Debacle (R) - Subject Zim

Summary:

All his life Dib has wanted to capture Zim and gain the victory and fame he always wanted. When his wish comes true however, not everything falls so comfortably into place.

Disclaimer:

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

This is from the old story Debacle which I rewrote awhile ago. You can read it as it is, and needs nothing else to accompany it. ^-^

Warnings:

Dark themes and angst throughout. Some chapters carry a hefty R warning.


Dib07: Thank you for the reviews, they really cheer me up, especially during such a tough and challenging year where it's easy to lose faith and motivation. The reviews have just been so... juicy too! I have been re-reading them on my phone, giggling in random places, like the locker room and out in public, lol. It just makes my DAY!

Right, let's get on with this thing...!

Apocalypticmind: Thank you, this gives me hope! I also hope this chapter is pretty okay too!


All I Wanted

He cycled through the footage, the reflections cast on the lens of his glasses as he flicked through them. In one recording three men were huddled around a table, their suited forms making them move like bulky and cumbersome marshmallows. The item currently under speculation was so tiny that he nearly missed it. A tiny pink marble had been placed in the steel centre and the men were prodding it with thin metal appliances.

"This is a waste of time! I keep telling you idiots that it's just a toy marble!" One of the scientists was awkwardly fumbling with his space-like helmet, and when he lifted it off to the grey and lined face of Williams was revealed. Dib watched him turn away and head for the door. Unperturbed in their quest, one of the suited scientists picked up the marble in gloveless hands and started turning it. The explosion was instantaneous, sending both men to opposite ends of the room, the front of their suits blackened and smoking: face helmets cracked. The camera must have blown because the footage snapped to black.

He hit the button, cycling to the next recording of earlier.

The polished sides of her purple hull and gleaming pink windshield stirred up sudden biting jealously.

The wound stung in reply, and he grimly clung to it. With all the lights surrounding it, above, below, and around, it brought out the lustre in her coating and propulsion systems. Few dents remained of battle, with even fewer marks of space flight, plainly illustrating the effort the pilot put into maintaining the ship.

The Voot Runner had been gently scooped out of the house's roof and placed on the back of a flatbed truck before being padded for the long journey. They had barely been able to lift it using the GV crane. He had stood on the sidelines, watching the slow and arduous process, and the biting resentment felt like a claw slashing his chest. It did not fade, even when the Voot was driven down the road. It should have been his. It didn't matter if he was too small for it, if the tech could never be understood or that he already had an Irken ship hidden away.

In the recording, the Voot sat on a small platform: scrutinized by a thousand lights. Every shadow was brought to light; every nodule and tiny vein of piping was thrown out of the dark. Like its stubborn pilot, it stood, uncontested, and unbeaten. The windshield, the gate to its integrity, was intact. Men cautiously approached it with tools and prods extended as if they were cornering a rampant and ferocious beast. As soon as anything touched it, a veil of pink burst outwards, throwing the men back, electrical discharge purring over the Voot and over the floor and walls like glittery, rippling water. The screams of pain had him quickly shut off the footage.

He took his glasses off so that he could wipe the sweat off his face using an old handkerchief.

Zim had been his mountain, to climb, to conquer, and to demolish.

The mountain had been tipped upside down, his assets and worth strung out into exhibits reminiscent of a carnival freak.

The door clicked open and Dib spun round, pain spiking his side as if someone was pressing glass through the flesh. Torrent stood in the doorway, the lapel of his lab coat smeared with brown and yellow stains. His eyes were dark and watchful. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dib? Dib Membrane?" No recognition lightened the man's eyes. "...The one who gave you guys the alien?"

"What are you doing?" Then in the next breath, "You shouldn't be in here!"

"Why not? I have the right!"

"Get out! Now!"

He opened his mouth, about to conform to the usual: "I'm gonna tell my dad!" before stopping on the first syllable. "Fine. Whatever." He grabbed his jacket and hurried past Torrent, stepping dizzyingly into the cold and sterilized corridor. Geneva was a frigid, bland and insipid prison of labyrinthine corridors that insisted on a repeating and nauseating pattern. It was easy to lose your way and easy to double back on yourself, often passing the same door thrice before realizing you were going round in circles.

