his destination.

Little lights banking the conduit's walls serenely sparkled and blinked, with a silence detonating inside his head. He felt this clamour build inside like a fever; and he stepped back until he hit the soft and smooth wall, boot heels squeaking on the polished floor. The computer seemed to understand, the doors closed, and the conduit was plunging him back into Zim's honeycomb nucleus. His fractured mind battled with the consequences of facing the inevitable, of diving back into the pain, only to watch Zim die.

Clara had been right to leave him. What kind of a person would choose to love a coward?

His fists tightened, cold tears sticking like sequins on pale cheeks.

Happiness. Heh. What even is that, really?

He could not help but think that he and Zim had exchanged a part of their soul to one another without being aware. But how could it be? When they'd spent the better part of their lives hating one another?

He could feel it even though he could not explain it.

A part of him was dying, as if whatever he had exchanged with Zim was dying too.

The doors opened. He ran headlong down the tight and weaving arterial tunnels, barely combing back the tubing in time as his scythe of hair brushed the ceiling, elbows hitting metal ducts and valves. There was a need, however misguided or infantile, to try, to not give up, even if there was nothing on Earth that he could do.

You were never the monster I believed you to be.

All those times you could have just packed up and left for some other place. But you never did.

Observing you over time allowed me to notice the little things, and to understand just how alone you were. Did your leaders expect you to keep going forever? Or did they retire you, and you were just too proud to admit it? You battled to stay valid every single day, not just to be recognised, but to survive.

You knew you were going to die. No matter what you did.

I should have told you this a long time ago. You are my happiness, Zim. And I am not going to let you die alone.