He found the correct stairwell because he had left a pink sweet wrapper there and trudged down it, hoping his side hadn't split open and that he wasn't still bleeding under the brick of padding.

Shuffling into the lobby, two scientists walked past without lifting their heads to notice him. He half wanted to chase them down, and yell and scream his name, but the desire fizzled out within the moment.

He checked his wristwatch. It was eleven thirty. He had five hours before Zim's regenerative testing. As much as he wanted to rest, and find the courage to peer at the padding beneath his clothing, he had to check that old and kooky house to make sure the underground lair was still intact before making his way back in time.

Outside the glass doors, the gatherings of the crowd seemed to have thinned since yesterday. There was a young man holding a microphone and a clipboard, with perhaps a dozen protestors pressing forwards at his back.

Using his key card, the glass doors opened, and as soon as the watery sunlight hit his face, he put on a big smile. Cameras flashed. People started looking excitedly his way, their voices surging into one loud noise. He rose his hand up, trying to copy the confidence of his father. Prof. Membrane handled the press with ease, never once getting ruffled, or losing a shade of that coolness that kept him grounded. The cover on Science of Today hadn't captured the image he'd wanted on the too-pale, too-strained image of himself standing, overshadowed by his self-assured father.

"Are you Dib Membrane?" The microphone was in his face again, but instead of backing away, he inched forwards, continuing to wave at his audience.

"How do you feel?"

His smile waned when he saw the protestors moving in. "Thank you, thank you! One at a time, please!"

"What will happen to the alien?"

"When will we be able to see it?"

"Is this just another scam for money?"

"Why is the military involved?"

As he waved and smiled, he saw that he was just a figurehead for their questions and all-consuming curiosity about Zim; not about him, his life, and his ambitions.

"Yes, well, it was difficult for me." He said, trying to imagine a different audience asking questions that mattered. "But the world is safe, thanks to me. I always said aliens were real, that they were right here! Who knows what else is out there, targeting Earth! And I..." Something splattered onto his face, his glasses covered in some sticky, gooey substance. He turned away, blinded, hands clawing to his face. Someone was laughing.

He pulled away, spitting out the substance that had got into his mouth as more of it dribbled down his chin and neck. He stumbled and fell; something wet and hot exploded down his ribs and stomach, and the laughter found new sums of hilarity.

In the jeering and pain and darkness, someone reached up to take his hand and he was led forwards. His feet stumbled after them, the laughter braying in his ears. Whoever had him by the hand was small, and he had to bend his back. Using an arm he irritably rubbed his glasses with a sleeve, and the yellow substance greased along the lenses. A rotten, eggy smell filled his nostrils and mouth. Something green was walking ahead of him, and entangling guilt and fear collided into a storm, causing his chest to tighten. "Z-Zim?"

"No, silly!"

Dib's eyes softened. The little paw released his hand.

He removed his glasses and tried to clean off the goo with his shirt. When he placed them back over his nose, Gir's doggie face stared back through the smears.

"What are you doing here?" He spat out egg. "I told you not to follow me!"

"Awww! Don't be mad! I bought cake!" And he whisked out a cake from seemingly nowhere from his backside and presented it on a rose-tinted place on nubby little paws. It looked like dark chocolate cake through the smears, but even he noticed the twig sticking up from its centre, and he could smell leaf mulch and a sweet earthly aroma that was not sugar icing or cocoa.

"Is that a mud pie?"

It was beginning to drip from the plate. Runny soil trickled down Gir's paws.

He checked behind him to see garbage overflowing along a brick wall. Zim's android had led him to the dustbins at the back of Geneva. Rage and shame brightened his cheeks beneath the plastered yolk. When he turned to Gir, his shout made the robot flinch and step away. "I told you not to follow me!"

Gir looked down at his 'cake' before tears gathered in those mismatched eyes.

Dib watched the undeniably real tears fall and plop onto the trash-littered stone. He wanted to see him as a volatile and unpredictable robot that had been engineered to help with Zim's evil. Now he could only see an orphan. He reached out, and took the grubby plate from grubby paws. "Thanks, Gir. Maybe I'll have some later." The 'dog' perked up immediately with tail wagging, floppy ears lifting. "You miss him, don't you?" He reached out, he didn't know why. He was hurting, from the jeers, the humiliation. No one had a kind word to say to him: no one stopped to notice him, and no one ever hugged him.

Gir bypassed the hand entirely and leapt forwards to hug him, nubby paws clinging desperately to his neck.

-x-

He stared at the crooked green house that no longer presented the looming malice he ordinarily felt when looking at it. Its walls and skewered windows weren't glowing or pulsing, as if something inside had capsized, and the windows were aglow with the cold flashing lights of red and blue from the adjacent cop cars that were parked on the front lawn. Yellow tape flittered and whipped about from their posts. The leering satellite that had stretched like a singular reaching arm had been taken down and the lawn gnomes had been packed and carted away. Men sat in their patrol cars, keeping an eye out for scavengers and protestors or anyone else who happened to get too close, while the investigation team pecked through the site like archaeologists looking for old bones.

"You stay here." He turned in his seat to give Gir what he hoped was a convincing look.

"You still have egg on you!"

He peered tiredly at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. His jacket was crusty with dried yolk, and blobs of it clung to his ebony hair. When he spoke, his eyes held his battered and bruised reflection. "They never did ask how it ended between us, Gir. I kinda thought they wanted to know, I guess."

Gir was munching great mouthfuls of mud.

He sighed, looking at the dull vestiges of a province that once stirred up boundless exhilaration as he prepared for that ride only Zim could offer.

How long would it take for Carlson's all-seeing and probing eye to turn towards home? The specifics of the fight hadn't come under much scrutiny, the immediateness of it lost beneath the excitement of 'Zim.' The battleground had held no grandeur, only a desperate kind of animalistic desperation. He was always too tired to fill up a bucket and confront the green and ruby stains. They had dried, caking to the floor and walls like paint. The claws marks in the doorway needed to be filled in, and repainted. The fusion weapon would have to be hidden, preferably buried.

He had been prepared to lie about the final battle, to make it seem more spectacular. But no one had asked, and he was no longer sure what to say even if something presented him with the question.

He gave one last glance at the anxiously staring 'dog' in the backseat and slammed the door shut. Wind whisked and played at his coat tails. The movements of his hip kept stirring up the pain, and he had to bite down on his tongue to keep from groaning.

The red and blue lights pulsed over him, turning his white and egg-stained face into something grey and ghoulish.

"Hey! Hey you!" A cop confronted him on Zim's old pathway. Tiny craters remained of where the gnomes were once rooted. He couldn't stop comparing them to garden vegetables, and that they had been harvested like turnips. "Hey! Boy!"

He turned, glass lenses flashing coldly as the sun disappeared behind grey and sombre clouds.

"You need to back off! This is a crime scene."

"I'm Dib Membrane." He held up his key card. It teased open painful disappointments. The card was opening pathways and thorny roads while his face and name remained closed to people. "I'm here to check on the investigation team. Professor Membrane's orders."

"His... o-orders?" He stammered, and quickly jumped aside.

Wherever he went, his father's repute followed him like a dark and heavy shadow.

It was like stepping into something that belonged to a far-flung and distant past. The wallpaper had been scrapped back to reveal drywall, and the drywall had been drilled or blasted into, exposing tubes and wires and circuitry that spilled out like intestines. The TV had been hauled away in a truck, so had the sofa, and every picture frame. An apocalypse had blown through Zim's house, and leaves gusted in after him on a mud stained carpet. The coffee table had been split in two. The kitchen ripped apart. He stood in the plaster-rubble, heart racing and mouth dry as he snapped looks to every gaping hole and excavated perforation.

You're that golden goose, Zim. The goose that keeps on giving.

The mountain had fallen, exposing its roots. The horizon opened before him, but there was nothing accelerating left to climb, no high points to look from.

Nothing lasts forever. Not even between us.

The rooms were filled with the salvo of drilling and pounding, of pristine drills penetrating the deeper walls, of fine-tuned hammers chipping back and peeling away the fibres. The excavation team with CSI stamped in black on their uniforms toiled in white protective suits. They clawed away sections, grabbed and pulled things before secreting them away in sealed bags. One of the suited men was rolling up the rug, exposing wooden floorboards. Under that would be a layer of heavy-duty metal and under that would be about a mile of earth. The toilet in the kitchen had been removed, exposing the slim passage of the conduit. The bin had also been excavated, revealing another narrow passage.

The bookcase was the only piece of furniture left that hadn't been spoiled.

They were all too busy hammering, drilling and chipping at the walls. He flashed out his hand and dropped a charge down the opening of the conduit, and did the same for the opening where the bin was. He came to stand by the bookcase, watching the vultures do their work. The beauty of the place was torn out, parts of it individually packaged and labelled in cold methodology. Zim's legacy amounted to tagged and labelled items in stored boxes: his existence part of human history alongside fossils, curious medieval finds, and artefacts of another epoch.

A wall crumbled, exposing filaments that weakly pulsed. A gloved hand reached up and grabbed them, pulling them out of the cavity. Dib couldn't watch. He tapped on the lowermost side of the bookcase and it tipped open. The charge made a sound as it bounced inside, but the drilling concealed it. Another tap and the bookcase closed with the softest click.

When he stepped forward something crunched beneath his boot heel. He looked down, boot coming away from fragments of a broken toy. The nausea rose up suddenly, his mouth filled with saliva and he hurried out into the cold winds, but the icy chill on his burning cheeks did not alleviate him. Struggling to pull in a breath, he hobbled to the car parked on the curb.

Gir's lopsided dog-suit eyes were watching him through the glass.

He stood, hunched by the car, a hand on its metal. Swallowing brought back a stronger reflex to chuck up his insides.

The pavement pulsed red and blue. Even when he shut his eyes to try and gravitate the spinning, he could still see the PAK's pulses on the backs of his eyelids.

When his eyes cleared, when he had loosened his hands from around Zim's throat, he had stared at the makings of what he'd done. His cold and shaking hand had reached forwards to rock a limp and tiny shoulder.

He hunched up, insides roiling around, and his stomach contents splattered onto the pulsing red and blue pavement. Soup-grey liquid ran off the stone and into the grass.

Wrenching the car door open, he collapsed into the seat.

He could feel Gir watching him.

Running the back of his hand against his lips, he watched the clouds above break apart. Soft, new sunshine slid back onto the street, lining every tree, car and house in velvet gold.

When his eyes looked into the rear-view mirror, he caught sad accusing dog eyes staring back.

His throat clenched, hands squeezing on the steering wheel. "Don't look at me like that. Zim was bad, Gir. He didn't care about you. He would have walked all over you to get what he wanted."

Gir looked down, face covered in mud and twigs.

He picked up the remote, the cold of its plastic contrasting with the heat of his palm. He pressed it, and he could feel as much as hear three concussive blasts coming from inside the slouched and crooked house that used to glow. He watched the men in their protective suits fall out of the doorway as smoke chased after them.

His wristwatch began to pulse with shrill jingles. Pressing a hand to his chest, he realized what it was and lifted the watch to his face. He hit the intercom button and his father's holographic face appeared above the watch's blue plate. "Son! Where are you?" His tone was stern and sharper than usual. This kind of tone was saved especially for when he'd arrive home late after school, or when he ended up with another detention.

"I'm... I'm out. In the car. Driving..."

"Get to Geneva this instant!" And the holographic image disappeared.

He closed a hand over the watch and leaned back, his head resting on the backrest of his seat, chest heaving. Zim's next session wasn't due for another two hours and forty five minutes, but his father's abrasiveness fetched up every worry he had been trying to squeeze away. He kept imagining scenarios of Zim escaping. Of Zim coming for him.

He released the handbrake and put his foot on the gas, arm snapping the steering wheel into a harsh 180.

Wetness was creeping through his shirt; the material sticking to him.

He parked outside Waterfall National Park, stumbled out of the car and swung the passenger door wide. He gestured at the cavernous woods where shadows crept, moved and fluttered. Flowers skirting the border bobbed their heads to the tune of the wind. "Get out."

Gir carefully and quietly slid out. The damn thing was like a living, animate cartoon that would only snag on his patience and complicate his life. And he was still holding that ridiculous cake monstrosity on a soiled plate. Gir attempted offering it to him again even when it was half eaten, but Dib had already turned away and was in the car. He backed onto the road. Gir became a tiny misshapen dog thing in the distance until the green dot couldn't be seen against the backdrop of trees.

-x-

He lurched out of the car like his midsection was broken and staggered heavily up the stone steps to the front of the building. The lingering, pestering crowd wasn't there on account of someone leaning against the glass doors. Seeing the purple hair and raised and narrowed eyes still had the unfortunate affect of making him shudder. He acted as though he hadn't noticed her, and fussed with his rumpled jacket, eyes downward as he proceeded, but the ice in her words still plunged through his chest wall.

"Way to go, Dib."

He lifted his eyes to look back at her. Her smile was calculating and cold, but her amber eyes burned. "What's your problem?"

"Why don't you take a good look in the mirror?" Her smile was cunning, a catlike smile, but there was no warmth there.

"Do I even want to know what you're doing here?"

She thumbed the entrance beside her. "Dad works here. Obviously." She rolled her eyes. "I'm taking him out to lunch. When he's dealt with you."

He thought of demanding an answer, then shook his head despairingly at her, lips trembling, and pushed through the glass door. His father was waiting for him, arms folded, looking like a disappointed teacher that was about to hand him a suspension slip. With him was Williams. The transition was so sudden, and their looks so sombre that he entirely forgot about his sister's reception.

"What's this about?" Dib looked between them, anxiously trying to pinpoint a telltale giveaway to their sudden urgency. His stomach kept roiling around, his mouth tasted like bile, and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.

"This way, please." And his father ushered him towards the elevator, his voice aloof as if he was merely speaking to an underling.

"Zim's got out, hasn't he? You want me safe, is that it?"

The professor's hand was clasped on his shoulder; it was heavy and severe, almost squeezing painfully into bone.

Their silence was infuriating. He was planted between them, like a criminal guarded on each side by police officers.

They took him out of the elevator and down a seamless and cold corridor. The stink of bleach and antiseptics and latex was back.

There was no way they discovered that I planted those charges! I made sure I wasn't seen!

What if there's something incriminating in my files?

The professor took him to a door, and Williams promptly knocked on the metal with a light tap of his knuckles. When it opened, Carlson's knotted face was there to greet him. The sergeant tried to smile, but his lips twisted into something that made Dib think of knotted and rusty wire. "Step inside son." He stepped back, and Dib walked in, eyes flashing to the chamber's interior, sure to see restraints ready to admit him. The room was small, with a few swivel chairs, a table, and a bank of monitoring computers, some of which were turned off, while one displayed the pulsing lines from an ECG that could only be Zim's vitals. Others showed bits and parts of the subject's body, skeletal structure and organs in graphic detail.

Carlson, arms folded, sat on the desk by the bank of computers, sucking on a cocktail stick. Aside from the professor and Williams, he looked most at ease. He gestured at the chair before him. "Sit down. Make yourself comfortable."

Dib looked to the chair, not liking the atmosphere, or Carlson's sudden interest in him. The sergeant had hardly looked his way; had hardly acknowledged him since Zim's arrival.

As much as he preferred to stand, his vision was plagued with blinding afterimages and the floor like to move around as if he was standing in water.

He eased himself into the chair as naturally as he could, and managed to do it without wincing.

"I'd like you to watch what we recorded a little earlier." Carlson's uneasy and stiff smile lingered on that lined and watchful face. He turned slightly, and tapped on the keyboard. The computer screen in front of him lit up, presenting the thin, naked and drawn form of his nemesis as he sat, welded to the metal chair, arms and chest strung with wires that clung unceremoniously to his nymphet body.

"Hey!" Zim was hoarsely shouting at someone off-screen. "Don't I get to make a phone call?"

There was mumblings from the observers that the camera could barely pick up. Then a tinny version of Carlson's voice piped up. "Hang on! I want to see where this goes!"

Dib watched Zim's pale face light up, those narrowed eyes widening into softer curvatures. A bulky plastic phone was presented, and he watched those skinny green arms try to lift to reach for it only to jar against bloodied restraints. Williams approached in the recording, standing in view of the camera as he held the phone.

"What's the number?" Williams asked.

"0076 00..." Zim started, his lips lifting at the nearness of the scientist. Eventually the phone was lifted towards his right antenna. There was a click on the other end, and a childlike voice was heard.

Dib's heart plunged.

"Gir?!" Zim's eyes fluttered and the soft pink of his pupils seemed to dilate. "Gir is that you? Where are you? Are you okay?"

"I like mud! I have lots of new friends! Dib made sure I was comfy!"

The recording was abruptly shut off, the image of Zim's mingled pain and relief was still in his eyes, and Carlson moved his hand away from the keyboard. He lifted the cocktail stick from his lips and twirled it in his index finger and thumb. His voice was calm when he asked: "Who is this Gir?"

"I don't know!" He looked to them, to Carlson, his father, Williams. "Zim's doing this just to spite me! He's always trying to get me! Don't be fooled by him!"

"You mentioned in your files that A01 had a robot assistant."

"Yes, the uh, robot parents he has stuffed in his cupboards or wherever!"

Carlson stopped twiddling the stick for a minute, hard eyes settling on Dib's. "These 'robot parents' of his has been dissembled. The call connected to a mobile device."

"You have everything of his! He was just calling some neighbour or friend! He manipulates and lies to survive! I have nothing to do with this!"

Carlson held the slim stick a moment before snapping it in half. "You're not in any trouble, son. But if there's anything we've missed, anything we should know, I believe you'll come through for us." He looked at him, his gaze as heavy as concrete. Dib fidgeted where he sat, armpits tickling with sweat.

"You have everything!" He said again through gritted teeth, struggling not to wince and cry out as the pain magnified and climbed through him. Carlson's gaze quietly probed, as if he could undress him with those wolfish, gunmetal eyes. His iron scrutiny took in his twitching fingers, the sweaty shine on his nose and forehead.

He didn't know what to say in his defence.

The sergeant stood up slowly from the desk as if his back troubled him. He approached, and Dib stared, straightening in turn, heart racing, blood and the sweat saturating his clothes.

The man planted a hand on his shoulder and said in his ear: "You have egg on you." He smiled, and the tension lifted in the same moment. Dib felt his inner core sag, the air finally getting to his lungs. "You can go." Carlson turned to the professor and the cardiologist before shortly gesturing at Dib. "I haven't been formally introduced to the world's bravest hero. I think it's about time we got to know one another a little better. What do you say, Dib?"

He slapped him on the back of his shoulder blades, causing him to let slip a pain-filled moan. "S-Sure."

Prof. Membrane hesitated, looking to his son. Williams was at the door, not enthused on staying.

"Well, all right." The professor said with difficulty. He turned and left with the doctor.

Dib watched the door shut on their retreat, the closing click as final as a hammer sliding back on a gun.

"It's all right, son. There's no need to look so spooked." Carlson turned to the water receptacle and drew out water into a plastic cup. He handed it to Dib who weakly smiled when he took it. Sipping it and getting his throat working did not suppress the shivers or make him feel any less sick. "You're a smart kid. And you're a survivor. I admire you, you've had to suffer, and do so alone. Many a man twice your age would crumble at the slightest danger. But not you."

"T-Thanks." The nausea rose like the rising tide. He wasn't sure if it was because of the wound, because of the blips and bleeps of the ECG in the background, or because it happened to be Carlson who was finally giving him recognition.

"I wish there was more brave men like you out there." He folded his arms, his voice warmer and softer than Dib had ever heard it, that wincing smile remaining, but he looked at him as a farmer might look at one of his fattening piglets. "There has been this one thing that's been bothering me though."

"Y-yeah? What's that?"

"I find it curious that you've happily sat on the sidelines, watching the proceedings without taking a more active approach. Don't you want to hurt that thing after what it's done to you?"

Dib sipped at the water, taking his time, but there was no outlasting a soldier. They had the patience to endure bombardment in the trenches, and wait for their prey to stumble into an ambush.

Carlson seemed to sense his hesitation, but did not appear harassed or disappointed by it. He lifted his bushy eyebrows and took a cocktail stick packet out from his cargo pant pocket. "Your father wants to mollycoddle the creature. As if it has rights. But we both know A01 threw those away the moment he breached Earth's stratosphere. He is an invader, as a virus is to the human body."

"It's okay." He breathed out. "I'll let the experts handle it."

Those calculating eyes roamed over his body again. "You're scared, son. But that's okay. I know what you're going through. It happened to me once, a long time ago, before you were born."

"S-Scared?"

"Why else do you avoid the opportunity, my boy? You don't want to face A01. Why is that? Is it the guilt? The fear that he might hurt you again?"

"I... I just don't want to, that's all."

"Isn't there anything you want to say to it?"

"No." He took a breath. "I have nothing to say."

"That's okay, son. It takes guts to look your enemy in the face. Especially ones you once knew, ones you trusted. They're like a knife in the back. It stirs up things inside. And they want to weaken you. But you mustn't let them." He softly patted Dib on the shoulder. "You're strong in heart and spirit. You're the type who'll always rise above evil. Your father however has strange and ineffective ideals. You can never trust those who dance on both sides of the fence."

"He... he wants to see the best in people. That's how he's always been..."

"Then he is a fool. But I believe in you." He approached the desk and retrieved a beat-up, dog eared copy of his ZIM files. "The intel you gathered... I'm impressed. You uncovered so much about the enemy all by yourself. Your father tells me this started when you were just shy of eleven years old."

Dib nodded, unable to hold the self-conscious smile. The nausea abated. "I couldn't just stand by, and let the world fall into Zim's hands."

"You have tenacity, son. Something your father overlooks. I've noticed."

Dib produced another awkward smile, hand haplessly drawing to the aching throb spreading to his armpit and pelvis.

Carlson straightened, eyebrows lifting. "You look terrifically pale, my boy."

"It's nothing." He sunk back, fixed in place, sweat running down his temple.

"Let's see now, it's okay."

"No!" He shot to his feet, swerved round, hit the chair that seemed to position itself in the way, and stumbled to the floor. The game was over. When he looked round, palms and knees flat on the grubby hard linoleum, dots of blood were wherever he'd been. The back of the chair looked like someone had spilled red dye down it.

Carlson knelt before him. Dib slowly looked up into those hard and stoic eyes. Grimly the sergeant opened out his jacket to reveal the deep red saturating his shirt and gauze. The soggy material clung to his skin like wet plastic. The sergeant mildly shook his head, grunting. "You've been hiding that, haven't you?"

"H-How did you...?" His voice rattled out of trembling lips.

"Reading people inside and out is my God given job. Who did that to you, son?"

"It's n-nothing..." He dipped his eyes away, knowing it was useless to keep up the act. He had never been good at hiding behind masks like Zim could.

"That monster did that to you, didn't he? I wondered how you did it when you approached me unscathed, and gave A01 to me."

He clamped his jaw, eyes screwing shut. Idiot! Idiot!

There would be a quiet place he'd be taken to, and he may not be allowed to leave Geneva for an indefinite period of time. He might be treated very well by the staff but he'd still be prisoner.

Carlson offered him a hand. He looked at it, weighing up his narrowing options, and gingerly took it. The military man helped him up. "Let me take you to that oddball doctor of the professor's. I'm sure he can clean you up and see to that injury. Looks like you've lost quite a bit of blood too."

"Aren't you going to detain me? Examine me?"

Carlson's laughter was a lot like his abrasive grunts. He took him by the elbow with one arm around his shoulders as he led him through the door and down the hall. "Good one, kid."

Dib allowed the support, he wasn't sure he could hold his own weight, but being this close to the sergeant seemed to widen the pain and fill him with a feverish panic. The man smelt of grease, gun oil, whiskey and that musty attic smell you got when you retrieved an item of clothing from the vestiges of neglect.

"Blood loss can make you feel inebriated." He sergeant's tones sounded painfully imitated, his smile that persistent and uncomfortable wince. A puppet would have given a more genuine expression. "Let's hope that monster didn't hit you anywhere vital. How did it happen?"

"I... I was..." He had been mostly paying attention to the inlaid diamonds patterned on the floor, and as they moved, the floor suddenly veered upwards, but instead of hitting the wood, he sunk straight through, the diamonds breaking apart like so many drifting clouds beneath the shifting and waxing of colours. Things twirled in that hidden world, like leaves of whispered heartache.

Zim's thin willowy silhouette was standing against the backdrop of a giant screen revealing the spiralling constellations and galaxies in their pulsing millions. In his gloved hand was a remote.

His thumb hit the button.

"The Armada aren't coming."

The screen blew outwards, enveloping Zim's form.

When he opened his eyes, a blurry world peered back, and a monstrous figure was hovering just out of reach, the face a mask with dark oval things perched on top. He blinked, heart pounding, about to scream when the figure materialized into his father. "Aha! There you are my boy!" His words clapped into his ears like dynamite exploding.

He made to sit up; trying to find and arrange his noodle-like limbs, but a hand was planted on his shoulder before he had even begun the attempt and he laid his pounding head back on the pillow.

"No no! You ought to rest. You have stitches, and moving around only aggravates them."

"Stitches?" He answered dreamily without making the connection.

"Quite so." He ran gloved fingers over his son's forehead. "There is little use explaining my disappointment in you. You shoulder so much, without ever seeking help."

He swallowed, feeling thorns down there. His head felt like it had a wedge of glass inside it. "Where am I?"

"You are tucked up in my spare room. Geneva has many spare offices and rooms set aside for us."

Dib lifted his blankets to see that he was wearing blood-peppered boxers. His torso was bare except for the gauze meticulously wrapped around his midsection. He touched the curiously numbed and padded area with a kind of wonder.

"I would refrain from touching your wound. You banged your head and have a concussion. Your side has a laceration..."

"Zim did that..." He breathed out.

"And you never told me?"

"Guess I thought it would hold up..." His eyes flashed guiltily up at his. He heard his father sigh in exasperation. He went to sit up again more cautiously, wanting to discern where he was. He was in one of those steel and plain beds that were regularly used by late-night staff. The room was humble in its simplicity, with all the modest comforts of a hotel room. There were no tools, no metal devices and menacing computer screens. The only tech this room had to offer was an old TV set.

"Must you be so stubborn?" His father leaned forward a little to shore up a pillow so that his son could lean comfortably into it.

He blinked a few times, the dim lights in the room causing stars to blink and scatter in his eyes. "What... what was that thing you used? To make him sit back in that chair?"

"Thing?" His father paused a moment, and then sighed in recognition. "No, no, I carried no such device or instrument. I merely asked him to return to the chair."

Panic made him sit forwards, muscles tensing, "He would have attacked you if you weren't carrying something to defend yourself with! What about the smoke from the vents? What was that for?" What were you thinking?

"Don't concern yourself with such trivialities. You need to rest."

"I... I wanted to prove that I could!" He burst out, eyes glazing over. "All I wanted was for you to notice me! To make you proud!"

"Shush now, son." He was back to tenderly stroking his bandaged forehead, the touch magically wicking away the pain. "It is my fault. I drove you to this. My work divided my attention, but I never stopped believing in you, son. Never."


Dib07: I always reply if you wanna leave your thoughts, and though I am a shy person, I love love sharing my enthusiasm for this franchise! Thanks for reading!

TBC...?